Must-See: American Public Square: Dinner at the Square: A Dose of Reality: A Medicaid Status Report
Must-See: Alas! I seem to be missing the Kathleen Sibelius panel on Medicaid expansion this evening at UMKC:
: Dinner at the Square: A Dose of Reality: A Medicaid Status Report
But I do have a question that I would like to ask panelist Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute. I would greatly appreciate it if somebody else would ask the question–and get an answer:
Mr. Cannon: You said that:
- RomneyCare had begun a process of adverse-selection meltdown in Massachusetts that was “well underway”,
- people would not sign up for ObamaCare in large numbers,
- people who signed up for ObamaCare would not pay their premiums,
- ObamaCare would in fact reduce private insurance coverage by making it riskless for healthy people to drop insurance,
- a federal exchange was a profoundly different legal object than a state exchange, even though ObamaCare commanded Secretary Sibelius to establish “such exchange” when a state that did not establish one,
- states that did not expand
MedicareMedicaid would have healthier state budgets than those who did, and - I could go on for quite a while…
I have counted more than a dozen predictions you have made ever since, back in 2005, Mitt Romney set us on our current health-policy path. All of yours have gone wrong. None of yours have gone right.
How has the fact that you have been so wrong about so much over the past decade changed your thinking about how health insurance markets work, and about health policy?
What has this episode taught you about your milieu–about think-tanks controlled by billionaires with strong ideological commitments, and surrounded by flatterers who assure them they are right about everything? And what has this episode taught you about yourself and your peers who draw their paychecks from such think-tanks?