Robust MedPAC and Robust Public Option Are Too Great Tastes That Go Great Together
An excellent point from Igor Volsky who observes that the idea of cutting health care costs through a beefed-up MedPAC is highly complementary with the idea for a robust public option for non-seniors:
This makes the public plan all the more important. If MedPAC is identifying payment reforms that would lower health care spending, then the public health option could transfer those methods into the private insurance market by itself adopting these efficiencies and (through the miracle of competition) coax private insurers to do the same.
One might add, conversely, that public-private competition among non-seniors could also act as a check against the (in my mind, remote) threat of MedPAC decision-making run amok. But the broader point is simpler. Clearly, everyone working on health reform sees that senior citizens should have a publicly run insurance option—it’s called Medicare. Equally clearly, everyone is hoping on reforms implemented through the Medicare process to pay systematic dividends in terms of ensuring the availability of affordable coverage for everyone. The logic of those two points is firmly in the direction of a serious public option for the under-65 crowd. The transmission of Medicare-based reforms throughout the system could happen without such an option, but it would be much easier to make it happen with a public option in place. Politics is politics, of course, but if Medicare is the right option for senior citizens and if Medicare is an important mechanism for influencing provider behavior, it continues to be hard to see the case on the merits for denying a Medicare-esque option to the rest of us.
16 Responses to “Robust MedPAC and Robust Public Option Are Too Great Tastes That Go Great Together”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
June 4th, 2009 at 11:00 am
On the other hand, the idea of the public option actually delivering cost-effective health insurance is what is keeping people with a vested interest in the status quo up at night.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Ah, the pleasures of too great tastes…
June 4th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Is it to much two ask that Matt gives his work a second look in order too get rid of typos, at least in the title?
June 4th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Is it to much two ask that Matt gives his work a second look . . . .
Appearencely yez, it’s 2 mooch 2 ass, cents peephole half bin assing 4evuh.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:17 am
maybe they’re just toooooo grrrreat to separate! it was TOTALLY intentional.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:25 am
So either one would be a good idea, but together their too much. Got it! I’ll immediately write my congresscritters to tell them to pick one or the other.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:32 am
mb w cn js tx msg nu pos
June 4th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Maybe MY meant the headline as a rejoinder, as in, “yes, they are too great tastes… so there!”
June 4th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Because Congress doesn’t have the cohones to implement MedPAC recommendations and the Centers for Medicare/Medicaid are a bunch of pin head bureaucrats, a third decision making group should be chartered?
The world must be laughing.
June 4th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
The first comprehensive English language dictionary, the OED, wasn’t created until something like 120 years ago. Go back 200 years earlier and you won’t find people even especially trying to spell things consistently.
It’s possible we’ve already passed a high-point of spelling accuracy. For the near to mid term I don’t see a spell checker emerging that can pick the correct word from a set of homophones based on context. If our future is in the hands of bright, prolific writers who don’t especially care about spelling (beyond ensuring that every word already exists in the dictionary), then we’re just one generation from having a large body of published works where, e.g., use “two” and “too” are employed interchangeably.
June 4th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
(On the other hand, there’s at least one typo in just about everything I post online, so I completely understand that I’m part of the problem).
June 4th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
The annoying thing about this site is that whenever Matt has a typo in a post I have to wade through tons of tedious comments whining about it.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Does MY even know that whenever he make an egregious error, like this one or the great one a few weeks ago where he didn’t label the axis on one of his graphs, such that the graph then was as aggravating and useless as a Megan McArdle post, it just causes what might otherwise have been a fruitful discussion in the comments to become one of these snarkfests?
June 4th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
tons of tedious comments whining about it.
Willie, I think you mistake as whining what is really our enormous appreciation for how Matt is able to take his orthographic challenges (as he put it recently) to ever new heights. I, for one, would have never believed that someone could mess up “two.” We are not whiners, we’re fans, eagerly awaiting the next pushback of the envelope.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
A more “robust” MedPac is a frightening prospect. It has a long and ugly history of ignorance, deceit and an inability either to understand or fairly present basic health statistics. I’ve been fighting for increased access to and quality of health care for decades, and MedPac has never failed to be a barrier.
June 5th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
The right model is public, universal, automatic catastrophic coverage funded, at least in the long run, from general revenues, with competition among private and self-funded public entities underneath that. Providing certainty of coverage and substantial certainty of payment for services rendered — along with clearly useful reforms like electronic documentation — will eliminate enormous costs flowing simply from the irrationality of the current mish-mash. It also provides benefits for all parties, including providers who can dismantle their expensive bill-collection infrastructures, and even private insurers which are no longer exposed to unpredictable catastrophic costs and no longer need to incur the costs of finding and fighting over pre-existing conditions.
Once we have a rational payment system in place, then we can see what public efforts make sense to reduce costs further. In other words, focus on the insurance now. It is the social crisis that first needs to be addressed, and at least some significant fiscal benefits will flow from just that reform without the need for new cost-control bureaucracies.