Trumpcare Needs Milton Friedman
Trumpcare has focused exclusively on eliminating mandates, reducing tax credits, and rolling back Medicaid expansion to the working poor. But, the consequences of this are an estimated 24 Million people dropping coverage and huge increases in premiums for those who wish to remain covered.
Trumpcare is up for a vote in the House of Representatives and its passage very much in doubt despite a 24 vote majority held by Republicans. Even it passes the House, its chances of passage in the Senate are deemed slim seemingly by design.
To appeal to moderates, Trumpcare needs to preserve Obamacare’s affordability, keep the Medicaid expansion, while at the same find a way to reduce overall budget costs in the order of 20%. To appeal to conservatives, Trumpcare must reduce overall costs in the order of 20% plus eliminate mandates which was a source of affordability by providing cross subsidies between health-risk cohorts.
The only way we see out of this conundrum is a move to consumer-directed healthcare espoused by the late economist Milton Friedman.
While Friedman is probably better known for his voucher plan for schools, he had similar ideas espoused in a paper written in 2001 called “How to Cure Healthcare.” A condensed version has been made available online by the conservative think tank The Hoover Institute.
Friedman’s big idea in 2001 was this:
“Two simple observations are key to explaining both the high level of spending on medical care and the dissatisfaction with that spending. The first is that most payments to physicians or hospitals or other caregivers for medical care are made not by the patient but by a third party — an insurance company or employer or governmental body. The second is that nobody spends somebody else’s money as wisely or as frugally as he spends his own.”
Friedman was no knee-jerk conservative. He made it clear that Federal subsidies to the uninsured was a fairness issue and not some handout. This is because of the unfairness of the current system of giving tax exemptions only to employer-provided medical insurance.
When Friedman wrote his healthcare piece in 2001, the estimate of this tax shelter was $100 Billion. Today, The Brookings Institute estimates this selective subsidy at $261 Billion.
When Friedman wrote this piece in 2001, consumer-directed healthcare with payments made from a Health Savings Account (HSA) was a new idea. He envisioned HSAs eventually as centerpiece of both Medicare and Medicaid through a combination of Federal contributions deposited in HSAs to cover normal expenses supplemented by Federal government single payer, high-deductible catastrophic insurance.
There have been three trends since Friedman’s 2001 article that have made consumer-directed health care so much more a viable option today. Trumpcare should take advantage of these trends.
The first trend — a negative one — is the dearth of Federal Trade Commission challenges to anti-competitive mergers among healthcare insurers and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). It is ludicrous today to think that insurance companies and PBMs compete for customers today by working hard to hold down healthcare costs and associated premiums. We have written extensively about the bilateral oligopolies in the drug supply chain and the misaligned PBM business model.
The second trend — a positive one — is the extent to which the Internet, payments technology, and mobile phones have lowered transactions costs — price discovery, evaluation of treatment options, patient advocacy, and payments — associated with the purchase of healthcare. This includes the substitution of the costly paperwork that used to plague HSAs with HSA-linked debit and credit cards programmed to pay only for SKUs certified as reimbursable healthcare costs.
Interestingly, it was Friedman’s colleague at the University of Chicago, the late Ronald Coase, that had the big idea that transactions costs could have profound effects on markets and institutions.
Notice, we said nothing about the need for government mandates for healthcare price transparency similar to the recent bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress.
We have no doubt, as would have Friedman, that consumer-directed healthcare would create such an explosion in provider price transparency as to make regulation unnecessary.
Recently, the U.S. House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz admonished people who complained about increased premiums under Trumpcare. He said they should get their priorities straight and cut back on luxuries like iPhones.
If Trumpcare were consumer-directed, this admonishment would be ironic because smartphones would pay for themselves by helping consumers hold down costs. For example, it is a sure thing that there would be app-based patient advocate services you could summon on a moment’s notice upon being admitted to a hospital. All bills would be run through the service. Consultants would be available 24/7 to review proposed treatments.
Indeed, we would argue that under consumer-directed healthcare, a portion of a smartphone’s expense should be a deductible.
The third trend — a positive one — is the exponential growth in venture-capital funded startups focused on healthcare price discovery, cash-only drop-in clinics, labs test for early detection of cancer, low cost step-therapies, etc. All of these services are in a symbiotic relation with consumer-directed healthcare.
We would like to mention just two of the many healthcare startups out there with services focused on enhancing consumer-directed healthcare. Both would thrive if Trumpcare were based on Milton Friedman’s ideas.
One is a basic healthcare clinic just starting up in San Francisco called Forward. The innovation here is an out-of-pocket only subscription business model of $1,800 a year billed annually. They do not accept insurance. This type of clinic is made-to-order for consumer-directed healthcare.
The other startup we want to mention is the crowd-sourced price discovery website Clear Health Costs. Here is just one screenshot to give you some idea of its value to consumer-directed healthcare.
Again these are just two of the hundreds of healthcare startups that would make consumer-directed healthcare a viable alternative to Trumpcare as initially designed.
We conclude below with a table outlining how Obamacare, Trumpcare, and Trumpcare + Milton Friedman would address major issues:
