Click here if you would like to view a one hour webcast filmed at the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington DC on Wednesday. Three panelists talking about state health reform — me, Alice Burton of the State Initiatives program at Academy Health, and Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation. Alice consults with state officials seeking to expand insurance coverage and has to be scrupulous not to take sides. Unlike Stuart and me.
Stuart Butler hails from Great Britain — where they insure everyone and have better health outcomes than we do for less than half the cost of what we spend on health care. For about 25 years, he has been banging the drum to abandon employer sponsored health insurance in favor of individual tax credits where everyone buys on their own and individual mandates. He’s a nice guy, quite smart, and a good explainer of his positions. You may see him around the channels next week bucking up President Bush’s new health agenda coming in the State of the Union.
Stuart’s especially disrespectful of employer mandates. In one of our best exchanges, he says (I paraphrase): backers of employer mandates make it seem like it’s a free lunch. It’s not. When you do it, you force changes in employer behavior such as cutting wages and hours, raising prices, and cutting back on investments.
After he finished, I said (I paraphase): absolutely true, and you, Stuart, need also to recognize that when employers like Friendly’s Ice Cream screw their workers by cutting their health benefits, that also creates important side effects — individuals in debt and bankruptcy, hospitals with uncollectable bills and costs they must shift onto others, and businesses who have to pay higher premiums to pay for businesses that don’t cover.
If you watch it, let me know what you think…
