McCaincare and Women
One thing that our health care system does is tend to generate cross-subsidies between people who don’t use much health care over to people who use a lot of health care. The system doesn’t necessarily do this very well, because the system’s not very well-designed, but it definitely does this to some extent. If you had a universal system with everyone in a single big risk pool, you’d do this to an even larger extent.
On the other sign of the fence is the emerging conservative orthodoxy about health care which holds that the problem with health care in the United States is that there’s too much health insurance. Thus, you have John McCain supporting some changes to the regulation of private health insurance and to the tax treatment of health insurance that are designed to shove people in the direction of cheaper plans that don’t cover as much stuff. There are some things to be said in favor of this approach. In particular, it really would cut down on wasteful health expenditures to some extent. But it would do so in a fairly indiscriminate way with the downside disproportionately borne by people who have less money and by people who use more health care. Among other things, as a whole women make less money than do men and women use more health care services than do men. Consequently, the impact of McCain-style health reform would fall disproportionately on women.
You can see all this spelled out in some detail in a new CAPAF report on women and McCain’s health care proposals.
19 Responses to “McCaincare and Women”
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September 10th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Why in the world are you writing about something as inconsequential as this? Didn’t you hear that Obama called Sarah Palin a pig?
Ambinder would be ashamed of you for writing about this wonky nonsense.
September 10th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
“designed to shove people in the direction of cheaper plans that don’t cover as much stuff.”
That’s wrong. And if you ever had to buy insurance as an individual, you’d know it. Insurance plans for individuals are much more expensive to the buyer than group plans. They are not cheaper. The second half is correct. Those individual plans do, in fact, cover less. Due to the preexisting condition restrictions, they specifically don’t cover the medical issues that are most likely to occur. The deal insurance companies offer to us individual buyers is this: “We’re going to charge twice as much and we’ll only cover health problems that you are unlikely to have. And we won’t tell you what we will refuse to cover until you actually need the coverage. In short, we’re glad to have your money, but don’t expect anything in return.” The only thing good about McCain’s plan is that it doesn’t actually force me to buy insurance that won’t to cover my medical problems. I can still keep my “Fly to Thailand when you’re sick” plan.
September 10th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
“One thing that our health care system does is tend to generate cross-subsidies between people who don’t use much health care over to people who use a lot of health care.”
This is also what insurance does.
September 10th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
It’s funny that conservatives don’t complain about other risk pooling, such as deposit or liability insurance.
September 10th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
“In particular, it really would cut down on wasteful health expenditures to some extent.”
Whether the net effect would be to reduce wasteful expenditures, or total expenditures, is not obvious. One of the effects of requiring people to pay their own medical expenses is that they forego routine monitoring and preventive care until they are really sick. The expensive treatment they then receive is wasteful by any reasonable definition of the term.
September 10th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Re: It’s funny that conservatives don’t complain about other risk pooling, such as deposit or liability insurance.
Or even car insurance, property insurance or life insurance.
September 10th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
“Among other things, as a whole women make less money than do men and women use more health care services than do men.”
#1. Women may make less money, but making money isn’t the only way to have money. For married people, the money tends to get distributed from the man to the woman (not always, of course, but you yourself were only speaking in terms of general trends).
#2. Women might actually use more health services, but that’s a different question from who should be using more health services. As a big-thinking liberal, you, Matt, are hardly one who should be assuming that we’re stuck with things the way they are. There’s lots of evidence that men have it worse when it comes to health.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Speaking from a liberal orthodoxy, I would also describe the problem as too much insurance–or more accurately, too much insurance industry between me and my care. That said, I don’t think McCain’s proposals are going to help any of my problems, much less so were I a woman.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Gold plated coverage = wasteful = health care services provided to someone else.
Core = essential = health care services provided to me.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Great site. Good info
March 13th, 2009 at 6:41 am
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
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