Government Health Care Kills
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is calling on the Pennsylvania Senate leadership to break their pledge not to hold a lame duck session. Among Rendell's rhetorical arguments is that "nearly two people a day die in Pennsylvania because of a lack of health insurance."
The Commonwealth Foundation's response, tongue-in-cheek, is that 10 Pennsylvanians die every day because of government involvement in health care.
Of course, no one really dies because they lack insurance or because they enroll in Medicaid, but the point (besides exposing Rendell's demagoguery) is that government health insurance—which Governor Rendell sees as the solution—is worse than the disease.
Instead, we should look to options that allow more individuals to enroll in private coverage.
2 comments:
Do you have statistics on how coverage mandates impact the number of insured? How many people are forced to drop coverage because of the corresponding price increases? How many people lost coverage because of the autism mandate?
The brain trust in Harrisburg appears magnanimous, but it is clear they don't think about the people on the margins.
Yes, there have been a couple recent studies on the cost of mandates one by the NCPA, the other from the Pacific Research Center, which finds that each mandate increases the uninsured rate by an average of 0.25%.
For Pennsylvania, which had 38 mandates until the most recent additions, that means 9% uninsured because of mandates (the total uninsured rate of PA is about 11%). A related study shows that by allowing individuals to buy insurance across state lines (from states with fewer mandates) we would reduce the number of uninsured by 25% or more.
As for the autism mandate, estimates range from a 1 to 1.5% increase (PHC4) in current premiums to a 2 to 6% increase (Insurance Federation) in premiums.
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