Asymmetrical Information

Check out www.doctormental.blogspot.com, specifically the entry for Sept. 25, 2004 for a good summary of why Tenncare is not working.

My god.

If this goes through, it will be the first and only time I've ever heard of a government program being shut down...

If I weren't such a goddamned cynic, I'd be doing cartwheels. Some COMMON sense in government! It isn't impossible to role these monsters back! Just very very hard!

It better happen, or I'm going to be as embittered as a kerry supporter.

I hate to be too melodramatic, but wow. Endorphins are popping in my brain. America may not be doomed to the socialist death spiral...

Bankruptcy has a wonderful way of focusing the legislature's attention -- and TennCare has made a lot of people throw that word around about state finances.

TennCare is a state programme that looked a lot like John Kerry's health care plan in many respects, dramatically expanding Medicaid in order to cover the uninsured.

The result? After a few years, the governor is pulling the plug: the costs vastly exceeded projections, and the state can no longer afford it.

Imagine if the same standard of pulling the plug on a program whose costs "vastly exceeded projections" and that we "can no longer afford" had been used for Medicare and Medicaid.

Or Social Security...*sigh*.

But as to other government programs that have been cancelled, does Prohibition I (alcohol, not to be confused with Prohibition II: non-alcoholic drugs) count?

Keep in mind that state governments often have balanced budget requirements in their constitution that the US federal government does not. This may be a very good example of how letting the states experiment is a good idea.

The quibble I have--is this really a good match for what Kerry was proposing? Wasn't there quite a few pieces to his health care proposal?

An advantage for a Democratic governor: he can do this. A Republican would be booted to North Carolina.

Vermont's health plan put in by Dean is putting a tremendous financial burden on the state goverment. They will have to change it or pull the plug in the next few years too.

Social Security is a manageable problem. Its a finite amount of money per retiree, and the ratio of retirees per worker is fairly well bounded in the short/medium run.

Medicare, on the other hand, is a very difficult problem. Its essentially an open-ended amount of money per retiree. Mayhap Medicare may meet the same fate. I'm not getting my hopes up though.

"Programme"? Where'd you get your dictionary?

Trust me, Bredesen is not going to let himself go down in history as the governor who denied a million people healthcare. Currently, TennCare is a fiscal nightmare that has been bound up from its inception by advocacy groups who have never heard of the word "compromise". Their motto seems to be "pay for everything, for everybody, all the time."

If Bredesen has to pull the plug, I feel pretty confident that he will have a replacement plan waiting in the wings. I also suspect it will not have anything like the legal vulnerability of the current model.

HobbsOnline had this to say:

"South Knox Bubba thinks Bredesen is bluffing, scoring political points with Republicans who think TennCare is a fiscal black hole (which, by the way, it is), and will score points again with Republicans when his bluff forces the lawyers to cave whose lawsuits helped destroy TennCare by preventing needed fiscal reforms.

But what if the lawyers don't cave? Bubba doesn't account for that - he fully expects they will. He might be right, but I suspect Bredesen has a plan to win even if they don't cave - by pulling the plug on TennCare and replacing it with a new program designed to do what TennCare did, only on a more fiscally sane and sound basis."

Sometimes I think it would be cheaper if the federal government just created medical savings-money market accounts for each person and put 10,000$ in each at birth. Require everyone to purchase catastrophic insurance, then just delete all government health care programs. Deregulate, pass tort reform, stop illegal immigration. Use information technology and a networked health information system to get rid of the dreaded paper work once and for all. Ha! It's late and I'm drunk.

This is a great success if you disagree with the idea behind TennCare, but while you're celebrating the "rush of endorphins" to your head, let's not forget that 400,000+ people have just lost their health coverage. According to any standard, this is not a good thing.

Jane, to her credit, is not celebrating their loss, but talking only about the end of TennCare. Even if you see TennCare as the wrong solution, the problem of uninsured people still remains, and it has taken a significant leap for the worse with the end of TennCare. That's not something to celebrate. What is going to fill in the gap for these 400,000 people? Will capping medical malpractice awards restore health care?

Yeah, it is something to celebrate. For the first time that I am aware of, a gigantic wasteful program was stopped BEFORE it destroyed the states finances. That, in and of itself, is a great thing.

The reason I am so happy about is that I was convinced, until yesteday, that once one of these programs got put it place, that it was harder to kill than Dracula, no matter how much of a monetary black hole it became, and that, as a result, we were doomed to an eventual collapse. See France's 30 year economic forecast for what I'm talking about.

Am I sad 400,000 people are going to lose their health care? On a personal level, yes. Rough times are ahead for them. On a intellectual level, no. Their program was going to create hard times for everyone. If it hadn't been killed, Tennesse would be an economic disaster zone in another decade. So I celebrate that.

I'm disappointed you haven't commented on the following:

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110003711129469246,00.html?mod=home%5Fpage%5Fone%5Fus

which shows that private plans are no bed of roses either.

The sooner people stop referring to any kind of socialised medicine as "Health Care" the sooner everyone will know where they stand. Socialised "Health Care" is a misnomer, during election week I spoke to many misguided US Citizens who were under the impression that a socialised medical scheme would be just like Private Care, only free.... sorry to burst their bubble. Imagine Medicare/Medicaid without enough funding. This is the nightmare that millions of UK residents live with everyday! Of course we're all better off now, because the government has announced plans to cut waiting times for operations to much less than 6 months in their latest overhaul of the service!

If you want a taste of things under socialised medicine.... take a look at these links. They're current. Then think again.

http://www.dh.gov.uk/PublicationsAndStatistics/PressReleases/PressReleasesNotices/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=4094443&chk=eS979h
http://www.publications.doh.gov.uk/nhsplan/index.htm

Here's a nice out take for you, if you can't be bothered to follow the links... "By 2008 no one will have to wait longer than 18 weeks from GP (Doctor) referral to hospital treatment, and most people will experience much shorter waits, with even quicker access in priority areas such as cancer."

T.

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