Can Brad Goehring Cut Costs Without Medical Rationing?
Brad Goehring, one of three Republicans competing for the right to challenge Democratic incumbent Jerry McNerny to represent California’s 11th congressional district in Congress, doesn’t much like the idea of the federal government helping people to get health care. As he sees it, if current health care reform efforts are passed into law, “the only outcome will be a system which denies care to the elderly and creates a huge new bureaucracy whose job will be to ration out care as it sees fit. This is no solution.”
No solution? No solution to what? Oh, yes: The problem that already exists. The problem that already exists is that insurance companies have been allowed to establish huge bureaucracies that deny medical care to the elderly, and to children, and to everyone in between. If you are against health care rationing, then you ought to be against the status quo. Health care rationing is here, now, in the private system.
What does Goehring want to do about these current health care problems? “I support measures designed to cut costs,” he says. How, exactly, does Goehring suggest that he can cut costs while keeping the huge insurance bureaucracy in place, without denying medical treatment by rationing health care?
So far, Brad Goehring doesn’t have any answers to those questions.
Hey, fair enough, just don’t sell yourself as bipartisan, you obviously aren’t, which is ok, but the obfuscation of the truth is problematic. At least Goehring makes no bones about being a conservative and a republican.
Yep. You fellas have the right idea. Let’s substitute huge government bureaucracies at taxpayer expense for those insurance company bureaucracies. That oughta make it cheaper and more efficient. Or maybe we could try dealing with some of the things thad drive costs like frivolous malpractice lawsuits that force doctors to run up costs with defensive medicine. Maybe we could even open up the market to let out of state health insurers compete. I think that would be called choice and competition.
Peter, your analysis isn’t based on the facts. Malpractice lawsuits are not a significant contributor to health care costs. Insurance company profiteering is, and that profit margin disappears when government gets involved. You already pay that expense that you complain about, in lost wages, through lost medical care, or through income that’s withheld from every paycheck.
Choice and competition has not made the cable TV market less expensive or more effective. Why should we expect it to work for medical insurance?