So it’s death panels all the way down? Now he tells us: Ex-budget director Peter Orszag, denouncing the Ryan Medicare plan, says “the health-care competition tooth fairy” won’t cut medical costs. Hmm. Wasn’t “health-care competition”–specifically, “competition among insurance companies” in new health care exchanges–one of the key features of Obamacare, the system Orszag helped the president ram through Congress? …
P.S.: It’s one thing to argue that competition doesn’t cut costs enough–though even on those grounds Orszag’s column is thin. It’s another to dismiss competition as a “tooth fairy”–to say expenses won’t “come down” at all. I seem to remember Obamacare proponents relying on competition’s positive effects–“lowering prices by 7 to 10 percent”–during the late-2009 debate over a potentially embarrassing CBO report. Seven percent is not a tooth fairy! …
P.P.S.: Orszag’s alternative? He says “the key to keeping costs to a minimum is to encourage providers to offer better, less costly care in complex cases.” Um … needs fleshing out! Some might say that it is not intuitively obvious why better care in complex cases will be less costly–at least not less costly enough in enough cases to outweigh the times when better care will be more costly. …