Dead Cant Rant

What do you get when you actually implement HillaryCare? Total Disaster.

But the real problem with TennCare is even more fundamental. Because TennCare makes no effort to match the costs of health care with patients’ benefits, patients have no incentive to control costs. As one state legislator described, “Many on TennCare were not acting out of medical necessity when seeking medical care… They pursued medical care they didn’t need.” In a market, excessive demand would cause prices to rise and, some time thereafter, supply to increase as well. But that’s not what happens when government control supercedes the market.

So how did Tennessee address the problem? First, the state cut reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals and that, in turn, gradually reduced the supply of medical services. Enrollees had to contend with longer waits for care and fewer choices. Still, there was little change in behavior, as costs continued to rise. The state’s (obvious and foreseeable) second step? Increased government decision-making and the rationing of care. And that leads us very quickly to the present crisis.

The straw that broke the camel’s back actually came from efforts to ‘reform’ TennCare further along these lines. Gov. Bredesen tried to implement changes to TennCare to reduce program ‘utilization’ (that is, to ration care further) and increase the use of generic drugs (that is, to tell enrollees what drugs they must use). In response, a ‘public-interest’ law firm sued to block him. The writing was on wall: if it was this hard to put small patches to TennCare into practice, then serious fixes would surely be doomed. The only sensible choice is to start over.

Sigh. Socialism lives on in the hopes and dreams of Americans too stupid to understand basic economics and too lazy to read the history of “dead, white males.”