"Private-Market Tooth Fairy Can’t Cut Medicare Cost" By Peter Orszag at Bloomberg News

[applegrove]

Private-Market Tooth Fairy Can’t Cut Medicare Cost

By Peter Orszag at Bloomberg News

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-20/private-market-tooth-fairy-can-t-cut-medicare-cost.html

"SNIP...................................................

The vast bulk of health-care costs arise from an extremely small share of patients, whose insurance will inevitably bear a substantial share of their expenses.

That’s why competition in health care doesn’t work as well as in other sectors, and it’s also why the key to keeping costs to a minimum is to encourage providers to offer better, less costly care in complex cases.

Unfortunately, proponents of moving Medicare to a private “consumer-driven” system, including Republican vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan, seem to instead believe in a health-care competition tooth fairy -- that if we just increase the patient’s share of costs and bolster competition among insurance companies, the expense will come down. As Karl Rove recently argued, “Competition will lower costs by using market forces to spur innovation and improvement.”

Someone might want to tell that to the Congressional Budget Office, which evaluated Ryan’s original 2011 proposal to gradually move all of Medicare to private insurance companies. (In all these comparisons, we must remember that the goal is to reduce total cost -- to the government and the beneficiary combined -- compared with current projections. Merely shifting costs across the two categories is not a particularly impressive accomplishment.)

......................................................SNIP"

[freshwest]

1. All the GOP has is voodoo economics and fairy dust. I mean, tooth fairy dust.

We need to make them go POOF!

[Hydra]

2. We tried to in 2008

The GOP was DEAD. It took one of the most popular and likable Democratic Presidents ever to resurrect them.

...That was NOT the miracle I voted for!

[freshwest]

4. I didn't vote for a miracle, so I'm not surprised. The Messiah was not on the ticket.

[Hydra]

5. You're not surprised that the GOP is as strong as they were before the crash?

And that they had the help of our party to do it?

That certainly was a miracle...just not one I was voting for.

[freshwest]

7. They didn't need our help and we didn't give them any. They had 20 years of media in their favor.

And they still do. Not only that, they've had more than half a century of wealth accumulation to use on those who believed in fair play. But they don't play fair, and don't have to since they control the message. On the Democratic Party and Obama bashing, we'll just have to part ways. See you later, I don't do that.

[CBHagman]

6. I'm glad to see someone addressing the GOP's unjustified faith in the market.

Given the rather fawning attention Ryan has received from the media, it's encouraging to see some of that has abated and the debunking is now taking place in earnest.

[freshwest]

8. Thanks.