Friday, July 23, 2010

Health Wonk Review Review: Those Confusing Conservatives

Cross-posted from The Agenda on National Review Online.

Not so long ago, most liberal bloggers and policy wonks debated health care policy amongst themselves, without much reference to the conservative point of view. Most frequently, as if to channel Lionel Trilling, they dismissed conservative arguments as irritable mental gestures.

The most recent edition of Health Wonk Review, hosted by Julie Ferguson of Workers’ Comp Insider, appears to reflect a shift on this score. Perhaps it is a reaction to the persistent unpopularity of PPACA, given that many liberals were once confident that the law would gain in appeal once it was passed. Whatever the reason, the port side of the health care blogoboat is spending more time engaging the starboard, often constructively and sometimes not. I hope the trend continues.

One such example is Michael Tanner’s new report entitled Bad Medicine: A Guide to the Real Costs and Consequences of the New Health Care Law. Tanner argues that the law leaves 21 million Americans uninsured, despite its promises of universal coverage; that it will add $352 billion to the national debt over its first 10 years of full implementation; that health costs will increase at an accelerated rate; that the law’s $669 billion in new taxes “will significantly reduce economic growth and employment”; that it allows the government to interfere with how doctors practice medicine; and will disrupt existing coverage for many Americans.

Maggie Mahar of the Century Foundation, in “Part 1” of what she promises to be an extended rebuttal of Tanner’s report, disputes the claim that PPACA is unpopular. “What bothers me is…the fact Tanner is using old numbers,” she writes. But the new numbers don’t aid her case either. Personally, I find this debate a bit of a sideshow: I would oppose PPACA even if it was popular, and I would expect Mahar to support it even if it was unpopular.

Joe Paduda of Managed Care Matters declares that he is “confused” about conservative criticisms of PPACA, and it appears that he is:
There’s a bit of hypocrisy, or perhaps more kindly, ignorance among those who criticized ‘Obamacare’ for its ‘socialist’ leanings and now fault reform for benefit plan changes implemented by employers seeking market answers to rising costs…Critics can’t have it both ways. Either decry the bill for its weak cost controls and governmental ‘takeover’ of health care, or slam it for forcing employers to change plans to control costs because the bill doesn’t do enough.
Conservatives aren’t criticizing insurers for attempting to control costs. Conservatives are criticizing PPACA for introducing a blizzard of mandates which make insurance more expensive, forcing those insurers to raise premiums or increase cost-sharing. Requiring every health plan to pay for acupuncture, for instance, is a surefire way to increase costs; if insurers are to keep premiums constant, they are forced to cut other benefits, or increase cost-sharing, in order to pay for that benefit.

Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt, on the Health Affairs Blog, wonders why conservatives advocate more competition among insurers. “I find it hard to believe that…fragmenting the buy side of health care even more would serve the goal of cost containment.” The conservative argument is two-fold: as Reinhardt speculates earlier in the post, interstate competition allows consumers to buy insurance from less-costly states; in addition, allowing insurers to gain a larger scale will allow them to counteract the power of hospital monopolies.

David Williams of Health Business Blog criticizes Republicans for passing the Medicare prescription drug benefit, at a cost of $50 billion a year, without any fiscal offsets. He suggests cutting the subsidy in order to send more Medicaid money to the states.

Jared Rhoads of the Lucidicus Project, an Objectivist blog for medical students, takes Mitt Romney to task for advocating further government control of the health care system in his book, No Apology.

Jan Sidorov of the Disease Management Care Blog is worried that, as the Medicare “doc fix” problem remains unfixed, physicians will stop taking Medicare patients, hindering access to health care for the elderly.

Beth Capell of the Health Access Blog celebrates the new insurance mandates of PPACA, arguing that they will eliminate “junk” insurance and require that all plans cover basic health benefits including “mental health and substance abuse.” The problem is that the insurance model should take exactly the opposite approach, letting individuals pay for such routine care out-of-pocket, and instead cover catastrophic care. Capell’s approach is precisely why the cost of insurance keeps going up.

Finally, Louise Norris of Colorado Health Insurance Insider raises concerns about the increased frequency of Caesarean sections. She argues that obstetricians are financially rewarded for performing more C-sections, and that reforming payment for these procedures could help keep costs down.

9 comments:

  1. "as Reinhardt speculates earlier in the post, interstate competition allows consumers to buy insurance from less-costly states;"

    Errr, I could sell really cheap insurance. That is not a problem. What happens when said insurer has to pay for care? If some insurance company from Utah comes to me and wants me to accept lower rates, no way that happens unless they control a large part of the population. I will expect them to pay me more. An insurance company with no local history will need deep pockets to hold out long enough and establish a large base of patients.

    2) This would require that we accept the coverage standards of other states. I dont have much problem with that in principle, but who is going to tell a state that it cannot set standards for its own area? I assume you would favor a federal law requiring overturning all state insurance coverage requirements? If not, how do we decide? Who decides? (Ok, I can hear it now, let the market decide, but what I see is that everytime there is a catastrophic event, or some celebrity suffers, the rules get changed. Insurance companies fold. They always have. How do you change this?)

    3) Most states are already dominated by one or two insurance companies. That does not hold down costs. How many insurance companies do we need for appropriate marketing power? At what point do we risk monopoly?

    As to your point about conservative health writers, I have intermittently looked for them, but not found many. I mostly read libertarian econ blogs, and health care is of passing interest to them. Who would you recommend to read on the right? Someone who writes in good faith and when they large numbers puts them in context with dates or ranges and sources. I would especially love to find some people who are data driven.

    Steve

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  2. Hi Steve,

    1. It's not about physician payment rates, but about insurance mandates. For example, certain states like New York require have strict guaranteed-issue and community rating requirements, whereas New Hampsire does not. This drives the cost of insurance up in NY vs. NH. Also, some states require first-dollar coverage of extraneous services, driving up premiums for the people who don't need those benefits. So premiums would go down even if reimbursement rates stayed the same.

    2. Insurers that are able to gain large risk pools can afford to walk away from providers who are too aggressive about rate increases. That's hard to do if you can only build a risk pool in one state (e.g. Massachusetts) where the providers (Partners/MGH/Brigham) are dominant.

    I'll put another comment up about bloggers.

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  3. As to data-driven bloggers, here are some of my favorites (links are on the right). The best in the business, in my opinion, is John Goodman of NCPA (http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/).

    Michael Cannon at the Cato Institute is excellent (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/author/michael-cannon/). So is Peter Suderman at Reason (http://reason.com/people/peter-suderman/all.xml), though Peter also writes on other stuff.

    James Capretta (http://www.eppc.org/scholars/scholarID.83,type.1/pub_list.asp) doesn't blog so much, but his writing on the subject of health care is excellent. His stuff often appears at National Affairs (http://www.nationalaffairs.com), where I have also appeared.

    Two that I post to regularly at National Review also feature other writers: The Agenda (http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda) and Critical Condition (http://www.nationalreview.com/critical-condition). I would also check out InsureBlog for some very good technical discussion of health insurance.

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  4. " For example, certain states like New York require have strict guaranteed-issue and community rating requirements, whereas New Hampsire does not. This drives the cost of insurance up in NY vs. NH"

    Cost of living and utilization rates are the same in New Hampshire as New York? I find that hard to believe. Ratio of specialists to primary care?

    "Insurers that are able to gain large risk pools can afford to walk away from providers who are too aggressive about rate increases"

    Again, most states are dominated by one or two insurers. It does not seem to hold down costs. Why should I suddenly lower fees, or my hospital charge less, because the same insurance company is dominant in all of the states around us? Our patients are linked to us by geographical constraint and high risk surgeries will of necessity and best practice be limited to a limited number of facilities. (The numbers listed in the below study sound right, but I am not familiar with the study group.)

    http://hcfan.3cdn.net/648e0302462c448dd3_6om6b909w.pdf

    Steve

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  5. Oops, forgot to thank you for the references. Have read Suderman for a long time. Have read Capretta, but he seems to write infrequently. Will try Goodman more regularly. See him on links occasionally.

    Steve

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  6. Sorry Steve, I should have walked you through the argument in more detail.

    So: in high-cost state Y, state law requires that insurers charge people the same premiums regardless of their age. This has the effect of making insurance cheaper for the elderly, but more expensive for the young. Since the young are typically healthy, with minimal health expenditures, they opt out of the system, rather than spend say $8000 a year on insurance they will never use. The risk pool therefore contains only middle-aged to older people, driving the costs of insurance up even more (since those people are sicker on average).

    In low-cost state H, insurers are free to charge different rates to the young and the old. As a result, insurance for the young is one-fourth in state H as it is in state Y for people of comparable youth and health status.

    Otherwise (for the purposes of this exercise), states H and Y have the same cost of living, and the same reimbursement rates to physicians and hospitals. The only difference between the states is that state Y has a dumb law (community rating) and state H does not.

    By allowing residents of state Y to buy insurance from state H, several objectives are achieved:

    1. More young and healthy people buy insurance, improving the risk pool, and making insurance cheaper for everyone else, reducing the number of people who are priced out of the health care system.

    2. More young and healthy people buy insurance, meaning that they are financially protected from catastrophic health risks.

    3. Policymakers in state Y are discouraged from passing dumb laws that drive up the cost of insurance and reduce access to health care.

    Hope that helps.

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  7. Thanks Avik for the concise summary - it's a keeper: "Otherwise (for the purposes of this exercise), states H and Y have the same cost of living, and the same reimbursement rates to physicians and hospitals. The only difference between the states is that state Y has a dumb law (community rating) and state H does not."

    Exactly. Buying insurance "across state lines" is not about the cost of medical care - it's about the cost of insurance. The high cost of insurance is almost entirely a consequence of the high cost of medical care. But that does not mean we ignore opportunities to make insurance more efficient.

    As to whether this means a state would be unable to set standards for its own residents - I think that is a false issue. We are citizens, not subjects. I've bought many other goods and services out of state - including medical care. So why not insurance?

    If I could buy insurance out of state, I would be buying a product approved under the standards for the other state. Differences in the cost of medical care vs my state seem irrelevant to the premium, because I would continue to reside in my state. Insurers are capable of setting rates based on medical costs where their policyholders reside. But differences from one state to another based on mandated benefits will certainly affect the premium. Why does the law prevent that type of purchase? Why not change the law to allow people to shop? Why not, along the way, oblige states to compete?

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  8. Thanks Mike, that's a point I didn't get to -- we buy products across state lines all the time; indeed we buy products across national borders for the same reasons: it's cheaper to do so.

    If respecting the sovereignty of states meant never buying products that are produced out of state, our cost of living would go way up, and our quality of life would go way down.

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    ReplyDelete