Ideas About Issues: The Right Answers On Health Policy Are Beyond Politics; Could The Free Market Deliver A Solution?
Columnists offer thoughts on these issues as well as who has gained ground with Obamacare, how self-employed people are bracing for change and the future of single-payer concepts.
The Columbus Dispatch:
Cast Aside Politics, Get Health Care Right
If you want to know what’s wrong with the never-ending political battle being fought in Washington to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, look no further than the lives, families, and communities that have been destroyed by opioid addiction all across America. Opioid addiction is a crisis ripping the heart out of our country. And every plan that’s been put forward by the Republican leadership in Congress takes a blow torch to the most important preventive care and treatment that’s currently covered by health insurance for those caught in the grip of addiction. If the Republicans get their way, that coverage goes away, and with it goes the best hope — and maybe the only real hope — that families and communities have to overcome the ravages of this terrible disease. (Joe Biden, 7/25)
Kansas City Star:
The Free Market Can Deliver A Better Health Care Solution
Robust competition in the marketplace — something that was held back by government even before Obamacare — should take the place of bureaucrats setting prices. For the vast majority of people, premiums would plummet and insurance options would bloom. (Aaron Hedlund, 7/24)
Bloomberg:
Obamacare's Big Win: It Helps Some People Be A Little Less Poor
There are some eternal debates that may never be settled. If there is a God, why does God allow evil in the world? Great taste, or less filling? And of course, does Medicaid make people healthier? I’m not going to rehash that last debate here, which I have covered many times. Suffice it to say that while liberals insist that the evidence is clear that health insurance expansions improve physical health, at least modestly, I do not see that the evidence warrants the confidence they exude. The intuitive sense that this ought to be correct seems to me to be doing a lot of heavy lifting in these evaluations. In health care, our intuitions are often wrong. (Megan McArdle, 7/24)
Modern Healthcare:
Self-Employed People Weigh Returning To Corporate Jobs If Senate Passes ACA Repeal Bill
Steven DeMaio of New York City has been happily self-employed as a writer and editor since 2008. At that time, he felt comfortable leaving a corporate job with health benefits and going out on his own because the state where he then lived, Massachusetts, had established a system guaranteeing affordable individual-market coverage without regard to health status. But DeMaio, 46, recently decided to look for a corporate job with health benefits because of uncertainty over the future of his health insurance posed by Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. As of Aug. 1, he will begin working for a company that offers a group health plan. (Harris Meyer, 7/24)
RealClear Health:
Single-Payer Health Care Looms As 2020 Campaign Issue
With 115 co-sponsors, a House bill that calls for single-payer health insurance now enjoys majority Democratic support in the lower chamber. Paired with Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, which helped bring national attention to the issue, some observers say that a single-payer push may become part of Democrats’ platform in 2020. (Ford Carson, 7/25)
Los Angeles Times:
Single Payer Can't Happen In California. At Least, Not Right Away
Given the dismal state of healthcare reform in Washington, liberal Californians have rallied around the idea that the state should establish a single-payer program. Although in the future such a system would be workable and desirable, the reality is that at the moment a single-payer bill cannot pass. Fighting for one in the immediate term is a waste of time. Financing, first of all, is a heavy lift. In addition to higher state taxes, California would need to channel Medicare and other federal healthcare funding into the single-payer system. Before it can do that, Congress must pass a waiver and the president must sign it — which isn’t going to happen while Donald Trump is in office. (Steve Tarzynski, 7/25)
