by Greg Blankenship
Today we released the The Medicaid Fix: Improving Access and Quality Without Breaking the Bank. It's linked below.
States have been experimenting with various kinds of health reforms for a couple of years now. We've seen RomneyCare in MA, Dirigo in ME, and Gov. Blagojevich's expansions of Medicaid on the activist government side of the issue, while we've seen more aggressive market oriented approaches by Gov. Sanford in SC and Gov. Bush in FL. And let's not forget Arnold in CA, either.
The dichtomy I'm beginning to see is between the more liberal northern state approach and the Southern market oriented approach. This is good news on the health care front because different states are trying different approaches in addressing health reforms. Some will do better than others and eventually we will see winners and losers in this competition.
If you read the Institute's report, we are placing our bet on the southern market oriented approaches. We see choice and competition as the means by which we get better products and services at lower prices. We also see it as a way to end welfare dependency and -- albeit at the margins -- begin addressing health care inflation to bring it more in line with inflation in the larger economy (recognizing of course that other drivers technology and labor) are still going to cause inflation in this sector.
The press release is here and here is the full report: TheMedicaidFix.pdf (application/pdf Object).
