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Single Party Payer System Backfires On Great Britain

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

Last year the Great British single party payer system, The National Health Service, backfired.

It occurred just at the time Americans were being suckered into instituting a single party payer system by its progressive politicians..

Winston Churchill was right when he said,“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.”

I hope some of our leaders are listening.

President Obama appointed Dr. Donald Berwick Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, during the Senate’s recess July 4th2010 in order to avoid a senate confirmation hearing. The American people did not have the opportunity to hear Dr. Berwick’s philosophy on healthcare reform and his plans for Medicare.

Dr. Don Berwick touted Britain’s National Health Serviceas the America’s ultimate healthcare role model.

Dr. Berwick had some good ideas and many very bad ideas.

President Obama had other ideas. His ideas were not about repairing the healthcare system. His goal for healthcare reform was having the federal government control the entire healthcare system.

President Obama and Dr. Berwick portrayed physicians and patients as the villains in healthcare dysfunction. It is easy to blame the physicians and the patients because both have some blame in the dysfunction.

The main villains are the healthcare insurance industry, the drug companies, the government, and the lack of malpractice reform.

In 2009 the new British coalition government declared the National Health Service a fiscal failure.

The new coalition government had proposed a reorganization of its National Health Serviceand proposed reorganzation.

After 62 years, the British government’s present goal is to decentralize its healthcare system. The goal does not include decentralizing medical decision making. The system continues to put restraints on consumers’ medical spending. The government believes consumers are not smart enough to make their own medical decisions.

 

Baroness Hale had previously written the following for the British High Court, the U.K.’s equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court:

“Decision-makers must look at [the patient’s] welfare … the nature of the medical treatment in question, … they [decision makers] must try and put themselves in the place of the individual patient.”

“The patient is not the decision-maker.”

The British Healthcare Service has an organization called NICE. Nice is a perfect bureaucratic name for “the National Institute for Clinical Excellence.” NICE sounds nice. Its function is not very nice.

According to the NHS Constitution, “You have the right to drugs and treatments that have been recommended by NICE.”The National Institute for Clinical Excellence is an agency that “advises” the government whether to authorize payments or withhold them for treatments deemed “not cost effective.”

Britain’s National Health Servicehas continually changed over the 62 years. Various British administrations have searched for the formula to deliver high quality care at an affordable price.

Unfortunately,Britain is making another complicated mistake.

The United States is making the same mistake as it marches toward a single party payer system. The mistake is the lack of respect for the intelligence and will of consumers. The mistake is not permitting consumers to be financially and emotionally responsible for their own medical care decisions.

The British incident is chilling. The British High Court recently ruled against parents’ wishes in defense of the National Health Services.

The high court’s decision is the result of British consumers giving total control of the healthcare system to its central government.

The British government believes that the people are not smart enough or responsible enough to figure out how to take care of themselves.

The British thinking is not dissimilar to the thinking of the Obama administration and Dr. Donald Berwick.

The basic conflict is over who is ultimately in charge of medical decision making. Government control of medical decision making is not limited to Great Britain’s single-payer structure.

In all government run health-care systems, whether in Australia, Canada, or even here in the United States under Obamacare, government increasingly makes final medical decisions, not patients in consultation with their doctors.

NICE is an agency that “advises” the government whether to authorize payments or withhold them for treatments deemed “not cost effective.”

“Consumers have the right to do what they or their doctor thinks best medically as long as your decision does not override the decision NICE decides is cost effective for the government.”

Britain has nevertheless experienced increasing costs and demand as quality and access to care has decreased.

What is missing from the British system?

All government has to do is make the right rules, empower consumers with their own money, level the playing field among stakeholders and get out of the way.

I think Americans understand that building bigger and bigger bureaucracies never solves social problems. They make the problems more complicated and more costly to fix.

Americans did not fully understand two recent single party payer events that occurred in Britain. This was partly because the American media did not cover the story’s significance adequately.

Perhaps the American media did not understand the story’s significance to the American debate in reference to a single party payer healthcare system.

First Charlie Gard and now Alfie Evans. These are two 23 month old babies who, though verbally silent, still gave clarion warnings to proponents of single-payer health care: The government — not my parents — is in charge of my life.”

Charlie Gard was born in August 2015 with a rare genetic disorder that carried a poor long-term prognosis.

“In July 2017, little Charlie was just 23 months of age and on a ventilator. Over the objections of his parents, British doctors decided to withdraw life-sustaining care.”

“According to British Courts, the National Health Service (NHS), the country’s single-payer system, is the ultimate medical decision maker — not the family. Ventilator support was withdrawn and Charlie died.”

Less than a year later another 23 month old child hit the British headlines. Alfie Evans was a comatose child whose NHS doctors said his condition was hopeless. His physicians felt he could not survive without ventilating life support. They wanted to terminate his life support.

His parents wanted to transfer their child to Rome’s Bambino Gesu Pediatric Hospital for further care. The Italian Hospital was willing to take him.

The British High Court ruled against the parents’ wishes, leaving Alfie’s fate to the NHS. As Justice-Baroness Hale wrote in Aintree v James: “we [referring to patients] cannot always have what we want.” On April 28, 2018,Alfie’s ventilatory support withdrawn.

Alfie did not die when artifical ventilation was withdrawn. He died because of inadaquate I.V. nutrition.He was able to breath on his own. His physicians were wrong.

NICE is the model on which the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) was created under the Affordable Care Act.The Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, was to be a fifteen member agency which was to have the explicit task of achieving specified savings in Medicare without affecting coverage or quality. The system creating IPAB granted IPAB the authority to make changes to the Medicare program with the Congress being given the power to overrule the agency’s decisions through supermajority vote.

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018repealed IPAB before it could take effect.[1

 In my opinion it should not be the government or the court that decides about who should live or die. It should be the patient or the patient’s family who decides with the advice of the patient’s physicians and clergy.

The institution the patient is being cared in should not be responsible for the bill.

Consider the question “who’s in charge?” from two perspectives: that of the American public and that of physicians.

Americans prize their freedom above all else. When the government makes medical decisions against the patient’s wishes, it directly infringes on personal freedom. It is doubtful that Americans would support a single-payer system if they understood what they have to give up in exchange for the promise of government supplied health care. Americans would be giving up freedom of choice.

http://stanfeld.com/?s=single+party+payer+system

 

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone

 All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2018 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

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A Single Party Payer System Will Not Work

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP, MACE

Why am I opposed to a single party payer healthcare system?

I am concerned about America’s $20 trillion dollar deficit and $180 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

I am also concerned about China being a reliable buyer of American debt.

The deficit should be viewed as a house of cards that might crumble at any time.

Our country has suffered a massive increase in the deficit the last eight years under Barack Obama and Obamacare. The public knows the debt has increased at lease 1 trillion dollars a year.

No one has seen a good accounting the deficit increase. Everyone knows we have had massive inflation even though we have been told that inflation is only one percent.

The public knows Obamacare is imploding.

The public knows about the waste incurred during the Obamacare website roll out and the scandalous contracts to venders. The public knows about the massive increasing in insurance premiums and the massive subsides that were not anticipated.

The Democrats that the people have elected to congress do not seem to care about the deficits created. Now, we have finally realized that the Establishment Republicans do not seem to care about Obamacare failures either.

These officials do not care how much money the government wastes on bad deals at all levels of the economy. Obamacare has made terrible deals with the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry and hospital systems.

It has not made a good deal for the middle class or their primary providers namely physicians.

I do not think American healthcare policy makers or congress can afford to make another mistake.

Winston Churchill’s famous quote about Americans stands out here.

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing after they’ve tried everything else.”

America cannot try something that is destined to fail. Socialism, especially in healthcare, does not work. Our government officials refuse to believe this even though it is demonstrated by our own failed entitlements such as the VA Healthcare System, Medicare and Medicaid.

Government officials refuse to believe that the socialistic universal healthcare systems in the rest of the world are unsustainable.

Britain is the perfect example of this as the system is crumbling.

Socialism does work in the long term.

Winston Churchill said it again.

“Socialism does not work because it is not consistent with fundamental principles of human behavior. The failure of socialism in countries around the world can be traced to one critical defect: it is a system that ignores incentives.”

The key to the solution of the healthcare system problem is to provide incentives to all the stakeholders, especially the consumers.I believe “My Ideal Medical Saving Account” will work to provide universal coverage at an affordable cost.

http://stanleyfeldmdmace.typepad.com/repairing_the_healthcare_/2012/05/my-ideal-medical-savings-account-is-democratic.html

America does not need a healthcare system that makes consumers dependent on government. It needs a system that makes them independent of government.

Butch Mazzuca is a local Vail Valley Resident who wrote this article about socialism and the healthcare system that appeared in the Vail

Valley News on July 9, 2017.

Mr. Mazzuca has given me permission to republish his article.

“When it comes to socialism, will they ever learn?

http://www.vaildaily.com/opinion/vail-daily-column-when-it-comes-to-socialism-will-they-ever-learn/ 

Editor’s note: Find a cited version of this column at http://www.vaildaily.com.

“Several weeks ago on ABC’s Sunday morning talk show “This Week,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told host George Stephanopoulos, “The democrats need a strong, bold, sharp-edged and common-sense economic agenda. … That’s what’s been missing.”

So I find it a bit ironic that seven months after losing the 2016 presidential election, Schumer feels the Democratic Party is still struggling to articulate a coherent message. Meanwhile, the Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren wing of the party delivers a very clear message. Unfortunately for their constituency, it’s about a failed ideology — socialism.

Sanders and Warren are advocates of redistributing wealthlax immigration rules, governmental intervention into health careenergy and business; and the acceptance that Washington should be the final arbiter of all problems.

SOCIALISM HAS INHERENT DEFECTS

While socialism is antithetical to the ideals of the Founding Fathers, it tends to gain its strongest support among the young and those who are uninformed. On the surface, socialism sounds great; it has always sounded great and will continue to sound great within certain precincts. The only problem with socialism is that history exposes it as a bankrupt ideology.

But rather than describing socialism’s failures tenet by tenet, the following apocryphal story illustrates socialism’s inherent defects in an easy-to-understand way.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class. The class insisted that wealth redistribution, aka socialism, worked because then no one would be poor and no one would be rich — a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, let’s try an experiment.” Henceforth, all grades would be averaged; everyone would receive the same grade, and no one would fail.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone received a B. The students who studied hard were upset but the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who had studied little now studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride, too, so they too decided to study little. The second test average was a D.

Now no one was happy. When the third test rolled around, the class average was an F; and from that point forward, the scores never increased, as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings with the result that no one would study for the benefit of anyone else and the students all failed the class.

The professor then told them socialism as a form of government always fails because of human nature, i.e., when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes the rewards away, no one will try to succeed.

HUMAN NATURE IS PART OF IDEOLOGICAL EQUATIONS

Similar to the aforementioned students, the far left consistently overlooks the fact that human nature is part of any ideological equation. They fail to understand that socialism has never and will never work because it’s based on a premise that’s inconsistent with human behavior.

When people work, they expect to be compensated commensurate with their effort and skill level. And capitalism does that more effectively than any economic system yet devised by man. Capitalism provides an incentive for people to achieve because they know their efforts will be rewarded.

Conversely, socialism is a disincentive to achievement because people also know their work is valued only collectively, rather than being valued individually.

Quote of the day: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” — Winston Churchill.”

Butch Mazzuca, of Edwards, writes regularly for the Vail Daily. He can be reached at bmazz68@comcast.net.

Our politicians should stop fooling around with America’s healthcare system, our fiscal viability, and the welfare of our citizen.

It is time to try something that will work, and not another thing that is doomed to failure.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, you are both dead wrong.

 

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” is, mine and mine alone.

All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2017 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

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Defective Thinking About Single Party Payer Systems

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP, MACE

Sowell

 

In a government controlled single payer health care system the government provides the healthcare coverage for all. The government pays providers for various services at a cost determined by the government.

Advocates of a single party payer system in the United States have publicized that Canada, Britain and the European Countries have successful single party payer systems.

These declarations are untrue.

The definition of success is variable, problematical and questionable. It is successful in the fact that healthcare coverage is universal.

It is problematical in the sense that access to care is difficult. The rationing of medical care has inevitable because of the escalation of costs.

It is questionable as to whether these countries can afford to cover everyone. The National Healthcare System in Britain is falling apart rapidly. Hospitals are closing because of lack of funding. Patients’ waiting lines are increasing, access to care and rationing of care is increasing.

Britain has a robust private healthcare insurance industry for those who can afford to pay. The National Healthcare Systems costs are unsustainable.

In Britain the private healthcare insurance industry is thriving.

In Canada the healthcare system is absorbing 50% of Canada’s GDP.

Canada’s unsustainable healthcare system has resulted in government rationing of care as well as long waiting lines for patients to receive even rudimentary care much less hip or knee replacement.

The United States has three single party healthcare systems: the VA healthcare system, Medicaid and Medicare.

The VA Healthcare System is a treatment and financial disaster. It has evolved into a bureaucratic monster. Employees who do not perform cannot be fired according to government rules. Too many employees have been hired to try to get the job done. The infrastructure is administratively bloated.

The second reason for the VA Healthcare System’s problems is there is no intellectual or financial incentive to do a responsible and better job on the part of employees.

The culture of the VA System is that of a typical government bureaucracy. The federal government throwing more money at the VA System, to help our veterans receive better care, has not improved the system.

Patients are not satisfied with Medicaid because there is limited assess to care. Physicians do not accept Medicaid patients because reimbursement is too low. Medicaid provides an opportunity for the indigent to receive medical care. However the ability to get medical care is limited.

Seniors are satisfied with the care available through Medicare. However, as reimbursement is decreasing and the delivery of care is becoming more bureaucratic, physicians are leaving the Medicare system and demanding cash from seniors for medical care.

There is also an increase in concierge medicine for seniors.

Drugs are increasing in price. Seniors cannot afford their medication. Medicare Part D coverage (Drug Medicare) has become too expensive to afford.

The result is patients are becoming sicker because they cannot afford the prescribed medications. Then they end up in the hospital. The result is an increased cost to the Medicare System. Since deductibles and co-pay are increasing seniors are being bankrupt by the Medicare system.

The advocates of a single party system ignore basic inefficiencies inherent in government controlled bureaucratic systems.

These bureaucratic systems are inefficient and ineffective. They become unsustainable in all the single party payer systems in existence.

The deception sold to the public by progressive politicians is the advantage that medical care is free to all. The simple concept that nothing is free is ignored.

A system must replace these failed systems that provides incentives to consumers for consumers to drive the system.

Below are the claimed advantages to a single party payer system. I have noted the deception in each claim.

  1. Healthcare Coverage is Universal

Everyone has health care coverage to the full extent that his or her health needs require.

People with pre-existing illness cannot be refused medical treatment.”

This should be the goal of any healthcare system.

The problems with healthcare systems in which consumers are entitled almost always get abused. The healthcare system has to be developed where people are responsible for their health and healthcare dollars.

  1. Decrease Amount of Necessary Paperwork

That a single party payer system will “decrease the amount of necessary paperwork” is a fictitious advantage. It will increase the amount of paperwork as has been proven over and over again.

The goal of any government run healthcare system is to measure what the healthcare system is doing so that the government can determine the quality of care delivered on the basis of the information provided. The fact that the information provided could be fudged is immaterial to the documentation.

The delivery of medical care is complex. It is almost impossible to commoditize. In an effort to measure quality of care there are increased regulations and documentation requirements.

The more complex an illness is the more paperwork will be needed to enable evaluation of the quality of care.

The result will be there will be less time, not more time, for the medical staff to spend providing care for the patient.

The belief of single party payer advocates is “providers will have more time to spend with patients.”

Additionally because medical care is free the entitled inevitably overuse the healthcare system making it even less efficient.
“Advocates believe the costs of single payer health care systems will be lower.”

  1. Lower Costs

Progressives think the reasons for “the lower costs is there isn’t any competition, a not for profit structure, and a reduced number of administrative staff.”

“ The high salaries for administrators and sales people are eliminated in a single payer system.”

The costs of government run systems are never lower. The costs to patients are lower because it is free. The costs to the healthcare system are higher because there is no incentive to be competitive.

The government will have to outsource the administrative services to the healthcare industry. The healthcare industry will make the money even as they do now.

Obamacare’s administrative costs were supposed to be lower. The administration is in panic mode because of its high costs and impending failure.

A small part of the failure is the result of healthcare insurance companies non-participation in the health insurance exchanges and the failure of government set up Co-Op Insurance funds.

President Obama paid only 12% of what the healthcare insurance companies claim they are owed to cover their loses through the crazy reinsurance program the government promised the healthcare insurance industry.

President Obama, through the Justice Department is going to raid the Treasury’s Judgment Fund” to pay the insurance industry what they were promised in the reinsurance program.

It is essential for the survival of Obamacare that the healthcare insurance industries participate in Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges. Justice and the Treasury are ignoring the appropriation power of the congress.

This happens to be against the law.

In a 1998 letter the Government Accountability office pointed out that the Judgment Fund “is not a tool to circumvent congressional restrictions on appropriations.”

This is precisely what President Obama is doing.

The Administration will do anything to rescue its flailing Affordable Care Act, and nothing so meager as the law will interfere. This damage to the separation of powers, not a health-care bill, will be President Obama’s abiding legacy.”

The problem is congress will letter President Obama get away with doing this.

  1. No Insurance Companies Needed

The notion that the healthcare insurance industry is not needed for administrative services is a deception that progressive politicians continue to state falsely.

  1. Only One Buyer Required

“Only one buyer (the government) is required” is partially true and false. In the military the cost of drugs are cheaper than either the cost of drugs for government employees with Medicare Part C or seniors with Medicare Part D. The government is restricted from negotiating prices for drugs. The middlemen infrastructure for purchasing drug will remain.

I believe Americans are becoming more and more cynical about big government’s intentions and efficiencies. They want a change for good reason.

The following the ideas of progressives is not working. It is destroying the healthcare system.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.

 All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2016 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

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Canada Has Big Single Party Healthcare System Problems

Stanley Feld M.D., FACP, MACE

There are big problems in Canada that have been undisclosed by Democrats to the public in the United States.

There were two articles in American newspapers in 2011 that applaud the Canadian system.

 Article 1. Debunking Canadian health care myths – The Denver Post .

Article 2. Everything you ever wanted to know about Canadian health care in one post. Washington Post.

Both articles are opinion articles and lack concrete evidence. The articles contain both misinformation and disinformation.  The articles are in essence  fake news designed to mislead the American public into believing that a single party payer system is the answer to America’s healthcare systems problem.

The articles are precisely why the American public should not and does not trust politicians and the traditional mass media.

The Fraser Institute is a well-respected Canadian think tank. Its research is considered accurate, with a libertarian slant.

Its 2011 report contradicts the statistics in both the Washington Post’s and the Denver Post’s articles about the Canadian government healthcare costs.

 Article 1. “Ten percent of Canada’s GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada’s.”

Article 2.  “In 2009, Canada spent 11.4 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on health care, which puts it on the slightly higher end of OECD countries.”

This is not true according to the Fraser report. Six of ten Canadian provinces are on track to spend half of their revenues on health care, according to the Frazer Institute. To be specific, in 2011, health care spending consumed 50% GDP in Canada’s two largest provinces, Ontario and Quebec.

“Total federal, provincial and territorial government health spending has grown by 8.1 percent annually, while the national GDP in Canada rose by only 6.7 percent during the same period.”

 The provincial governments have raised taxes and rationed care, while increasing patient wait times.  

“Provincial drug plans have also more often refused to pay for most of the drugs that are certified as “safe and effective” by Health Canada.”

“Unsustainable rates of growth in health care spending crowd out the resources available for other purposes including education, public safety, and economic growth-enhancing tax relief.”

One has only to think about the Obama administration’s initial propaganda and the stunning reality we are facing presently. 

The VA is now asking for additional funding to clear up its disaster.

The problem is entitlements are too expensive for governments.  Entitlements do not work because governments cannot legislate behavior by directives. Individuals must be responsible for their health and healthcare dollars.

The other problem is government entitlement programs generate a large bureaucracy. The bureaucracy stimulates the development of inefficiencies and corruption. The new bureaucracy practically guarantees the failure of the entitlement.

The government never gets to the core problems that must be repaired when they try to construct a healthcare system that is efficient, cost effective and will benefit consumers. 

The primary stakeholders are consumers of healthcare. Physicians are a close second. Secondary stakeholders are hospital systems, healthcare insurance companies, drug companies, malpractice insurance companies, and the government.

In order to Repair America’s Healthcare System, the government must focus on the primary stakeholders’ (patients’) needs and ways to satisfy those needs. The key is to set up a system that provides the primary stakeholders (consumers of healthcare) with incentives to maintain their health and conserve their healthcare dollars. This applies to healthy consumers as well as patients with chronic diseases.

Patients with chronic diseases must become professors of their disease. They must understand the latest techniques and use the latest tools to prevent the progression of their disease.  

The healthcare system must help consumers be prosumers (productive consumers) of their own healthcare.

The Canadian system is not the answer to our healthcare system’s problems. The United States has a much larger population than Canada. The Canadian government cannot support its universal healthcare system.

 How will we? Bernie Sander’s state of Vermont has abandoned its “Medicare for All” program.

The only way the portion of our population in favor of Medicare for All is going to believe it is unsustainable and destined for failure is going to experience its failure. It seems Bernie and his followers have little interest in learning from previous experience.

 The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.

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Mechanism Design and the Repairing the Healthcare System


Stanley Feld M.D., FACP, MACE.      

On November 11, 2007, I published the following blog: “Incentives and Mechanism Design.” The authors Leoid Hurwicz, Roger Meyerson and Eric Maskin were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for the concept in 2007.

http://stanfeld.com/?s=mechanism+design

 I suspect few politicians know about Mechanism Design in 2019. I am certain Bernie Sanders and the “Medicare for All” crowd do not know anything about Mechanical Design.

In my last blog, I described how politicians and the mainstream media use Confirmation Bias to try to put the government in control of healthcare against the will and welfare of the public.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

I think Donald Trump either studied the use of Mechanism Design and its mechanics or he intuitively uses its principles in his thinking.

Mechanism Design is a concept that tries to put science into social science. It mathematically evaluates vested interests of stakeholders in order to eliminate confirmation bias and line up all the stakeholders’ vested interests for the greatest good. It assumes all the stakeholders have expressed their vested interests truthfully.

The Democrats want to hold onto (fix) Obamacare. However, the Democrats understand Obamacare is not viable in its present form. I believe “Medicare for All” with central government control of healthcare will be a disaster as it has been in most single party payer systems.

I do not believe Obamacare is fixable. I believe President Obama and the Democrats believed that Obamacare would fail. Then the nation would beg either his public option or Medicare for All.

I think President Obama believes “Medicare for All” and the total government control of healthcare is the ideological solution to the problems in our healthcare system.

His confirmation bias overrules all of the examples of “Medicare for All” failed examples at home (Vermont California and Colorado), as well as Denmark, Sweden, England, and France.  

In 2017, the Republicans with a slim majority in the Senate refused to repeal Obamacare. Whether the Republican failure to repeal Obamacare was because of intramural revenge or ideology is best to question is which system is best for the common good.

If our politicians understood the principles of Mechanism Design and were diligently working for the people who elected them benefit, America would be on the way to “Repairing the Healthcare System.”

Against this backdrop of a hostile Democratic Party, in control of the House of Representatives, Donald Trump and his administration is slowing working its way to “Repairing the Healthcare System” using the principals of Mechanism Design.

In November 2007, pre the Obama administration, I wrote:

Last month the Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to Leoid Hurwicz, Roger Meyerson and Eric Maskin. They were awarded the Nobel Prize for developing the economic theory of “Mechanism Design.” My first reaction was “what is that?”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design

After some research, I discovered the power of Mechanism Design. It is a brilliant economic theory that could solve many economic problems. Mechanism Design applied to our healthcare system could solve the healthcare systems problems.

What is it? “In economics, mechanism design is the art and science of designing rules of a game to achieve a specific outcome, even though each participant may be self-interested. This is done by setting up a structure in which each player has an incentive to behave as the designer intends. The game is then said to implement the desired outcome. The strength of such a result depends on the solution concept used in the game. It is related to metagame theory, which is the theory of games the play of which consists of developing the rules of another game.

Mechanism designers commonly try to achieve the following basic outcomes: truthfulness, individual rationality, budget balance, and social welfare. However, it is impossible to guarantee optimal results for all four outcomes simultaneously in many situations, particularly in markets where buyers can also be sellers [1], thus significant research in mechanism design involves making trade-offs between these qualities. Other desirable criteria that may be achieved include fairness (minimizing variance between participants’ utilities), maximizing the auction holder’s revenue, and Pareto efficiency. More advanced mechanisms sometimes attempt to resist harmful coalitions of players.”

Lodi Hurwitz contributed to the idea of incentive compatibility. His point is the way to get as close to the most efficient economic outcomes is to design a mechanism in which everyone does best for themselves. He says this can be achieved by sharing information truthfully (Price Transparency). It is easy to understand that some people can do better than others by not sharing information or lying.

If everyone’s incentives are aligned, you have a much more efficient economic system. An example is defense contracting. If you agree to pay on a cost-plus basis you have created an incentive for the contractor to be inefficient. If you agree to pay a fixed price you can come close to an efficient price if you have all the truthful information. If you do not you have incentives aligned and truthful information you create the incentive to be overcharged. Most people can do better by not sharing truthful information. If the rules of the game require truthful information you can get close to an efficient market-driven solution.

The concept of Pareto efficiency means no one can be made better off without someone becoming worse off. Therefore, the incentive is to maintain your dominance by not being truthful at the expense of others. Hurwicz observed as others had that the dispersion of information was at the heart of the failure of a planned economy. He observed that there was a lack of incentive for people to share their information with the government truthfullyThe free market mechanism was far less afflicted than central planning bureaucracy by such incentive problems. The free market economy was by no means immune to this defect. He observed that the free market economy can get us closer than central planning to incentive compatibility because the end consumer can drive the discovery of truthful information.

The customer creating rules of engagement in a market-driven economy can get you closer to the ideal of Mechanism Design. Since the customer determines success of an enterprise by creating demand in a transparent environment, they can get closer to incentive efficiency. They create the rules of the game for compatible incentive.

Roger Meyerson contributed the revelation principle, a mathematical model that simplifies the calculation to create the most efficient rules of the game. The mathematical model gets people to reveal their truthful private information leading to aligned incentives.

Eric Maskin’s breakthrough was in perfecting Mechanism Design with his “implementation theory.” His theory clarifies how to design mechanisms that heighten incentive alignment and efficiency.

How does Mechanism Design relate to the Repair of The Healthcare System? We have to set the rules of the games so that we align all the stakeholders’ incentives without one stakeholder takes advantage of another. The insurance industry is taking advantage of the patients, doctors and hospital systems. The hospital systems are taking advantage of the patients, doctors and insurance companies. Doctors are taking advantage of the insurance companies, hospital systems, patients and the government. The government is taking advantage of the hospital systems, the doctors and the patients. Employers who pay the insurance bills for their employees are taken advantage of by the insurance companies. The drug companies are taking advantage of patients and unduly influencing physicians.

In our healthcare system, everyone is pursuing his vested interest in a game that has rules that do not lead to “incentive compatibility.”

Some politicians think central planning will straighten out the rules. Historically, central planning has not worked. The winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics have proven this fact.

I believe consumers can fix the rules of the game so that all the incentives are compatible. Consumers have to have incentives to force politicians to fix the rules of the healthcare game. Consumer-driven healthcare system will achieve the alignment (incentive compatibility) using the ideal medical saving account.

Twelve years have passed since 2007. America has not gotten closer to the solution to Repair the Healthcare System even though the solution is staring us in our eyes.

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Why Vermont’s Single Party Payer Healthcare Plan Failed

Stanley Feld M.D., FACP,MACE

Vermont’s single party payer healthcare plan was doomed to fail from the onset for several reasons.

Vermont had a Republican governor for eight years. He decided to retire.  Peter Shumlin (D.) won the Democratic nomination for governor after progressive activists demanded that each candidate for the Democratic Party nomination promise to enact single-payer health care if nominated.

Shumlin’s got the nod, won the election. He was anxious to pass the single party payer system.

Vermont’s consultants were Harvard’s William Hsiao and MIT’s Jonathan Gruber.

William Hsiao has spent most of his academic career helping governments install single-payer healthcare systems.

There is little evidence that the systems by developed in Taiwan and other countries by William Hsiao have been successful. They have not been cost effective or sustainable. They have not preserved freedom of choice.

Gruber and Hsiao made the same mistakes for Vermont that they made for America with Obamacare.

Hsiao and Gruber promised that single-payer health care in Vermont could save $1.6 billion over ten years. With that endorsement in hand, Shumlin and the legislature passed Act 48, a law instructing the state to figure out how to finance a single-payer system. They dubbed it Green Mountain Care.

Governor Shumlin said, “If Vermont gets single-payer health care right, which I believe we will, other states will follow,” pronounced Shumlin. “If we screw it up, it will set back this effort for a long time. So I know we have a tremendous amount of responsibility, not only to Vermonters.”

Unfortunately, Americans have a short memory, the short memory promoted by the conformational bias of the traditional mass media toward a progressive agenda.

Progressive Americans and their progressive politicians had better wake up fast. “Medicare for All” does not work.

Medicare does not work in a financially sustainable way for the government or seniors. It was not sustainable in the Bernie Sanders small state of Vermont. It is nice to believe you can provide healthcare benefits for nothing to all. However, nothing is free especially when it is run by central bureaucrats. It has been proven over and over again.

First, bureaucrats and healthcare policy consultants do not understand the medical care system. The history of Vermont’s single- payor story is interesting.

In December 2014 Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin (D.) announced that he was pulling the plug after four years on Vermont’s single-payer, government-run health care system.

“In my judgment,” Governor Shumlin said, “the potential economic disruption and risks would be too great to small businesses, working families, and the state’s economy.”

Rather than saving $1.6 billion the Green Mountain Care would cost an additional 2.6 billion dollars in tax revenue for 2017 alone. The law would require a 151 percent increase in state taxes.

“Fiscally, that’s a train wreck. Even a skeptical report from Avalere health had previously assumed that the plan would “only” cost $1.9 to $2.2 billion extra in 2017.”

“In 2019, Costa estimated that Green Mountain Care would have required $2.9 billion in tax revenue vs. $1.8 billion under pre-existing law: a 160 percent increase in revenue.”

The result should explain why the dream of single-payer health care in the U.S. should be dead for the foreseeable future.

Daily, we read articles calling for “Medicare for All” from progressive politicians running for office.

How stupid do they think Americans are?

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.



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More Single Party Payer Noise

Stanley Feld M.D., FACP,MACE

Democrats have tried to pass a single party payer healthcare system since 1935. Slowly, but surely, the American population has been indoctrinated into believing that a single party payer system run by the government is the best healthcare system to have.

Americans have been filled with disinformation about the wild successes of single party payer systems in the rest of the world.

The economics of these single party payer systems are seldom discussed in a coherent way. Americans have no idea of the economic burden a single party payer system places on the budget of countries that have such a system.

The fact that these governments continue to raise taxes to pay for their single party payer system while decreasing their citizens’ access to care is hardly ever discussed. Only the favorable statistics that fit the progressive narrative are published.

In Norway the income tax rate is 50%. This is mostly because of its universal single party payer healthcare system. Norwegians seem happy with the system. If they get sick they have nothing to worry about. Their health care is free.

The Canadian healthcare system is unsustainable.

Canada spends 50% of its GNP on healthcare. All of the provinces are experiencing massive deficits due to additional healthcare costs.”

“Canadians who are healthy and do not need to interact with the system are happy and feel secure that their healthcare needs will be serviced without cost. Nothing is free.”

“The United States consumes only 18.5% of our GDP on healthcare. This percentage is rising as access to care is decreasing.”

The Frazer Reportis very specific on the cost of healthcare in Canada although the government is not very transparent.

Each province is having a difficult time figuring out how to fix its healthcare system. Many Canadians are convinced that a single party payer system is not the answer but cannot politically eliminate it.

The fact is nothing is free and only 20% of the population interacts with the healthcare system at any one time. People who are not sick think the single party payer system in great. They are happy they have no anxiety about the cost of healthcare if they get sick.

In Britain taxpayers are unhappy with the National Health Services. Consumers recognize the bureaucratic waste in their healthcare system. They suffer from decreased access to care. Wait times for health care and surgery are ridiculously long.

The private healthcare market is flourishing in Britain for those who can afford it. 

The British healthcare system is unsustainable. The British government has not been able to fix the expensive National Health Service.

America has a single party payer system for Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP and the VA system.

Seniors love Medicare. Most seniors could not afford to get medical treatment if there was not the Medicare System. Policy wonks and Democrats refuse to recognize that in 1965 after Medicare was enacted, healthcare prices exploded. Most economist agree, as a result of Medicare, the cost of healthcare in America has continued to increase yearly for all Americans.

Congress has ignored the basic defects in the Medicare system that has caused this explosion. Over the years a few brave congressmen have made attempts to correct these structural defects.

The Democrat and Republican establishment have ignored these congressmen.

The political establishment has made feeble attempts to control costs through ineffective regulations. The bureaucracy has grown and the healthcare system has become more costly and inefficient.

The reduction in reimbursement to physicians has resulted in the tremendous increase in concierge medicine. This explosion in concierge medicine has decreased access to medical care in many cities in the U.S.

The result is an increase in cost and greater opportunity for abuse by the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, hospitals and healthcare providers. The government has imposed more control over the individual’s ability to make his or her own healthcare decisions.

Medicaid has experienced the same increasing costs. It also created a shortage of physicians because of low reimbursement. Obamacare has expanded Medicaid. This has decreased the availability of medical care for Medicaid patients.

President Obama’s law (Obamacare) increased the number of Medicaid recipients but did not cure the reasons for the lack of providers. Many clever Medicaid providers have figured out how to exploit Medicaid rules only to suffer from government investigations and penalties in the long run.

The VA system is the purest example of sheer failure. Not only are the patients unhappy but also the providing administrative bureaucracy is riddled with inefficiency, corruption and waste.

The inefficiency, corruption and waste have not been able to be fixed by many notable private sector executives the government has hired to fix it. They have all ultimately resigned or were fired.

The VA system’s single party payer system remains an incurable failure.

These examples are proof that a single party payer system is unsustainable and not economically feasible. The government continues to make the same mistakes over and over again.

Are these mistakes intentional? Perhaps.

The government’s goals are to gain power and have control over the population. If its goals were to have an efficient and effective healthcare system, it would provide the resources to permit all consumers to drive the healthcare system. It would create a system that would motivate consumers to be responsible for their healthcare.

What is happening now?

The healthcare policy ideologists are using the New York Times as their propaganda vehicle to promote a single party payer system.

The article, Back to the Health Policy Drawing Board” may be intellectually simulating to readers of the Sunday Times. However, many of its details are untrue.

After one casually reads the article on a pleasant Sunday morning it would seem much simpler to have a single party healthcare system controlled by the government than the chaotic system that presently exist. The New York Times article is promoting Medicare for all.

Medicare currently is a single party payer system whosecost is out of control. America cannot continue to print money forever.

America’s politicians are ignoring this fact in order to gain more power.

 

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.



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Why Vermont’s Single Party Payer Healthcare Plan Failed

 Stanley Feld M.D., FACP,MACE

Vermont’s single party payer healthcare plan was doomed to fail from the onset for several reasons.

Healthcare policy consultants do not understand the medical care system. The healthcare policy consultants for the Vermont healthcare system were the same consulting architects President Obama used for Obamacare.

The consultants were Harvard’s William Hsiao and MIT’s Jonathan Gruber.

William Hsiao has spent most of his academic career helping governments install healthcare systems. William Hsiao is the K.T. Li Research Professor of Economics in Department of Health Policy and Management and Department of Global Health and Population, at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Jonathan Gruber is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992.[1]

He is also the director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a research associate.

Jonathan Gruber has been heavily involved in crafting public health policy.

He has been described as a key architect[2] of both the 2006 Massachusetts health care reform, sometimes referred to as “Romneycare”, and the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, sometimes referred to as the “ACA” and “Obamacare”.

There is little evidence that the systems he and Dr. Hsaio have built are overwhelming successful, cost effective or preserve consumer freedom of choice.

In fact, a study by NPR and Harvard’s T.Chan School of Public Health concluded that Obamacare is a complete failure.

Dr. Hsaio is on the faculty the Harvard T.Chan School of Public Health.

NPR AND HARVARD T.H. Chan School of public Health SAY: OBAMACARE IS A COMPLETE FAILURE

In a New York Times interview in 2009 Dr. Hsiao discussed the system of healthcare Reform he installed in Taiwan.

The question was:

What’s the most important lesson that Americans can learn from the Taiwanese example?

Dr. Hsiao.

You can have universal coverage and good quality health care while still managing to control costs. But you have to have a single-payer system to do it.

The Taiwan government managed to insure 98 percent of the population with a premium cost of 4.6 percent of wages.

Q.

Has your system of healthcare in Tiawan translated into better life expectancy or lower complication rates from major diseases?

Dr. Hsiao.

“There is evidence of positive health results for select diseases, like cardiovascular disease and kidney failure.”

There is no medical or financial data available to prove outcomes have improved.

“Overall, it’s really difficult to say that national health insurance has improved the aggregate health status, because mortality and life expectancy are crude measurements, not precise enough to pick up the impact of more health care.”

“That said, life expectancy is improving, and mortality is dropping. And everyone now has access to good health care”.

This is not good science. It is not even good social science. This is a biased opinion.

Q.

What are the system’s weaknesses?

Dr. Hsaio

“In the legislative process, compromises had to be made. First, the president yielded on payment reform, so Taiwan kept its fee-for-service payment system. Unfortunately, that encourages doctors and hospitals to give more treatment in order to boost their income.

“Second, the Taiwanese system doesn’t have a systematic way to monitor and improve quality of care.”

“Third, in the legislative process, they rejected a provision to adjust the premium automatically when the national health system depletes its reserves.”

“In every country, health care costs are increasing faster than wages. When that happens, the premium has to go up. But that provision wasn’t incorporated into the law. As a result, the system is running a deficit.”

“National health insurance tries to cut the fees for hospital and physician services. But eventually these fee reductions will adversely affect the quality of health care.”

President Obama was so anxious to change the healthcare system in the United States to fit his socialist ideology that he picked two professors, Dr. Hsaio of Harvard and Jonathan Gruber of MIT to be the architects of Obamacare.

Jonathan Gruber has been introduced as the ‘architect’ of the Massachusetts law and/or Obamacare”.[52]

Neither professor had scientific evidence that a single party payer system would work efficiently.

Obamacare was not working efficiently yet the progressives in Vermont hired Dr. Hsaio and Dr. Guber to be the architects for Vermont’s single party payer system.

Jonathon Gruber has turned out to be a honest about the Obama administration’s lies.

Many of the videos show him talking about ways in which he felt the ACA was misleadingly crafted or marketed in order to get the bill passed, while in some of the videos he specifically refers to American voters as ill-informed or “stupid”.

In October 2013, Gruber we said: “the bill was deliberately written “in a tortured way” to disguise the fact that it creates a system by which “healthy people pay in and sick people get money”.

Some of Americans are waking up to the fact that they cannot trust President Obama and his administration to be our surrogate. This is true not only in healthcare but in his decision making in every area of the economy and our live.

Gruber said this obfuscation was needed due to “the stupidity of the American voter” in ensuring the bill’s passage. Gruber said the bill’s inherent “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage” in selling it .[31]

 In 2010, Jonathan Gruber expressed doubts that the ACA would significantly reduce health care costs. He thought lowering costs played a major part in the way the bill was promoted by the Obama administration.[36]

President Obama said he never met Jonathan Gruber and did not think he came to the White House. President Obama forgot he hired him and paid him a $400,000 consultation fee.

In 2014, the Obama administration claimed that Gruber did not have a major role in creating the PPACA.[50]

President Obama acted irresponsibly to the public by hiring healthcare policy wonks to change America’s healthcare system without evidence for the success because their thoughts fit his ideology.

I don’t think President Obama understands he has changed the way hospitals and physicians have changed their approach to healthcare and medical care.

In my opinion, healthcare and medical care has changed for the worse.

Rich Lowry said that the videos were emblematic of “the progressive mind, which values complexity over simplicity, favors indirect taxes and impositions on the American public so their costs can be hidden, and has a dim view of the average American”.[41]

The American public eventually figures it out.

Commentator Charles Krauthammer called the first Gruber video “the ultimate vindication of the charge that Obamacare was sold on a pack of lies.”[42]

 The Vermont governor hired Dr. Hsaio and Dr. Gruber to create a single party payer system in Vermont figuring,the system would be easier in one small state than in the nation.

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin (D.) announced that he was pulling the plug on his four-year quest to impose single-payer, government-run health care on the residents of his state.

“In my judgment,” said Shumlin at a press conference, “the potential economic disruption and risks would be too great to small businesses, working families, and the state’s economy.”

Watch out Colorado!

Why doesn’t a single party payer system work?

All of the healthcare policy wonks, especial Dr. Hsaio and Dr. Gruber, leave out the most important ingredients in a successful healthcare system.

Consumers cannot be treated as a commodity. Consumers cannot be forced to take what is given to them. The healthcare system must have a viable physician patient relationship provision.

The physician patient relationship is a big part of the therapeutic index. If treatment is to be successful patients must participate in their care.

Consumers of the healthcare system must drive the healthcare system. It must not be government or the healthcare insurance industry.

Consumers must be a the center of the healthcare system.

A system needs to be developed that puts patients in charge, not the government. Consumers must be responsible for their healthcare and their healthcare dollars.

This will motivate doctors and hospitals to compete for patients’ business.

My Ideal Medical Savings Account will provide incentives for the consumers to have a consumer driven healthcare system. This system will in turn drive hospital systems and physicians to compete for their care.

The end result will be to decrease the cost of the healthcare system and improve medical care and consumer satisfaction with the healthcare system.

 

 The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.

 All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2015 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

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Deals With The Devil, How To Destroy The Healthcare System

Stanley Feld M.D., FACP, MACE

President Obama’s goal is to destroy the healthcare system. His deals and regulations lead the healthcare system on the path of destruction.

The strategy is creating so much pain to all the stakeholders that the healthcare system will implode.

At that time public opinion will demand the government take over the healthcare system.

What makes the government a better manager than the free market? The key is to have a system that aligns all the stakeholders’ incentives.

The government is not doing a good job keeping Medicare and Medicaid solvent and providing access to care. It is providing horrible healthcare services to our veterans in the VA system.

The government has conditioned progressive Democrats to continuously declare; “ I don’t mind paying a little more to make the system better.”

The destruction of the healthcare system is a slow process. The Obama administration is proceeding step by step in a very organized fashion.

When it is replaced by a single party payer system controlled by non-elected bureaucrats, consumers will have no control over their free choices.

Hopefully, the U.S. and its citizens are too diverse and too accustomed to freedom of choice and freedom of expression to let this happen.

Hopefully, consumers realize that central government control and socialized medicine doesn’t work. The concept of central control and socialism has failed too many times to count.

Our founding fathers certainly understood this concept.

Hopefully, consumer will realize that Adam Smith was right. The free market is self-correcting. It is only self-correcting with everyone plays by the rules and the government enforces the rules.

A government run by the political establishment that is controlled by vested interests does not work. It will eventually generate mistrust among all parties.

The mistrust of government is building to a tipping point.

Two recent examples of approaching the tipping point are the new ACO rules and the deception involved in the Obamacare reinsurance scandal.

Most of the 242 ACOs out of 3000 potential ACOs have three-year contracts. Many ACOs are not about to reach their Shared Savings goals for the reason I have mentioned.

I don’t know if these ACOs realized in their quest to become more efficient they would eventually lose money. Next year’s sharing goal will be this year’s modified to be the new profit sharing benchmark.

It might be impossible to deliver care more efficiently by the new benchmark.

When the ACO automatically progress to track 2 and fall short of the most recent efficient cost sharing savings benchmark these ACOs will have to repay the government for the losses.

The second important point that is propelling the healthcare system to the tipping point is that the new ACO rules do not take into consideration the healthcare systems that signed up to become ACOs initially.

Any savings the new rules offer in order to attract more healthcare systems to sign up for the ACO program have not been offered to the original signees until 2019. The original 242 have to wait until 2019 to be eligible for the extra bonuses given to new signees.

This might get the original hospital systems to quit their ACO participation completely. If the old ACOs quit the program, it would create more dysfunction in the healthcare system.

It would be just the thing the Obama administration wants to happen. The more dysfunction, the closer America is to a single party payer system.

An equally frustrating example was the money promised to the healthcare insurance industry to guarantee it a profit if it participates in the federal and state health insurance exchange program.

I have described President Obama’s reinsurance program in detail previously.

I was opposed to the reinsurance program. The Obama administration is totally dependent on the healthcare insurance industry to perform healthcare administrative services.

I am not sure either house of congress was aware of or appreciated the implications of the reinsurance program until it because obvious three years after Obamacare was passed.

The healthcare insurance industry knowing full well that they couldn’t make legitimate profits selling coverage through Obamacare’s exchanges, relied on Democrat guarantees that their losses would be covered by the taxpayers.

But a funny thing happened on the way to easy profits. Congress refused to appropriate the funds.”

When congress realized what was going on it capped the funds appropriated to the reinsurance program. President Obama is still trying to find the fund to pay the healthcare insurance industry.

President Obama paid only 12.6% of the 2.87 billion dollars the industry claimed the government owed it.

Now the healthcare insurance companies that have not been paid are starting to sue the Obama administration.

The companies included are Health Republic Insurance Company. It has filed a class action lawsuit against the government for $5 billion, Highmark Health has sued for $223 million, Moda Healthfiled filed a $180 million suit. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of North Carolina has sued for $129 million. Land of Lincoln Health has filed a $70 million suit.

It isn’t clear that these lawsuits aren’t going anywhere. “

“The defendant in the class action suit, for example, is “The United States of America” and the plaintiffs ask the court to strike down provisions of two congressional budget resolutions that require the risk corridor program to be budget neutral.”

Congress is the only branch of government that has the power of the purse. It is not the administration or the court.

As U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer put it in a ruling against the Obama administration in a similar case involving unauthorized HHS spending, “Congress is the only source for such an appropriation … See U.S. Constitution, Art. I, § 9, cl. 7”

“(‘No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.…’).” And a budget resolution becomes law once it has been signed by the President. That’s why the 2015 spending bill is titled, “Public Law 113–235.” Yet the Health Republic class action suit holds that losses somehow render the law invalid:”

Qualified Health Plans have incurred even greater compensable losses in 2015 that CMS and HHS cannot pay as a result of the 2016 Spending Bill.

“Neither the Obama administration nor the congressional Democrats with whom they made their cynical deal can save them. In the end, the Devil will have his due.”

Another way to look at the entire debacle of Obamacare is this is exactly the way President Obama and his administration wanted it to turn out. It will lead the way to a single party payer system. The single party payer system will be another disaster.

Was Obamacare designed and implemented with such incredible ineptitude that Co-Ops like Health Republic and Lincoln Health were doomed from the onset?

Were Texas and the thirty other states that did not join smart enough to know the Co-Ops and state exchanges were destined to fail and go bankrupt?

Was it done purposefully by the Obama administration in order to create chaos in the healthcare system?

Why would anyone believe that a central government that runs and controls the healthcare system be any different than the VA system and the insolvent Medicare and Medicaid System?

Who is responsible for the debacle? The traditional mainstream media such as the New York Times and the Washington Post will blame it on a Republican congress that is refusing to change the law to pay President Obama’s illegal debts.

Who do you think will pay for the upcoming debacle?

You guessed it.

The taxpayers will pay for President Obama and his administration’s obvious fiscal irresponsibility.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.

All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2016 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE