Abortion Funding and Health Care
President Obama’s approach to health care reform — forcing taxpayers to subsidize health insurance for tens of millions of Americans — cannot not change the status quo on abortion.
Either those taxpayer dollars will fund abortions, or the restrictions necessary to prevent taxpayer funding will curtail access to private abortion coverage. There is no middle ground.
Thus both sides’ fears are justified. Both sides of the abortion debate are learning why government should not subsidize health care. Tip of the hat to President Obama for creating this teachable moment.
Meanwhile, Catholics should be outraged at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (to which my grandfather served as counsel). Yes, the USCCB helped prevent taxpayer funding of abortions in the House bill. But at the same time, those naughty bishops have abandoned the Church’s doctrine of subsidiarity by endorsing the rest of the Democrats’ plan to centralize power in Washington.
As it happens, Caesar is the main source of funding for Catholic hospitals. That may explain why the bishops are so eager to render unto, ahem, Him.
Cross-posted at Politico’s Health Care Arena.
Filed under: Government and Politics; Health, Welfare & Entitlements
Broder: Health Overhaul Likely, Because Hardest Part Lies Ahead
Yes, you read that right. And I had to do the same sort of double-take when I read David Broder’s op-ed in The Washington Post this morning.
Broder writes, “Obama has steered the enterprise to the point that odds now favor a bill-signing ceremony. But the hardest choices still lie ahead….” Whaa?? How can the odds be better than 50-50 if the biggest fights haven’t even happened yet?
Broder’s optimism continues, “Two things will be needed to reach [a majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate]: first, a plausible plan for making affordable and comprehensive health insurance available to millions…. And second, a way of financing the coverage….” But that’s been the whole challenge all along. Is Broder actually acknowledging that Democrats aren’t any closer to a signing ceremony than they were six months ago?
Broder says Democrats can meet the second challenge by taxing high-cost health plans — “a step that would require Obama to face down his labor union allies.” You mean Obama should lean on Democrats to tax a crucial part of their own base? One that’s already activating to block that tax?
Broder also thinks Obama should lean on his fellow Democrats to roll the doctors and hospitals in their states/districts by including more (some? any?) “delivery system reforms” in the legislation.
Sure. No problem. What could go wrong? This is practically a done deal.
(Cross-posted, sarcasm and all, at Politico’s Health Care Arena.)
Market Bets that ObamaCare Won’t Cut Costs
According to Don Johnson of The Health Care Blog:
Speculators seem to be betting that a watered down health insurance reform bill won’t hurt health insurers, hospitals, drug makers or medical device and supply manufacturers.
Stocks for almost all of these health sectors and for exchange trade funds that track health stock indexes turned higher last week.
In other words, those with real money at stake don’t believe that health reform will hurt the firms that make a living off of America’s highly inefficient health sector — President Obama’s assurances notwithstanding.
Johnson provides seven possible explanations for this development, including:
3. If the very liberal Coastal Democrats who lead Congress and most of the five committees drafting health insurance legislation want to get the support of Democrats from Western, Midwestern and Southern states, they’ll have to up Medicare payments to providers in those states. This is bullish for hospital chains, which operate mostly in the fly-over states…
6. Proposals to tax millionaires to pay for covering the uninsured and increasing benefits for others are in trouble, if not dead on arrival. The economy’s in no shape to be stalled by tax hikes, and there appear to be enough Democrats opposed to the tax to stop it.
7. While the so-called Blue Dog Democrats are stalling health insurance reform for economic and ideological reasons, the Congressional Black Caucus has made it clear that it won’t support a bill that the Blue Dogs will support. Throw in the opposition by anti-abortionists who don’t want the legislation to use taxpayers money to pay for abortions, and you have a pretty complex political problem for President Obama, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). While the Speaker claimed Sunday that she has the votes to pass health insurance reform, few believe her.
In Which I Liken Wal-Mart to Josef Stalin
Well, kinda.
In this oped for Kaiser Health News, I explain how the deals that the Obama administration has struck with (some) drug companies, Wal-Mart, and (some) hospitals are “the same old Washington game of bribes, backroom deals, profiteering and protectionism — and a harbinger of what health care will look like if the president’s reforms succeed.”
Filed under: Government and Politics; Health, Welfare & Entitlements
Samuelson: Obama Would Increase, Not Reduce, Health Care Costs
Columnist Robert J. Samuelson, writing in this morning’s Washington Post:
It’s hard to know whether President Obama’s health-care “reform” is naive, hypocritical or simply dishonest. Probably all three. The president keeps saying it’s imperative to control runaway health spending. He’s right. The trouble is that what’s being promoted as health-care “reform” almost certainly won’t suppress spending and, quite probably, will do the opposite…
The president summoned the heads of major health-care groups representing doctors, hospitals, drug companies and medical device firms to the White House. All pledged to bend the curve. This is mostly public relations. Does anyone believe the American Medical Association can control the nation’s 800,000 doctors or that the American Hospital Association can command the 5,700 hospitals?…
The main aim of health-care “reform” being fashioned in Congress is to provide insurance to most of the 46 million uncovered Americans…But the extra coverage might actually worsen the spending problem.
How much healthier today’s uninsured would be with that coverage is unclear…
The one certain consequence of expanding insurance coverage is that it would raise spending…
It’s easier to pretend to be curbing health spending while expanding coverage and spending. Presidents have done that for decades, and it’s why most health industries see “reform” as a good deal.
Cohn vs. AFP
The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn accuses Americans for Prosperity (AFP) of “lies” for running an ad that claims “Washington wants to bring Canadian-style healthcare to the U.S.”
AFP’s ad is more defensible than Cohn’s criticisms of it.
Cohn elides the question of whether Shana Holmes (the woman featured in the ad) was almost killed by Canada’s Medicare system. For a supporter of single-payer like Cohn, that is tantamount to admitting that, yeah, socialized medicine sometimes kills people.
Cohn argues that the ad is unfair because Canada has many advantages over the U.S. health care sector. That may be true, but the ad doesn’t appear to defend American health care. It merely says, “government should never come in between your family and your doctor” and “Don’t give up your rights.” That’s not pro-American health care or anti-reform. It’s just anti- the type of reform that Cohn wants. And it points to one area where our semi-socialized U.S. health care sector appears to be superior to Canada’s: quicker access to intensive treatments. Sometimes, that saves lives. In fact, AFP could go farther and say that the United States has another edge over Canada, in that we develop nearly all of the best new medical technologies. In fact, our medical technologies save Canadian lives, but Canada’s health care system (and its supporters) steal the credit.
Yet “the real lie,” Cohn claims, is that the ad suggests that “Washington” wants to impose a Canadian-style system on the United States. Cohn calls that claim “demonstrably false.” But consider:
- President Obama has said he would prefer single-payer and has hinted that he would like to make incremental changes in that direction.
- Many people who support a new public plan (e.g., Paul Krugman) do so because they believe it will lead to single-payer.
- Massachusetts, which has already implemented most of the reforms that Obama and congressional Democrats are considering, is now contemplating a large leap toward Canadian-style health care by imposing capitation on its entire health care sector.
- Government rationing becomes increasingly likely as government revenues fail to keep pace with the cost of government’s health care promises. (See again, Massachusetts.)
- The Left wants government to ration care. That’s the point of the comparative-effectiveness research funding. That draft House Appropriations Committee report committed a classic Washington gaffe when it said that certain treatments “would no longer be prescribed,” because it was admitting the truth.
Cohn is correct that no politician of influence is saying she wants to impose a Canadian-style system on the United States. But I prefer to pay attention to what they’re doing.
AFP: 1. Cohn: 0.
Filed under: Cato Publications; Health, Welfare & Entitlements
Irony! Get Your Red-Hot Health-Care Irony!
Someone forwarded me an email update from our friends at the Center for American Progress Action Fund (motto: “Disagree with us? Then you hate progress.”).
In one blurb, CAPAF’s crack team of spin-disclosers chides Republicans for discussing health care reform using the language recommended by pollster Frank Luntz, who “advised Republicans to fearmonger” Obama’s proposals to death! Or something.
The same email had another blurb titled, “INSURANCE COMPANIES AT THE TABLE?” There, CAPAF’s crack team of spin-disclosers describe how “health insurance companies and lobbying groups” stood beside President Obama last week to announce their support for reducing spending growth. The blurb continues:
However, days later, the insurance companies tried to walk back their promises, saying Obama had overstated their commitments. Richard Umbdenstock, the president of the American Hospital Association, wrote to his company’s state and local affiliates to “clarify” that “[t]he groups did not support reducing the rate of health spending by 1.5 percentage points annually.” However, the letter to Obama signed by Umbdenstock and the other insurance leaders specifically pledged…
“Umbdenstock and the other insurance leaders”?? Since when do we classify hospitals as insurance companies? And if “the insurance companies…sa[y] Obama had overstated their commitments,” why not quote the insurance companies? Could they not find such a quote?
It’s as if CAPAF’s crack team of spin-disclosers has decided to blame every development that might threaten a — ahem — government take-over of health care on the insurance companies. Now why might they want to do that? Could it be because insurance companies are less popular than hospitals?
And how would CAPAF’s crack team of spin-disclosers know that? By listening to a . . . pollster?
Cato on Facebook
Cato on Twitter
Cato on YouTube
Cato Tweets