Thursday’s OpEds: Expensive Treatments Hard To Curb; Keeping Your Coverage May Be Tough; Law Will Reduce Costs
Healthcare: Reining In Costs Won't Be Easy Los Angeles Times
Expensive end-of-life care and Americans' unwillingness to accept anything less than gold-plated treatment practically ensure that costs will continue to increase. There is enormous pressure on healthcare providers to continue practicing the most expensive medicine in the world. To resist that pressure, we need some help from policymakers (Dr. Stella Fitzgibbons 6/17).
The Bad News About ObamaCare Keeps Piling Up The Wall Street Journal
Take [President Obama's] oft-expressed statement that if you like the coverage you have, you can keep it. That sounds good-but perverse incentives in his new law will cause most Americans to lose their existing insurance (Karl Rove, 6/17).
Health Care Reform and Cost Control New England Journal of Medicine
Although the bill has now been signed into law, the debate over its design and intended effects has not abated. Yet we would argue that even from a purely "green eyeshade" viewpoint, the bill will significantly reduce costs (Peter Orszag and Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel 6/16).
Market-Based Reform Initiatives Are Key To Health Law Success Kaiser Health News
Consumer-directed health plans have been useful in controlling the rise of health costs over the last several years, but the survival of these plans is threatened by the new health overhaul law. Until now, employers have had the flexibility to tailor benefit and cost structures to fit their budgets and corporate cultures, but the new health overhaul law will limit their options in the future (Grace-Marie Turner 6/17).
Health Care Reform Was The Right Thing To Do The [Austin, Texas] Statesman
Regardless of what antigovernment types will say, health care - immediate, quality care - is treated as a right in our country, at least in the ER and at scenes where ambulances converge. Our problem, until Obama, is what little we'd done to help the millions of uninsured Americans stay on top of their needs through doctors' visits and preventive care (John Young, 6/16).
Obama's Promises, Promises The Daily Caller
Once in office, he promised the American people that if they liked their health care plan, they could keep it. Now it appears that this too is a lie, at least if his bureaucrats in the administration and at HHS have their way (Sally Pipes, 6/17).
Rebuttal: Small Business Hurt By Health Bill The Detroit News
No one knows better than our members that [small business owners] pay an average of 18 percent more for the same health care coverage as big business and labor unions. The problem is this new health care law does nothing to address that (Charles Owen, state director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, 6/17).