By Dana Goldman and Adam Leive
Health Affairs Blog, May 14, 2013
The Affordable Care Act survived the Supreme Court and a presidential election, so why does it face such an uncertain future? One reason is that it was essentially silent on how to control costs. This has led many pundits — including the likes of Paul Krugman and Robert Reich — to argue that the best approach would be to extend Medicare to everyone.
The idea of universal Medicare is powerful and attractive.
However, the argument that Medicare is superior in terms of cost savings and quality is flawed and ignores key factors that make any conclusion decidedly more nuanced. As the country’s fiscal challenges pressure us to make dramatic health system changes, we should be wary of calls to implement “Medicare-for-All.”
(In fairness, no attempt is made to edit their explanation of why “Medicare-for-All” is not the answer. Please use the following link to access their reasoning.)
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2013/05/14/why-medicare-for-all-is-not-the-answer/
HA BLOG RESPONSES:
Theodore Marmor Says (May 19):
This critique of Medicare is bafflingly opaque to the difference between single payer systems providing broad, first dollar coverage and the particular features of Medicare US version 2013. The arguments for the former rely on normative appeal of principles like those of the Canada Health Act, on experience with very limited if any patient cost-sharing at the point of service, and decades of comparative financing experience. On that basis, one can compare how Canadian developments differ from those in the US from 1971 – when their system was operational – to now. Not everyone would agree that Canadian experience is superior, but it would be difficult to argue the case that the US experience was superior. So, why are those data not addressed seriously when dealing with “international experience.” One cannot coherently argue against that form of medical care policy by selectively observing features of American medical care and speculative claims about the extent of ‘fraud’ in private and public health insurance. The monopsonist noted in the article is not US Medicare, but Canadian Medicare at the provincial level—or, by extension, the NHS in the UK. There are indeed issues of fraud in the US, but interestingly, there is no serious evidence presented that supports the claim that private health insurance is superior on that front.
Finally, in no OECD nation is health care financing the central explanation for the profile of the population’s health. Health care serves lots of purposes and is important in many ways, but it ought not be evaluated primarily or substantially–in rich countries with basic public health–for major changes in population health profiles.
Dana Goldman Says (May 23):
There is a tone here that somehow the Canadian system is ‘better’ — or at least non-inferior and less expensive. But surely everyone can agree that the Canadian system restricts choice, has greater delays, and is starting to show cracks. Just try getting Erbitux for Stage IV colon cancer ; or an office visit in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, where they held a lottery to see who would get primary care.
(See http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html or http://www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com/issue/2006/03_15/3_policy_politics03_05.html).
In fact, cancer is a poignant example, as research we published in Health Affairs last year demonstrated that the US has better survival than the EU, and the gap is widening. These better outcomes come at a cost, but a straightforward cost-benefit analysis indicates that the gains are worth it. (See http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/31/4/667.short)
The point is that the US — while wasteful — has a system that on average provides the best access and choice, especially with the ACA. Canada has a lower global budget, but it has restricted choice. If we move to global budgets, we can lower costs, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves that health outcomes will magically improve and access will improve.
Jon Oberlander Says (May 23):
Dana Goldman is concerned about tone in blog responses – I am more concerned by his factual errors and misleading statements. Comparing the United States to Canada, Goldman writes that “the US — while wasteful — has a system that on average provides the best access and choice, especially with the ACA.” It is not clear what “the best” means here – best in the world? Or only in North America? Regardless, it is simply inarguable that Canada provides better health security to its citizens with universal coverage at a much lower cost than the US.
To be sure, Canada has its share of significant problems. But it is a bit much for Goldman to cite issues in primary care shortages and a lottery for care as an indictment of Canada without mentioning America’s own issues with primary care or the now famous Oregon lottery for Medicaid or medical care costs driving Americans (including those with insurance) into bankruptcy and much more. Even when the ACA is fully implemented, over 30 million US residents will lack insurance coverage – we will not match Canada on universality.
Goldman is worried about Canada’s limits on choice but he does not note that the US is itself not free of constraints: many Americans face constraints on choice of medical care options because they do not have any coverage at all, do not have a choice of insurers from their employer, or have restricted choice of doctor because they are in a managed care plan. In short, Goldman’s conviction that the US has the “best access and choice” is strangely divorced from the evidence.
Finally, Goldman’s published work does not, as he claims, demonstrate that higher US spending on cancer produces better results than the EU. That work has serious methodological problems which undercut its conclusions:
see: http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/health-affairs-authors-respond-to-criticism-maybe-mine/
and http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/09/us-cancercare-idUSBRE8380SA20120409
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2013/05/14/why-medicare-for-all-is-not-the-answer/
Evidence Supports Medicare For All
By Ida Hellander
Health Affairs Blog, June 7, 2013
Dana Goldman and Adam Leive’s effort to discredit the single payer, Medicare-for-All model of financing health care — or as they put it, make “any conclusion decidedly more nuanced” — is sorely lacking in nuance, defined by Merriam-Webster as “made or done with extreme care or accuracy.”
As Goldman and Leive note, the Affordable Care Act will not control rising costs. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that even after it is fully implemented, the ACA will leave 31 million Americans uninsured. The support of Nobel Prize-winning economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, the former chief economist at the World Bank, along with Professor Robert Reich, the former U.S. secretary of labor, reflects a broad consensus that the only way to provide universal coverage and control costs is a single-payer system.
(In fairness, and because of the length of today’s message, no attempt is made to edit Ida Hellander’s response to Goldman and Leive. Please use the following link to access her response.)
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2013/06/07/evidence-supports-medicare-for-all/
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
We rarely respond to criticisms of Medicare for All since most of them are driven by conservative/libertarian ideology devoid of any acknowledgment of health care justice. Single
payer advocates simply cannot have an intelligent discussion with someone who does not believe that society has a moral obligation to ensure that absolutely everyone has affordable access to appropriate health care.
We had to make an exception in this case. Dana Goldman is a Professor and the Leonard D. Schaeffer Director’s Chair at the University of Southern California, and, until 2009, was RAND’s Distinguished Chair in Health Economics. Because he is “a nationally-recognized health economist influential in both academic and policy circles” (HA Bio), a response was obligatory on our part.
The thrust of their discrediting of Medicare for All is that they challenge the lower prices that Medicare pays, the much lower administrative costs of the Medicare program, and they even challenge the mediocrity of our health outcomes. Anyone with a basic knowledge of health policy cannot be but perplexed by their attack of these well established facts.
As an example of the questionable credibility of their statements, Jon Oberlander cites the dubious cancer statistics in his comment above. The link that he provides to The Incidental Economist is to an article that quotes the critique I had of the cancer study Goldman cites – a study of which he is a co-author.
Ida Hellander, in her full article, makes the very important point that Goldman and Leive “confuse today’s Medicare program (not a single payer but just one plan in a marketplace of multiple public and private plans) with Medicare for All (single payer).” Although they were off in what they did criticize, they did not discuss the other very important features of the single payer, improved Medicare for all model advocated for by PNHP.
By providing us with such a flawed critique of Medicare for All, Goldman and Leive have helped to make the case for us by demonstrating that they have to stretch their rhetoric to the breaking point to come up with arguments against it.