Monday, August 8, 2011

Getting some federalism back into education policy

Posted by dkuehn at 12:08 PM
They'll start issuing waivers for No Child Left Behind in September. Good news. Now let's incorporate a little federalism into health reform.

7 comments:

  1. Gary GunnelsAugust 8, 2011 at 12:59 PM

    The Obama administration will shortly take over seventeen of the state health care exchanges. I always figured that was the purpose of the law to start with; nationalize healthcare decisions.

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  2. PortoflioAugust 8, 2011 at 6:32 PM

    Even if we disagree with it, what serious proposals did the Republicans ever come up with?

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  3. Gary GunnelsAugust 8, 2011 at 6:40 PM

    Since I'm not a Republican, why should I care?

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  4. Gary GunnelsAugust 8, 2011 at 7:18 PM

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KubADIr5vo&feature=player_embedded

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  5. PortoflioAugust 8, 2011 at 11:25 PM

    "Since I'm not a Republican, why should I care? "

    Because we unfortunately live under a two party system and have to deal with the consequences of their decisions. Even though I find myself ideologically opposed to the Democrats a fair number of times, they're much better compared to the Republicans who have been swept up by populism. The fact that they couldn't even come up with a semi-sensible policy solution(despite their rhetoric) during the healthcare debate only goes to illustrate that. More broadly speaking, it's pathetic that so much time was spent on it in the first place. I'm going to have to somewhat agree with Dan, it's not my ideal, but means testing is a pretty straightforward way to get cost under control quickly.

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  6. Gary GunnelsAugust 9, 2011 at 3:04 PM

    Octahedron,

    The primary means of controlling costs by the Obama administration is not means testing; it is price controls. Good luck with that.

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  7. Gary GunnelsAugust 9, 2011 at 3:19 PM

    Octahedron,

    The fundamental problem is that no one (within the current mix of actors) knows how to decrease healthcare costs: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2011/July/13/Rising-Health-Care-Curve-Obama-fiscal-times.aspx

    I can think of some ways to control healthcare costs - (a) make lots of procedures the bailiwick of someone else besides doctors and dentists; (b) get rid of the efficacy requirement that the FDA currently works under; (c) get rid a lot of the gatekeepers we currently have in health care; (d) allow legally paid donations of things other than plasma; (e) have medicare/medicaid pay patients directly so that they can buy cancer drugs and do it in such a way that it incentivizes patients to shop around; (f) cut back on the number of requirements of coverage that insurance companies must provide and allow insurance companies to provide a wider scope of packages besides the typical three tiers that is required by law today; etc. These are all relatively minor reforms that would lead to huge cost savings and they wouldn't require some hail mary pass like IPAB to boot.

    ReplyDelete

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