Today's Op-Eds: Competition among insurers; health reform and hospital cuts; Medicare reimbursement crisis

Does Competition Benefit Health Insurance Subscribers? The New York Times
The effect of the regulation will be to drive many small insurers from the market and thus to reduce competition for health insurance. ... The question is whether a reduction in the number of insurers in a given market area invariably is to the disadvantage of the insured. On this point one's memories of Econ 101 can be quite misleading (Uwe E. Reinhardt, 10/29).

Invoking Health Care Freedom, Sowing Bankruptcy St. Louis Post-Dispatch
We're all for personal responsibility. But half of Missouri households earned less than $47,000 last year. Do those families really want the "right" to pay $7,000 a day for hospital care — $18,000 a day for the unlucky top 5 percent of expensive illnesses (10/28).

Surge Of M.D.s Into Politics Shows Doctors Aren't Fans Of ObamaCare Investors Business Daily
But didn't the AMA endorse ObamaCare? Yes, but the views of these office-seeking doctors suggest how little that endorsement was a reflection of the actual views of the AMA's (dwindling) membership. Indeed, the AMA's endorsement was more likely motivated by a desire to preserve its monopoly over billing codes used for Medicare and other insurance payments than by a desire to reflect the views of its members (Jeffrey H. Anderson and Andy Wickersham, 10/28).

Eliminating Entitlements Is A Misunderstood Concept (Minneapolis-St. Paul) Pioneer Press
To put it bluntly, if you think that Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements or that there are easy reductions in entitlement spending sufficient to close the federal budget deficit, you don't really know the facts…(doing away with entitlement programs) would eliminate Supplemental Security Income for hundreds of thousands of people with Down syndrome, severe spina bifida and other serious disabilities. It would end all Medicaid funding of nursing home bills for hundreds of thousands of the elderly. For thousands of nursing homes across our country, Medicaid is by far the largest source of funding. And it would eliminate all federal student aid (Edward Lotterman, 10/27).

Campaigns Against Health Care Bill Austin American-Statesman
The midterm elections seem to be all about exploiting the down economy and taking aim at those who courageously cast a vote to overhaul an unsustainable system. They should not be targeted and punished. People would do well to remember the fury and acrimony that surrounded the passage of Medicare. … If (the Affordable Care Act is) allowed to stay intact, it may well be as momentous as Medicare (Tony Inglis, 10/28).

Obamacare Hits West Virginia Hospitals The Charleston (W. Va.) Daily Mail
One month ago, the management at Charleston Area Medical Center confirmed that it would reduce in its staff through attrition in an effort to trim its budget. … The combination of a higher patient load and declining revenues is a disaster that comes courtesy of the federal government (10/29).

Medicare "Doc Fix" Ordeal For Physicians Could Worsen If GOP Captures House November 2 Medscape
Republican political comeback next Tuesday will only increase the gridlock in Congress that has prevented it from devising a so-called "doc fix" for the Medicare reimbursement crisis. The crisis will hit home on December 1 when Medicare rates for physicians are scheduled to drop by more than 23%, unless a lame-duck Congress votes after the election to avert it (Robert Lowes, 10/28).

The Founding Fathers Had Medicare Too, Or Something Slate
I've made a point of specifically asking Republicans if they want to vote to restore Medicare funding — no one jumps out and proudly says yes, but no one says no. And so the Tea Party era might begin with a massive vote of confidence in government-run health care (David Weigel, 10/28).

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This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.