November 2nd, 2009 by EvanFalchukJD in Better Health Network, Health Policy
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The battle between the states and federal government begins.
Yesterday, Illinois Insurance Director Michael McRaith told an audience that state insurance regulation is “under attack,” but that the states will prevail because they “do it better.”
Following a line of reasoning I highlighted last week, McRaith suggested adding federal regulation onto the existing state system would be duplicative, burdensome and fraught with the potential for conflict. McRaith said that insurance was such a uniquely local business that the states were best suited to regulate it. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*
September 21st, 2009 by DrWes in Better Health Network, Opinion
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Here’s a dumb thought: If you want to save costs on medical devices to the federal government, require a tax fee concessions of $4 billion dollars from the medical device companies to fund a health care overhaul.
Now either that $4 billion will get added to the cost of devices (and the patient/insurer’s tab) or the device companies will decide that they must pay the fee to maintain their current pricing.
Government pressures hospitals and doctors by paying less, so hospitals keep the heat on medical device makers to lower costs so they can make their margins.
It all sounds good, right?
But according to one analyst, it seems device makers would rather pay the fee than make their prices transparent:
But the mechanism for how devices companies might pay matters more than what they pay, according to Morgan Stanley analyst David Lewis. “A ‘flat tax’ is preferable, in our view, to targeted industry fees as our larger concern is the creation of more infrastructure intended to catalyze pricing transparency,” he said.
And so, with the fee, the government pays itself while the medical device prices continue to remain inflated.
Why do the patients always seem to lose with these government-mandated scenarios?
-Wes
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
