BCT Editorial – 12/16/08

This page was last updated on December 29, 2008.

Waste not, want not; Editorial; Beaver County Times; December 16, 2008.

The editorial subtitle is “Obama’s health care effort must make system more efficient.”

The most recent previous editorial on this topic was “Inching along.”

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“President-elect Barack Obama is taking a crack a health-care reform.

“One thing is certain: Any changes to make the system more efficient will require everyone involved — doctors, patients, insurers, prescription drug firms and employers — to rethink the way in which they approach health care.

“Obama last week named Tom Daschle, his choice as health and human services secretary, also to be director of a new White House office on health reform. Daschle’s job is to craft changes in health care that expand coverage without breaking the bank.”

[RWC] The editorial failed to note two things. First, Mr. Daschle (D-SD) was Senate Minority Leader when he lost his bid for re-election in 2004. Second, Mr. Daschle appears to have no background regarding healthcare. That said, after leaving the Senate, Mr. Daschle worked for a lobbying firm that got most of its revenue from healthcare industry clients.

“While Daschle faces a tough task, the one thing he has going for him is that just about everybody involved recognizes the current system is a mess. As The Washington Post reported last month, even chief executives of America’s preeminent health-care institutions say that when it comes to health care, the United States is not getting its money’s worth — not by a long shot.”

[RWC] Nowhere does the editorial discuss why “the current system is a mess.” There’s a reason. Please read my paper entitled “Healthcare” to learn what that reason is.

“The United States spends $2.3 trillion on health care, or 16 percent of its gross domestic product. That’s more per capita than any other nation in the world.”

[RWC] When reading the editorial’s “facts,” I suggest taking them with a grain of salt. Far too often my research finds Times editorial “facts” are dubious at best. One or more of the facts presented by the editorial could be correct, but I learned a long time ago not to trust them without verification.

“Yet the results are fairly dismal. The Post reported the United States ranks 29th in infant mortality, 48th in life expectancy and 19th out of 19 industrialized nations in preventable deaths.”

[RWC] My critique of “Diagnosis fatal” addressed similar previous claims and includes links to other editorial critiques on this subject.

“The experts the paper talked to — physicians, insurers, academics and corporate executives from across the political spectrum — are in broad agreement on what needs to be done.”

[RWC] “The experts the paper talked to … are in broad agreement on what needs to be done?” No kidding. I would be stunned to learn The Washington Post hadn’t predetermined the conclusion of its report and selected its “experts” accordingly. It’s the same tactic used by the manmade global warming crowd.

“A revamped health-care system ‘must revolve around the central goal of paying for results,’ the paper reported. ‘That will entail managing chronic illnesses better, adopting electronic medical records, coordinating care, researching what treatments work best, realigning financial incentives to reward success, encouraging prevention strategies and, most daunting and perhaps most important, saying no to expensive, unproven therapies.’”

[RWC] My head is about to explode! “[P]aying for results” is a product of free markets yet the editorial appears to miss this point.

“How much money would these changes save? The amount could be staggering. Dartmouth College researchers estimate that as much as 30 percent of medical spending in the United States — or $700 billion — does nothing to improve care.”

[RWC] Note the editorial doesn’t describe the activities that do “nothing to improve care.” That said, there have to be activities that don’t appear to help healthcare. For example, does a business’ accounting department improve care? What about billing? You get the idea.

I don’t have facts to argue against the reduced administration costs claim, but when was the last time government regulation reduced administration costs? For example, the Tax Foundation reports taxpayers spent $265.1 billion in administration costs to comply with the federal tax code for the 2005 tax year. That’s on top of the approximately $1.2 trillion taxes collected. As noted by the Tax Foundation, “This amounts to imposing a 22-cent tax compliance surcharge for every dollar the income tax system collects.”

“We have the wallet to improve health care in the United States. What we must show now is the will to undertake the changes that are needed to fix what is broken.”

[RWC] As previous editorials, I believe this editorial would lead most readers to conclude the Times is in favor of a government-run healthcare system. However, Times editorial page editor, Bob Uhriniak, disagrees with my conclusion that the Times supports a government-run, taxpayer-funded universal healthcare system. You can read more about this here. If you’ve been following Times editorials on the healthcare topic, you’ll note they tend to refer to nebulous terms like “universal healthcare” or “national health care coverage” yet never describe what the Times means by those terms. It’s difficult to debate someone on an issue when they don’t define their position.