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May 12, 2008
Presidential candidates' health plans
By THCB Staff
As a service to our readers, we've compiled all the presidential candidates' health plans in one place for you to easily access. Soon, we'll have a section of the TCHB devoted to the presidential race and health reform.
Click on the candidate to see his or her full plan for health reform.
As the race carries on, we'll bring you updated analysis from the candidate's health advisers, left - and right-leaning wonks and THCB contributors.
Also here is the Kaiser Network's side-by-side comparison of the current candidates' plans for quick reference.
Robert Laszewski's nonpartisan analysis of each candidate's plan previously posted on THCB are here:
If you're interested in seeing health reform plans of the candidates who dropped out of the race, here's the Kaiser Network's side-by-side comparison.
May 12, 2008 in Election 08, Hillary Clinton, McCain, Obama, Policy/Politics | Permalink
Comments
Grand statements but no real numbers yet from Obama or Clinton. Tell me my premium/co-pays/deductibles first then I'll see if it's worth signing on to. At least Obama won't mandate us into an expensive system first then worry about reducing costs later, as in Hillary's plan. Looks like it will be the Obama "plan" anyway since Hillary is running out of time. Unless white voters can get over not voting for a black president (especially in the south)it will be the McCain non-plan. But it looks like corporate America has the fix in against Obama anyway. How come we don't get the same 24/7 coverage of McCain's preacher and his statements? http://www.alternet.org/election08/84386/
Posted by: Peter | May 10, 2008 4:50:06 AM
I believe that Senator Clinton's plan is one of the reasons that she has lost the nomination. Those of us living in Massachusetts have seen what a fiasco mandated health insurance truly is and that access to low quality insurance products is hardly analogous to healthcare access. Does she truly believe that garnishing wages to feed the insatiable greed of the insurance industry was going to play well with the middle class?
Posted by: Ron | May 10, 2008 6:55:51 AM
Ron,
You talk about insatiable greed of the insurance industry as a primary cause of our health care costs. Presumably, you mean that the profits of this industry and salaries of executives are a major contributor to high costs. If you look at the numbers you will know that the evidence is strongly against you. Health insurance profit margins have always been on average below 5%, which makes it a low margin industry. Compare health insurance to other forms of insurance. Given that private insurance is somewhere around 35-40% of total expenditures on health care (the rest is Medicare, Medicaid, out-of-pocket expenditures, etc.), health insurance profits are around 1-2% of total health care costs. They are not what is driving costs up. CEO and executive pay is an even smaller factor, a fraction of a percent.
Massachusetts is a particularly stark case. Blue Cross, Harvard Pilgrim and Tufts all have very low profit margins. We're talking 1% margins, or not much higher. Executive salaries are also well under 1% of premiums. People who know health care in MA know that high costs there are being driven by a number of factors, almost all of them on the supply side. There are over 60% more physicians per capita in MA than in the nation as a whole, with a higher number of teaching hospitals and dominant hospital systems, particularly Partners. This is not a liberal or conservative view, it is simply an informed view. But don't take my word for it, look at this brief by The Center for Studying Health System Change or do some Googling on the topic.
Health plans do play a role in exacerbating the problem of high costs, but the main role is one of impotence. Health plans by and large have been unable to contain costs or manage care very effectively. They haven't really made a dent in the medically unwarranted care that Wennberg has been documenting for decades and they haven't been able to keep prices in line with general inflation. There are exceptions: managed care did actually make a difference in the mid 90s and kept costs lower than inflation and GDP growth, and managed care has kept physician incomes for primary care physicians at about the rate of inflation. But that's another story. My point is that the greed of insurers, particularly in MA, is an absurd reason to give for any problems that MA's universal health care system faces.
Posted by: jd | May 11, 2008 8:26:25 PM
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