Comments on: Orszag, DeParle Insist That Health Care Bill Has Cost Containment

By: greenharper

greenharper — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:18:46 +0000

I have one word for Peter Orszag: Iceland.

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:49:25 +0000

uwe reinhardt is one smart dude, and i quote his writings on occasion, but he also profits handsomely if we keep as much privatization in the system as possible.

By: marcopolo

marcopolo — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:51:00 +0000

I’m thinking the White House is going to commit a huge tactical mistake in the next week or so, whereby the administration will prioritize war over health care, and be in the unenviable position of valuing lives and cost in completely opposite ways.

Okay to pay without budget consequences to harm humans in war. Not okay to pay with budget consequences for harmed sick humans at home.

If progressives can frame this in the right way, they can kill two birds with one stone: a fraudulent reform effort and a war with no end. Save lives, care for them, don’t end them in drone attacks on villages.

By: David Dayen

David Dayen — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:48:41 +0000

Yeah, I kind of wove the questions into the story. Didn’t get mine out, it was just the big boys (NYT, Drudgico, NPR, CNN, etc). They were weirdly combative on the points Orszag and DeParle clearly wanted to highlight, but the elephants in the room were ignored.

By: marcopolo

marcopolo — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:44:53 +0000

Very confused about this, too. Everything I’ve read by or about Reinhardt indicates he recommends single- or all- (e.g.German)payer systems, where private insurers are either absent or relegated to a very minor role in the health care model. He has also come out in favor of simplifying the American health care system, with a scathing comparison to a patchwork of Afghani fiefdoms, each represented by a venal, for profit insurance or drug company. And I think Selise has posted elsewhere he had a hand in designing the (single payer) Taiwanese health care system. So what he is doing signing on to a hairball like the Senate bill? One wonders how this was presented to him…I thought a good, highly credentialed team would include Reinhardt, Marcia Angell and Krugman.

I really hope progressives and Republicans can band together to kill this bill.

By: apishapa

apishapa — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:04:48 +0000

Excise tax in high end insurance is a tax on Union Workers. That’s what it is. Orzag should shut up about that if Obama wants Union support next time around.

“Beefed up Medicare Commission” is a sneaky way to take medicare decisions out of the hands of Congress so that they have deniability when they cut benefits of voters. Rich people are not going to be hurt if Medicare is cut. Older middle class and poor people are. The same kind of thing seems to be in the works for Medicaid. Congressmen want to take away beneftis, but they don’t want to take the blame for “Death Panels” and “unhooking Grandma”. So they want a unelected commission to give them deniability. They do want to unhook Grandma, but they want to blame some faceless, untouchable commission. Democrats will get the blame for this. This is scary and I hate it.

Delivery systems aimed at efficiency is okay with me. Don’t think it is going to save much for a long time. It’s going to take 4 or more years to get the little public option going for 6 million people, imagine how slow they are going to move in copying all the medical records for 300,000,000 people. It is going to cost a mint and take forever, then the system will be down when you need it. Better hang on to the hardcopies.

All the hell I ever hear about is “cost containment” for the Governemnt and protecting profits for Insurance Companies. But it is never cost containment for the consumers who are going to be forced to buy worthless insurance from companies in the business of denying care. How about containing the cost of health care for all of us, not the cost of bailing out insurance companies at the expense of taxpayers? It is never about the cost in human lives of bargaining away genuine health care reform.

Many years ago, my Mom told me that the budget is always balanced on the backs of the poor, the old, the weak and the children. They always carry the burden so the rich can take more.

By: dbos

dbos — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:59:12 +0000

Less cost to the govt perhaps but not to the consumers,thats the rub. No strong public option available to all as an alternative, don’t pass it

By: fuckno

fuckno — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:39:10 +0000

Poor Obama, surrounded by an ever growing cohort of hand picked enemies.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:28:16 +0000

To return to that list I chose one of the schools at random. 23 economists to a lay person would suggest a significant chunk of the economics profession, a wide spectrum of views and backgrounds. But the opposite is true. These 23 represent a small and highly interconnected grouping. They are all credentialed out the wazoo but the nature of that credentialing is very similar. Both economics and healthcare are failed systems. These names are major pillars of one or both of those systems. The real question we should be asking about them is just how much credence do they have, or deserve?

Dr. Alan Auerbach, University of California, Berkeley: is a member of the American Enterprise Institute and has cowritten papers with Orszag

Dr. J. Bradford DeLong, University of California, Berkeley, as selise says a neoliberal idiot; he worked for Larry Summers at Treasury and on NAFTA; he also cowrote papers with Summers

Dr. Daniel McFadden, University of California, Berkeley, Nobel Laureate in Economics: econometrics modeling choice, connections also to MIT

Dr. Laura D’Andrea Tyson, University of California, Berkeley: Chair of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and an Obama economic adviser.

By: bmull

bmull — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:11:58 +0000

The economist’s letter was written for the express purpose of pushing the WH/Senate bill, and now the White House is touting the their plan as meeting the “pillars” set out in the letter.

This is what I call a propaganda circle. The issue validators and the officials are all working together, but they pretend they are not.