November 2009 Archives

The article, "Home Sick: Another Case Where Work Incentives Matter" shows the difference in the number of sick leaves between the U.S. and workers in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway. The biggest difference here is that workers in those specified European countries stay home much more often than U.S. workers. Here in America, we are on a totally different system, and Casey Mulligan, the author, believes that ours is more effective and refers to the others' system as "sick." His main push is that incentives matter. In these other countries, the sick people are much more likely to stay home from work when sick with paid leave, but the problem that Mulligan points out with that is healthy people are much more likely to stay home claiming they are sick. In our system, many people go to work anyway, because most of us are on a system of a given amount of sick days, and that is all. 

I decided to also read through some of the responses Mulligan got after posting this article. I agreed with one man who said, "Perhaps HE would rather sick workers go to work under threat of losing their jobs rather than risk some free riders staying home illegitimately but his is a value judgment not a cost-benefit analysis." I agree with this, as people are always going to try and "beat the system." Also, as this article points out, these European countries are healthier than Americans by every measure. I believe there are always going to be trade-offs, and it really is a value judgment.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/20/sotu.john.king/index.html?eref=rss_politics&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_allpolitics+%28RSS%3A+Politics%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

I found this article very interesting. I really liked how within the one article it talked about how two typical Americans would feel about healthcare reform on the two different sides of the political spectrum. It was nice not to read an article that was completely one sided but one that let you form your own opinion at the end of the article. It gave the reader real life scenrios that impact typical Americans and then let the reader take from it whatever they pleased. I think sometimes we are fed to much from the media just telling us one side of the healthcare issue,whether that be the Conservative side or the Liberal side, but what we really need to hear is both sides. Without seeing both sides of an arguement there is no way any sensible person can come to their own conculsion. I think this is why so many Americans are split on this healthcare issue.

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/11/16/breast-self-examinations-whats-wrong-with-them/

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/11/18/political-fallout-from-the-mammogram-maelstrom/

The first entry in the Wall Street Journal Health Blog talks about one of the new reccomendations from the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force that women no longer need to do self breast examaniations in awareness of breast cancer. The second talks about the other new regulation they set out, that women should wait until 50 years old for their first mammogram instead of the previously reccommended age of 40.

This announcement comes at an ironic time--when legislators are trying to reform health care. Are the new recommendations out in an attempt to cut costs for the government? I agree with Gary Lyman's comment on the blog, "Gary Lyman of Duke University tells the Health Blog: 'There's really no downside in my opinion" to doing self-exams, which are cheap and have minimal to no risk. '" It doesn't make sense to me to not recommend something that is virtually free unless a woman were to find something suspicious. In addition, I would say that the potential extra incurred costs outweigh the benefits of catching cancer in an early stage. This news worries me that under the new health care system, we may face medical rationing.

The first thing I thought upon reading this was, "wow, what a perfect example of political suicide." We've talked numerous times in class how Medicare is a very well respected and popular program here in the US. I previously could only imagine Medicare being expanded through increasing the DRGs, especially after Dr. Rud explained how hospitals are having a hard time making money off of Medicare and Medicaid patients. I would have thought the government would be more inclined to increase DRGs so as not to reduce quality coverage or access to care for senior citizens. In my opinion, taking from the old and giving to the poor IS NOT healthcare reform. It's dodging the issue of making healthcare affordable, not solving it. I'm disappointed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/14/AR2009111402597.html?hpid=topnews

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/10/other-public-option_22.html

                In Tom Schaller's blog titled "The Other Public Option", he discusses the government's defense sector as another option. The military is pressed to meet quotas, so in return they offer several benefits such as health care to individuals that sign up to enter the army. Where he goes on to provide examples of individuals who have joined the army to help support their families. One man ends up joining the army because his wife had cancer and he needed health care insurance to help pay for his wife's many medical treatments to help save her life.  And Schaller continues to support his claim by providing data of increased numbers enrolling in the US army along with the reduced requirements to join the army.

While I think this blog makes an excellent argument I am not so convinced that every American without health care is running to join the army. I agree that there needs to be a low cost government provided health care options for individuals in whom their jobs do not provide healthcare (often small businesses, or people who work for themselves). But not every individual is simply going to walk up and sign themselves up for the army because they do not have health care. He claims as of right now that is the only way to get "public option" health care offered by the government.  Yet the government does offer many other available services for individuals without health care, they just require a few more restrictions and are harder to obtain.  

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703399204574505423751140690.html

This is an article from the Wall Street Journal. The major claim is that the house bill on health care reform is the worst bill after the New Deal. A couple of things are particularly important to note.

If Pelosi is telling others that she is willing to give up seats in 2010, what is that saying? Does she already expect to lose seats? If the Democrats lose seats in 2010, obviously the public does not approve of what congress has accomplished in the past two years.  That statment makes health care sound like a personal agenda to her.

One of the taxes from the bill includes an 8% increase on payroll taxes for businesses that don't offer health insurance. This concerns me on both sides. If the business is incurring higher costs, that will transfer to higher prices on goods and services. It could also cause businesses to hire less workers, raising the already high unemployment rate.

One of the last comments was that this bill is just a stepping stone that Pelosi is hoping a future congress will take further. It appears that this is just a strategic move for the Democratic Party and that they may not be listening to the public.