June 1, 2009
What's Phase Two Again?
Maya MacGuineas has a superb column in the WaPo today, exploding the myth that the problem with health care is that government is not buying enough of it.
"Health-care reform is entitlement reform" has become a mantra of the Obama administration. The idea is that Congress can add a massive health-care program this year -- covering the uninsured -- and use the same measures that pay for the health reform to fix the broader budget problems. If that sounds too good to be true, there's a reason.
She takes the proponents' arguments seriously enough to refute them. Yes, it would help some to broaden the risk pool; yes it would help some to move patients from the ER to scheduled office visits. But to think that marginal savings would cancel or seriously mitigate the cost of providing coverage for tens of millions of additional recipients is absurd.
Hat-tip: Professor Makiw