Gruber, Cherry-picking His Own Research
Universal coverage is all gain, no pain, according to Jon Gruber, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine:
Increasing consumer spending: In the late 1980s and early 1990s… families that gained insurance coverage… increased their spending on other consumer goods – by an average of about $800 per year in today's dollars.
Eliminating Job Lock: Fear of leaving jobs that come with health insurance for those that do not… reduces job-to-job mobility among the employer-insured by as much as 25%.
Creating a huge jobs program: Shifting the focus of the health care system from specialists to preventive care practitioners… such as… nurse practitioners and registered nurses… could provide a landing spot for workers displaced from other sectors of our economy.
Being better prepared for the "herculean efforts" needed for entitlement reform: The future obligations of the U.S. government for the Medicare program alone, minus any Medicare payroll taxes collected, will be more than $70 trillion – an amount that is seven times that of our national debt.
Is this the same Jon Gruber who estimated that under SCHIP expansion 60% of new enrollees would lose their private health insurance coverage?
It is the very same indivual, Joe. Apparently reverse cherry picking the result you mentioned by forgetting to include it in his article.
The most interesting thing here is the admission that we have a huge unfunded liability in Medicare that needs attention ASAP. This, of course, is denied by the editorial page of the New York Times and by liberal Democrats in Congress,
It will be interesting to see what Obama does about Medicare. I don’t think he mentioned anything during the election about fundamental reform — at least not the kind of reforms the NMCPA writes about.
The term “universal coverage” seems pretty generic, so long as you don’t take it as code for “single payer.” Gruber’s article is pretty vague on that point. When you break it down, most of what he’s saying is tautology.