Sunday, March 21, 2010
If health care passes
Who will win? Not politicaly or socialy but financaily. When umpteen million financaily strapped people begin to exercise their new benefit of seeing a doctor regularly and checking on every discomfort they have lived with for years. From hemorrhoids to cancer the volume of treatment is going to skyrocket and money is going to change hands. Insurance companies have opposed this down the line so are they the losers, I'm not so sure about that considering their customer base will be increased phenomenally. Certainly Health Care providers will see a huge increase in business but will they be regulated by govmnt and insurance cos so much that it becomes less profitable across the board sort of neutralizing the whole endeavour. Fringe companies such as pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, testing, radiology, ect ect, ect are bound feel the love if they arn't caught up in regulation as well. Maybe some smart young people will find a way to milk this with a start up company of some sort. This subject is probably already been considered and acted on by the next wall str. phenom, but in all the press and coverage of the new bill I havn't seen much on the best way to position yourself on the receiving end of this huge spending spree.
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At some level, you have to accept the CBO projections, and that means that taxpayers will be saving substantial money overall within 10 years. I'm sure I will be in the category of taxpayer subsidizing the initial expansion of coverage. But, I'll also be able to add Garrett back on to my existing insurance plan, which he was evicted from last year. Kyla can avoid constructing career decisions around pre-existing conditions clauses. If you want these kinds of fixes, then you need to correct the current insurance company incentive to limit pools to healthy people. If you force the pool to be expanded, then you have to require people to pay for insurance so they don't game the system by buying it on the way to the hospital for their unanticipated cancer treatment. If you're going to do that, you have to require people to buy insurance. If you're going to do that, you have to subsidize people who legitimately cannot afford it. If you're going to do that without money flowing out of taxpayers pockets even more rapidly, you need to put incentives into place to reward effective practices. There are always people who looking to profit from the system, like the medicare scooter fraud type of cases.
I think Ezra Klein (now blogging for the Washington Post) has had the most content-filled information on health care policy in a readable form. Here's his take on cost controls, which also has a pointer to the OMB. Here is a more recent item he had on skepticism about the CBO projections, too.
And speaking of Ezra Klein, I guess he's reading this blog, because it looks like he responded just now.
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