The Health Care Bill

It should not be all that surprising that we finally got a health care bill passed. Before the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts, the House and Senate had already passed separate bills; all that remained was to combine the two. The House had the courage to pass the Senate bill with the hope that a reconciliation bill of some kind will remove the most egregious parts of the Senate bill.

The opposition of the populace, as measured by polls and other more informal means, ended up being set aside in favor of the hope that by November all will be forgotten, by a respectable belief on the part of some that the bill is really good for the country, and no doubt by a lot of armtwisting and dealmaking on the part of Pelosi, Reid and the President.

I do believe that the Anthem/Wellpoint increases in individual insurance rates in California, discussed by me in prior posts, played a not-insignificant role. Those increases pointed to the failure of the individual insurance market and defused some of the critics of the bill. The President and others hammered on those increases as evidence of what would happen if the bill did not pass -- and to extent they are correct; the individual markets are in a bit of a death spiral due to adverse selection and other issues.

I would really like to see a news reporter did into that Anthem decision to see if the Anthem folks understodd the gravity of their decisions at that time.

But this is now all water under the bridge.

On the positive side -- always an optimist -- the bill does some good. I have said for some time now that this country passed the point of not wanting to have all citizens have decent health insurance. This bill goes a long way to fixing that basic social safety net issue. Let's not deceive ourselves, however, there will still be a lot of uninsured people, just as there are a lot of folks who do not file their tax returns.

And there is no doubt, as I note above, that the individual and small group health insurance market was headed for disaster. That was making it extremely difficult for self-employed people and for small businesses (if you worked for an employer who did not offer insurance, you had to buy it on your own in a lemons market). That probably induced many people to work for large companies rather than striking out on their own. Removing that wedge between self-employment and working for large companies could be good for entrepreneurship and innovation. I have little doubt that access to health insurance was a large factor in many decisions as to what kind of career to pursue, at least at some point in one's life.

If the new exchanges function well, my hope is that the bill will be altered in the future to allow people in companies that offer plans to buy insurance from the exchanges as well. As the bill stands, that is not allowed (I am not sure why). If that would happen, then the link between place of employment and health insurance will indeed be broken. That in my mind is one of the better things that could happen. Sorry, but I just don't believe that an employer has the ability or incentives to offer me the best kind of insurance. I don't have Dartmouth offer me retirement investment services; they just give me a portion of my salary and let me invest it in my choice of independent, professional investment funds. Health insurance should be handled the same way.

It is too bad that the tax on plans was taken away because of union opposition (well, postponed until some time well in the future). To reduce demand to a more natural level, we need to remove the 25% - 40% subsidy given to purchasers of insurance through the exclusion of health benefits from taxation. I suspect that this tax will get moved up in time as the costs of the new bill become obvious. Get ready, but it actually is a good thing (maybe next they will remove the interest deduction for first and second homes as well?).

I have to look through the bill to see what provisions there are on the supply of doctors. I really worry what is going to happen with another 20 million or so people putting unlimited demands on an already-stretched health care system. This is not the time to be without a physician, for sure -- line one up now. And, I suspect that in the future, because there is going to be more nonprice rationing, WHERE you live will become almost as important as what company you work for, in regard to having access to medical care. I suspect that health care is going to become very similar to public schools, with location being very important and with a two tiered system emerging as well.

So, we are off to a brave new world. At least Americans can now walk through Europe without being thought of as monsters who don't provide health insurance to their neediest of citizens. And there will be some interesting possibilities for innovation and efficiency in this new system.