ObamaCare’s Planner Here

It Must be Popular!

Regardless of your political persuasion, here is a health care economist who claims to have been advising the Obama Administration on their HC Reform plans.  Few of us have time for this stuff, but his presentation takes only the first half hour – the rest is actually pretty substantive Q & A from a Holy Cross audience sprinkled with physicians.

The plan may pass into law in the next few days and there will be a lot in it, so before it’s too late, get yourself the foundational viewpoint of the Progressive professional class.

Jonathan Gruber is an MIT health care economist.  He claims to not know whether the proposed law will actually improve coverage or control costs, but asserts we must halt the trend toward health care as 40% of GDP.  (It’s 17% now, but it seems odd to me that, as an economist, he acted like the journalists and politicians in treating the healthcare economy as if it were strictly cost/demand.  He mentioned wealthy medical specialists, but skipped the tens of thousands who take home more modest paychecks and stimulate the economy with their spending.

Likewise, he explains that Pharma charges less abroad than here, so we rich American can subsidize TV commercial and (necessary) R & D.  His solution is to get rid of the ads, but he doesn’t even consider having Pharma finally raise their drug prices abroad.  Again, odd for an economist (but not for an ideologue).

He decries the emphasis over the last year on lowering cost, rather than emphasizing coverage; he then makes the argument that costs will be reduced dramatically over 20 years, primarily through waste & fraud elimination and tax hikes on companies and wealthy individuals.  A cutback in hospital admissions and less testing  should also help.  He doesn’t say who will be available to actually provide the care mandated by his plan.  (Something his audience was concerned about.)

Finally, regarding his uncertainty over future effectiveness, he leans heavily on the many “pilot projects” that are at the heart of ObamaCare, each one being an experiment in what might work to head off the destructive trend he claims we’re on.  That being so, one has to wonder why the Administration – if it’s truly interested in discovering the most effective way forward – wouldn’t sponsor these experiments in the various states to demonstrate what might be practical to adopt nationally.

To view the interview, click here:  Jonathan Gruber on Health Care @ Holy Cross 3/11/10 AP Photo/Susan Walsh