Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Are We Even Bothering to Think Anymore?

60 Minutes this week did a hit piece on Obamacare.
They followed a family where the husband was diagnosed with cancer and the family went broke when they went to a hospital in Texas (even though they were from Ohio.) And the hospital charged them all sorts of crazy prices and they're in enormous debt.

The thing mentioned in passing is that all happened before the ACA. But then Leslie Stahl points out that even though the family is on Medicaid now, they would have had the same problem because Texas doesn't have a Medicaid reciprocity agreement with Ohio.
So why wouldn't they go to Kessler instead? If the same man were diagnosed now then he could.
The point of the whole piece was that the ACA does not do anything about controlling prices of health-care. This is a bit of intellectual sleight-of-hand. No, the government does not negotiate prices. Yes, everyone has private insurance.
The insurance companies as, you know, part of the "free market" may negotiate with health-care providers all they want. The 60 Minutes piece even briefly mentioned that fact pointing out that insurers would never have paid what the Texas hospital charged that family.
At this point they may as well put Lara Logan back on to talk about Benghazi.


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