Obama '08?

Yes, and after that it will be insolvent.

The confidence of some beneficiaries of public pension and medical programs that they can continue as is and remain solvent merely by raising taxes is quite remarkable

Re: Medicaid spending, if your bunch had allowed the Public Option to go through, a large percentage of those who are currently on Medicaid would have gone there instead; and a lot of money would have been saved. But, that would have involved both giving Obama and the Libs a big victory, and admitting that sometimes, free market competition ISN'T the solution, and you guys would rather cut your throats than ever admit that.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Re: Medicaid spending, if your bunch had allowed the Public Option to go through, a large percentage of those who are currently on Medicaid would have gone there instead; and a lot of money would have been saved. But, that would have involved both giving Obama and the Libs a big victory, and admitting that sometimes, free market competition ISN'T the solution, and you guys would rather cut your throats than ever admit that.

Cycloptichorn

You are basing that on the untested hypothesis that the projected "Savings" in either the public option or, indeed. even the enacted Obamacare plan will actually occur. So far, even with respect to the latter, a significant number of the so called savings have been found to be illusory - even without condidering the deceit implicit in their trick of counting new tax receipds for ten years against pronected costs for only siux years.

Every public health scheme enacted by our Federal government (Medicare and Medicaid) has ended up costing far more than its advocates projected.

Quote:

Every public health scheme enacted by our Federal government (Medicare and Medicaid) has ended up costing far more than its advocates projected.

Sure, but the costs have gone up far slower than those of private insurance rates, which really have skyrocketed. Remember that this is what we are comparing the system to - not some zero-sum where costs aren't always increasing.

Cycloptichorn

Cumulative per enrollee growth. Cumulative spending per enrollee helps illustrate the impact of cost containment performance over time. Cumulative measures also account for differences in payers’ spending relative to previous spending trends, allowing for a more comprehensive look at trends over time.

Relying on the same data that we used to compare annual per enrollee growth rates, we calculated cumulative per enrollee growth by first establishing a 1970 index value of 100 for both Medicare and private insurance. To this index we added the annual per enrollee growth rate for each sector. An index number of 200, for example, indicates that spending per enrollee has doubled since 1970 (Exhibit 2Go). Since a cumulative index is based intrinsically on the starting point, we were careful to choose an initial measure for which the private sector and Medicare were growing at similar rates. Also, we chose a starting point that would provide us with the longest time period for analysis, while avoiding Medicare’s earliest years, in which enrollment and spending are more difficult to interpret.


View larger version (10K):
In this window
In a new window

EXHIBIT 2 Cumulative Growth In Per Enrollee Payments For Personal Health Care, Medicare And Private Insurers, 1970–2000

Exhibit 2Go also illustrates that over the past three decades Medicare has been more successful than the private insurance industry has in constraining its per enrollee cost growth for personal health care. By 2000 Medicare’s index number for per enrollee costs was 1,544, compared with 2,176 for private insurance. In other words, by 2000 the index for the private market was 44 percent higher than the index for Medicare.

Initially, Medicare and private insurance spending per enrollee rose very much in tandem, showing few discernible differences. Both public and private insurers essentially passed through costs to taxpayers or their clients. And while health care costs were rising rapidly in the 1970s, so were costs of other goods and services. By the end of the 1970s, health costs became an issue for debate.

By the 1980s per enrollee health care spending had more than doubled for both Medicare and private insurance. During this time Medicare became more proactive in constraining spending growth, in part as an effort to fend off mounting criticism against "big government." Although still on a similar growth path with per enrollee private health spending, Medicare expenditures were rising more rapidly than those of other federal programs. Therefore, in the 1980s Medicare instituted cost containment efforts—namely, hospital payment reforms—resulting in a slower per enrollee growth rate than in the private sector. At first, in the early part of the decade, ad hoc adjustments were used to try to slow growth. From about 1984 through 1988, the slope of Medicare’s cost growth line flattens out, indicating that it was much more successful than the private sector was in restricting growth (Exhibit 2Go).

In the mid-1990s private insurers turned to cost containment strategies but did not necessarily follow Medicare’s example, since private insurers do not share Medicare’s market clout. Instead, this slowdown occurred during a period of rapid rise in managed care. During this time the slope of private per enrollee spending rates is similar to Medicare’s in the 1980s, thus narrowing the overall gap between the two spending growth paths. However, with the introduction of the Balanced Budget Act (BBA) in the late 1990s, Medicare’s cumulative per enrollee growth rate again declined, while the private sector’s rate steadily rose. Finally, between 1999 and 2000 the gap in overall growth remained in Medicare’s favor, with private industry’s cumulative growth rising faster than that of Medicare.

But that doesn't precisely compare Medicare/Medicaid to private, now does it?

I've had private insurance and I now have Medicare. I definately know which is better.

United States
Main articles: Health insurance in the United States and Health care in the United States

The United States health care system relies heavily on private health insurance, which is the primary source of coverage for most Americans. According to the CDC, approximately 58% of Americans have private health insurance.[36] Public programs provide the primary source of coverage for most senior citizens and for low-income children and families who meet certain eligibility requirements. The primary public programs are Medicare, a federal social insurance program for seniors and certain disabled individuals, Medicaid, funded jointly by the federal government and states but administered at the state level, which covers certain very low income children and their families, and SCHIP, also a federal-state partnership that serves certain children and families who do not qualify for Medicaid but who cannot afford private coverage. Other public programs include military health benefits provided through TRICARE and the Veterans Health Administration and benefits provided through the Indian Health Service. Some states have additional programs for low-income individuals.[37]

Prior to the recent health care reforms, there was a great deal of dissatisfaction with the insurance industry which was regarded as dysfunctional. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, health advocacy companies began to appear to help patients deal with the complexities of the healthcare system. The complexity of the healthcare system has resulted in a variety of problems for the American public. A study had found that 62 percent of persons declaring bankruptcy in 2007 had unpaid medical expenses of over of $1000 or more, and in 92% of these cases the medical debts exceeded $5000. Nearly 80 percent who filed for bankruptcy had health insurance.[38]