Posted by
Laura L. Hollis, JD on Saturday, August 08, 2009 11:13:54 AM
I am at a conference of business law professors - a thoroughly
delightful group of people, by the way - and I had someone ask me a question at the session where I presented my paper on Entrepreneurial Policy Design: "How can you defend the health care status quo" my guest asked [this question drives me nuts, as I wasn't talking about health care, and
had I been, I would
not have defended the status quo] "...when we can see from 'competitive analysis' [a term I
had used] that all of the other industrialized nations have single-payer health care spend less, and have long life expectancies?"
Well, first of all, they
don't spend "less," but more about that another time.
When it comes to life expectancy, apparently, our Brit and Canuck friends only live longer than we do if they don't get sick in the first place. See Deroy Murdock's excellent piece on the subject in the
National Review Online here.
Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams once said. So are statistics.
And for what it's worth, I responded to my questioner by saying that not only was I
not defending the status quo, I believe our current system of health
insurance [not
care] to be a "failing business model." I explained that the costs were spiraling out of control, and that these are not sustainable. "What I
am saying,"
I explained, "is that we need a better model for designing our public policy; one more in keeping with the the kind of financial analyses and assessments that entrepreneurs must provide to prospective investors."
Everything people
hate about private insurance - the bureaucracy, the faceless decision-makers, the denial of care - would be present in Obamacare, and worse - because there would be
no switching jobs,
no switching policies,
no alternatives,
no appeals.
Worse (at least from a systemic, if not an individual standpoint) would be the fact that nothing in the Obamacare plan does anything to address the most serious issue: skyrocketing costs. In fact, Obama's plan would send costs into the stratosphere.
"You cannot salvage a failing business model by making it bigger," I said. "It doesn't work in the private sectore, and it doesn't work in the public sector, either. We threw $50 billion at GM, and they went into bankruptcy anyway. Why? Because they had - and perhaps still have - a business model that is unsustainable. Taking the current health care system 'universal' only means that when the system
does collapse - as it must - then it will take the entire United States government with it."