Let us fast forward a few weeks and assume health care reform passes the Congress and is signed into law, then what? Well, you have a massive piece of legislation as the starting point. In other words, you have a giant wad of play dough for Congress to manipulate in the future.
As one legislative aid told me recently, “once this passes we can start making changes.”
And changes they will make of that you can be sure.
It has been estimated that the mandates applied to health insurance add between 20 and 25% to the cost of insurance. Thus, the high premiums charged by much maligned insurance companies are driven in large part by our state politicians who cannot resist tinkering with health care in favor of this or that cause or constituency. Not only do these mandates add to the cost of health insurance, they continuously reinforce the idea that all health care should be “free” to the patient. But hey, nobody blames the politicians; it is far more convenient to blame the guy who tells you your premium is going up.
A look into the future of health care is available today in the mammogram debate. The revised guidelines were quickly dismissed by the administration and members of the Senate just as quickly amended their pending health care legislation to assure that there would be full coverage for this screening no questions asked. There was no time for debate and nobody really cared if the suggested rethinking was right or wrong it was politically incorrect…and it was emotional. These two factors are the primary drivers for health care spending decisions in the future.
No questions asked and nobody between you and your doctor is what has gotten Medicare into trouble, expand that approach throughout the health care system and you have the makings of out of control costs. There are smart people in government who know this does not work, but that is of little consequence because we are in the process of turning over those decisions to several hundred people who respond to….you got it…political correctness and emotion (with a modicum of self interest in the mix).
As we politicize health care decision making at the federal level we leave in place the ability for the states to continue their micromanagement and we also create pilot programs to research how health care can be more efficient and cost effective, we fund comparative effectiveness studies in the hope of filtering throughout the system best practices for providing care…you know, like new guidelines for mammograms …
Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the “Freedom from Oversight, Control and Interference between Patient and Doctor in Healthcare Decision Making Act of 2011.”
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QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
Emotion should almost always be replaced with logic, except for traumatic life experiences which emotion has to run it’s course. Mammograms are an emotional issue for many especially when at least one legislator was saved by early screening before 50. Maybe 50 is not the right cutoff. I think that is a worthwhile debate. Abortion debates have run their course, are we are arguing over a private company who provides for abortion but gets no federal money? We still want people safe don’t we? I agree with your position on state mandates, coverage has to be some where between state mandates and what Cigna covers.
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I felt much the same when the idiot Representatives were citing their “historic” vote, another idiotic reason to vote for quite possibly the biggest boondoggle ever perpetrated on America.
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