The Truth @ The Spin Factor

Ron Paul on McCain and Obama

From an interview with Kieran Chetry with CNN:

Chetry: Congressman, have you heard anything from either of the presidential candidates about their economic plans that you think are good things that need to be implemented?

Paul: No, not really, but it’s tough to find out the good parts. I do think that John McCain has a better approach to the medical problem, and Obama has a better approach to trying to save some money by coming home from Iraq. We’re spending $10 billion a month over there. We could save a lot of money, and that money should be spent back here. Quite frankly, how can we trust anybody? When it comes to the bailout, how do they differ? Both McCain and Obama come rushing back to Washington and vote for the bailout.

From a libertarian point of view, it is still difficult to be entirely happy with either result. In a way, McCain results in little change which means we’ll know what to expect, more war and probable economic problems.

Obama results in change; but questionable change. Bringing the troops home is an excellent change. However,  some of the points in his Obama-Biden Health Care Plan are questionable. On the upside, he realizes that private healthcare is less wasteful. On the downside, he wants to subsidize private healthcare, which would obviously make private healthcare less private and more public.

One of the upsides of Obama’s plan is the following:

(1) INVEST IN ELECTRONIC HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS. Most medical records are still stored on paper, which makes them difficult to use to coordinate care, measure quality, or reduce medical errors. Processing paper claims also costs twice as much as processing electronic claims. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad doption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records. They will also phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT and commit the necessary federal resources to make it happen. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will ensure that these systems are developed in coordination with providers and frontline workers, including those in rural and underserved areas. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will ensure that patients’ privacy is protected. A study by the Rand Corporation found that if most hospitals and doctors offices adopted electronic health records, up to $77 billion of savings would be realized each year through improvements such as reduced hospital stays, avoidance of duplicative and unnecessary testing, more appropriate drug utilization, and other efficiencies.

The study in reference was published by Rand Corporation. The only major obstacle is the rate of adoption. I suspect part of the obstacle to adoption is current policy and available funds on on side, but also the inability to train providers in the public sector, either because they are resistant to electronic methods or because the advantages are mitigated if your organization is the only one using them.

Where providers are resistant due to psychological reasons (cyberphobia) and having to lay-off older generations, the Electronic Health and Information Technology proposal would yield small benefits even in the long run.

Where the deterrent to Health Information Technology improvements is compatibility and connectivity, this program would yield major benefits as long as the architecture is reusable and upgradeable.

A better way to introduce this portion of the Obama-Biden plan, would be to offer improvements only where they are needed and where updating systems will not meet resistance for practical reasons. That would reduce the cost to about $3 billion per year instead, and a lot of valuable people wouldn’t have to go through unnecessary training and lay-offs.

Another upside to Obama’s plan is the ability to import medications from developed countries. That’s one freedom-friendly policy, though it has all kinds of consequences for the pharmaceutical industry. An industry which undoubtably benefits from patent laws in the United States, partially at the expense of consumer, but it will begin to feel the intellectual property sting that the music industry is currently fighting. The big difference is that while MP3s are easy to reproduce at home, pharmaceuticals currently are not. On the other hand, foreign governments are quite capable of producing patented medications without permission. At the same time, the pharmaceutical industry cannot afford the moral consequences of denying aid to developing nations. So the pharmaceutical industry will lobby for strong consequences against importing medications from developing nations.

That policy change isn’t likely to make big waves, but it is certainly one step in the right direction. More importantly there is a need to curb the FDA and DEA’s insistence on controlling medications. It is a financial burden to have to visit a doctor every time you need a medication, and there are times when it is plain unnecessary. Saying that this is why we need nationalized health insurance is a circular argument. We could afford more doctor visits if our money wasn’t spent on the administrative costs of processing insurance paperwork.

In other words, health care is more expensive because the government has some unnecessary regulations; but what Obama and Biden are saying is that you shouldn’t worry because the government will pay for the unwanted consequences (higher medical costs) of those regulations. The problem is there because the solution insists on creating it. Or Obama and Biden could tell the FDA and DEA to stop forcing consumers to be dependent on their doctors and nationalized health-insurance. That would save us all a lot of money.

This is, however, a better plan than mandatory health insurance, as Edwards and Clinton wanted to impose.

McCain does propose some interesting solutions when it comes to healthcare:

Reforms To Make Health Insurance Innovative, Portable And Affordable

Health Care Costs: John McCain will reform health care making it easier for individuals and families to obtain insurance. Americans are working harder and longer, yet the amount workers take home in their paychecks is not keeping pace because of rising health care costs. An important part of his plan is to use competition to improve the quality of health insurance with greater variety to match people’s needs, lower prices, and promote portability. Families should be able to purchase health insurance nationwide, across state lines.

Making the Tax Subsidy Fair: By making the tax code more equitable and transparent, John McCain will give every family a refundable tax credit – cash towards insurance – of $5,000 (Individuals receive $2,500). Every family in America, regardless of the source of their insurance or how much they make will get the same help. Families will be able to stay with their current plan, or choose the insurance provider that suits them best and have the money sent directly to the insurance provider.

Making Insurance More Portable: Americans need insurance that follows them from job to job. Too many job decisions today are controlled by a fear of losing health care. Americans want insurance that is still there if they retire early and does not change if they take a few years off to raise the children. John McCain will lead the reform for portable insurance.

It should be noted that Governor Palin was described as a supporter of Ron Paul before she seized the opportunity of accepting a VP position with Senator McCain

Though from Palin’s current interviews, it appears that her job is to stick to McCain’s talking points, which explains why she often sounds confused. For that reason, I don’t know what a President Palin would do, and she doesn’t appear to offer any alternatives to McCain’s war-hungry appetite.

October 22nd, 2008 Posted by eaglescout | 2008 Election, Libertarianism, McCain, Obama, Politics, Ron Paul, Technology | 6 comments