I get health care emails from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who paid my tuition in an experimental Physician Assistant Program at Hopkins in 1973-5. They have been looking at various Health Reform problems since then.
I knew instinctively this fact had to be true, given all the waste I have lived and worked with.
http://www.rwjf.org/...
And specifically about this current debate:
http://www.rwjf.org/...
Urban Institute Researchers Calculate Savings from Reform and Show that Revenue Options Provide Ample Funds to Finance Health Care Reform
July 29, 2009
By: Berenson RA, Holahan J, Blumberg LJ, Bovbjerg RR, Waidmann T, Cook A, Williams A and Urban Institute
Sorry for mostly quoting, but I want to quickly add this foundation to people's reading sites, and to inject some calm assertive energy into the debate:
"A new analysis shows that savings from many popular health reform ideas would finance the lion’s share of the cost of comprehensive health care reform. It also shows that a combination of revenue options currently being discussed would provide more than enough money to fill the relatively modest gap between the cost of reform and the savings resulting from it.
The Urban Institute analysis outlines multiple options for health reforms that would save the government $1.25 trillion over 10 years:
- reductions in payments to specific components of Medicare and reallocation of money currently spent on the safety net could save $624 billion;
- improvements in chronic disease management, prevention, HIT, and end-of-life care would generate savings totaling $498 billion;
- malpractice reform could provide $129 billion in savings.
4)In addition, introducing a public plan option into the health insurance exchange could save $224 to $400 billion.
The researchers also provide estimates for a range of government revenue sources and suggest that spreading the costs broadly across an array of options is the best financing approach. For example, over 10 years:
- A progressive payroll tax on employers that do not offer insurance coverage could generate $570 billion;
- A cap on the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored insurance could add as much as $456 billion;
- Raising the income on high-income households by 5 percentage points would add $224 billion;
- Extending the individual share of the Medicare tax to unearned income -- it currently applies only to wages – would raise $435 billion.
- Ultimately, the authors quantify how the reform process rests on this process of balancing savings and needed revenues with the overall cost of reform – but show that many options for saving money and sharing financing exist."
A lot of the confusion and arguments are just blue smoke kicked up to impede courage.