In an interview with Popular Mechanics, Dean Kamen, one of the world’s most prolific inventors of healthcare technologies, challenges the notion that the U.S. has a healthcare crisis. Rather than slowing the pace of medical progress in order to cut healthcare costs, he argues, America should be encouraging more innovation in life-saving drugs and technologies . . . Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Healthcare Reform
Thomas Jefferson on Obama’s Healthcare Speech
My fellow Americans — Perhaps it was unfair of me to be critical of President Obama’s healthcare speech without having heard it. There’s not much to do on a Saturday night when you’re dead, so I read the transcript: We’ve estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse. . . . The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies . . . Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan. And how much money are we talking about, sir? Now, add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years. WTF?! I… Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on Healthcare Reform
My fellow Americans — Did you watch President Obama’s healthcare speech tonight? Neither did I. But I did learn from msnbc.com’s First Read that he hoped in his speech to explain to ordinary American voters — “call them Joe and Jane from Kansas City” — that his health-care reform will 1) cover nearly everyone and 2) cut costs in the long run. So let me get this straight — we’re going to spend money to save money! Does he think everyone in Kansas City is that stupid or just Joe and Jane? What — you don’t believe we can insure 50 million more people and cut costs at the same time? Well then, you’re an uninformed kook! You’re scared that those cost savings will come from drastically rationing access to care, particularly for people who are chronically ill and/or near the end of their lives? You’re un-American! Probably a Nazi!… Read more →
Unicorn Dust and Pixie Wings
Donald Marron points out that another one of those great cost-saving ideas in the healthcare debate (the Independent Medicare Advisory Council) has taken a hit: CBO estimates that the proposed legislation would save a paltry $2 billion over the next ten years, less than 1/500 of the 10-year cost of health reform. Damn that CBO! They keep killing all these great ideas with, like, analysis and numbers and all that stuff. Everything would work out just fine if only they would close their eyes, click their heels together three times, and say, “There is no policy like reform…there is no policy like reform….” — Greg Mankiw Read more →