Repairing the Healthcare System:

Stanley Feld M.D., FACP, MACE.

On November 11, 2007, I published the following blog: “Incentives and Mechanism Design.” The authors Leoid Hurwicz, Roger Meyerson and Eric Maskin were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for the concept in 2007.

http://stanfeld.com/?s=mechanism+design

I suspect few politicians know about Mechanism Design in 2019. I am certain Bernie Sanders and the “Medicare for All” crowd do not know anything about Mechanical Design.

In my last blog, I described how politicians and the mainstream media use Confirmation Bias to try to put the government in control of healthcare against the will and welfare of the public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

I think Donald Trump either studied the use of Mechanism Design and its mechanics or he intuitively uses its principles in his thinking.

Mechanism Design is a concept that tries to put science into social science. It mathematically evaluates vested interests of stakeholders in order to eliminate confirmation bias and line up all the stakeholders’ vested interests for the greatest good. It assumes all the stakeholders have expressed their vested interests truthfully.

http://stanfeld.com/please-read-between-the-lines/

The Democrats want to hold onto (fix) Obamacare. However, the Democrats understand Obamacare is not viable in its present form. I believe “Medicare for All” with central government control of healthcare will be a disaster as it has been in most single party payer systems.

I do not believe Obamacare is fixable. I believe President Obama and the Democrats believed that Obamacare would fail. Then the nation would beg either his public option or Medicare for All.

I think President Obama believes “Medicare for All” and the total government control of healthcare is the ideological solution to the problems in our healthcare system.

His confirmation bias overrules all of the examples of “Medicare for All” failed examples at home (Vermont California and Colorado), as well as Denmark, Sweden, England, and France.

In 2017, the Republicans with a slim majority in the Senate refused to repeal Obamacare. Whether the Republican failure to repeal Obamacare was because of intramural revenge or ideology is best to question is which system is best for the common good.

If our politicians understood the principles of Mechanism Design and were diligently working for the people who elected them benefit, America would be on the way to “Repairing the Healthcare System.”

Against this backdrop of a hostile Democratic Party, in control of the House of Representatives, Donald Trump and his administration is slowing working its way to “Repairing the Healthcare System” using the principals of Mechanism Design.

In November 2007, pre the Obama administration, I wrote:

Last month the Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to Leoid Hurwicz, Roger Meyerson and Eric Maskin. They were awarded the Nobel Prize for developing the economic theory of “Mechanism Design.” My first reaction was “what is that?”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design

After some research, I discovered the power of Mechanism Design. It is a brilliant economic theory that could solve many economic problems. Mechanism Design applied to our healthcare system could solve the healthcare systems problems.

What is it? “In economics, mechanism design is the art and science of designing rules of a game to achieve a specific outcome, even though each participant may be self-interested. This is done by setting up a structure in which each player has an incentive to behave as the designer intends. The game is then said to implement the desired outcome. The strength of such a result depends on the solution concept used in the game. It is related to metagame theory, which is the theory of games the play of which consists of developing the rules of another game.

Mechanism designers commonly try to achieve the following basic outcomes: truthfulness, individual rationality, budget balance, and social welfare. However, it is impossible to guarantee optimal results for all four outcomes simultaneously in many situations, particularly in markets where buyers can also be sellers [1], thus significant research in mechanism design involves making trade-offs between these qualities. Other desirable criteria that may be achieved include fairness (minimizing variance between participants' utilities), maximizing the auction holder's revenue, and Pareto efficiency. More advanced mechanisms sometimes attempt to resist harmful coalitions of players.”

Lodi Hurwitz contributed to the idea of incentive compatibility. His point is the way to get as close to the most efficient economic outcomes is to design a mechanism in which everyone does best for themselves. He says this can be achieved by sharing information truthfully (Price Transparency). It is easy to understand that some people can do better than others by not sharing information or lying.

If everyone’s incentives are aligned, you have a much more efficient economic system. An example is defense contracting. If you agree to pay on a cost-plus basis you have created an incentive for the contractor to be inefficient. If you agree to pay a fixed price you can come close to an efficient price if you have all the truthful information. If you do not you have incentives aligned and truthful information you create the incentive to be overcharged. Most people can do better by not sharing truthful information. If the rules of the game require truthful information you can get close to an efficient market-driven solution.

The concept of Pareto efficiency means no one can be made better off without someone becoming worse off. Therefore, the incentive is to maintain your dominance by not being truthful at the expense of others. Hurwicz observed as others had that the dispersion of information was at the heart of the failure of a planned economy. He observed that there was a lack of incentive for people to share their information with the government truthfully. The free market mechanism was far less afflicted than central planning bureaucracy by such incentive problems. The free market economy was by no means immune to this defect. He observed that the free market economy can get us closer than central planning to incentive compatibility because the end consumer can drive the discovery of truthful information.

The customer creating rules of engagement in a market-driven economy can get you closer to the ideal of Mechanism Design. Since the customer determines success of an enterprise by creating demand in a transparent environment, they can get closer to incentive efficiency. They create the rules of the game for compatible incentive.

Roger Meyerson contributed the revelation principle, a mathematical model that simplifies the calculation to create the most efficient rules of the game. The mathematical model gets people to reveal their truthful private information leading to aligned incentives.

Eric Maskin’s breakthrough was in perfecting Mechanism Design with his “implementation theory.” His theory clarifies how to design mechanisms that heighten incentive alignment and efficiency.

How does Mechanism Design relate to the Repair of The Healthcare System? We have to set the rules of the games so that we align all the stakeholders’ incentives without one stakeholder takes advantage of another. The insurance industry is taking advantage of the patients, doctors and hospital systems. The hospital systems are taking advantage of the patients, doctors and insurance companies. Doctors are taking advantage of the insurance companies, hospital systems, patients and the government. The government is taking advantage of the hospital systems, the doctors and the patients. Employers who pay the insurance bills for their employees are taken advantage of by the insurance companies. The drug companies are taking advantage of patients and unduly influencing physicians.

In our healthcare system, everyone is pursuing his vested interest in a game that has rules that do not lead to “incentive compatibility.”

Some politicians think central planning will straighten out the rules. Historically, central planning has not worked. The winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics have proven this fact.

I believe consumers can fix the rules of the game so that all the incentives are compatible. Consumers have to have incentives to force politicians to fix the rules of the healthcare game. Consumer-driven healthcare system will achieve the alignment (incentive compatibility) using the ideal medical saving account.

Twelve years have passed since 2007. America has not gotten closer to the solution to Repair the Healthcare System even though the solution is staring us in our eyes.

www. stanfeld.com

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.  

Copywrite 2006-2019

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Stanley Feld M.D., FACP, MACE

Most of us have trained ourselves to speed read the daily newspaper. I have asked my readers to read between the lines of the New York Times’ healthcare articles. Most articles are not factual or half-truths. The articles are an opinion and express a confirmation bias.

“Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses while giving disproportionately less attention to information that contradicts it.^[32] The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias#Confirmation_bias

Often, the application of confirmation bias is subtle. During speed reading, one’s opinion can be influenced by the presentation of confirmation bias. The bias is interpreted as fact because the “media is the message.”

The traditional media is losing its influence on our culture because peoples are realizing it is feeding us a confirmation bias that does not comport with reality.

The development of ideological manipulation is a science unto its own. The print media and television media are its masters. The traditional mainstream media leans towards the progressive left.

Conclusions should be backed by facts and not by opinion. All sides of an opinion should be presented. A huge problem is social science is imperfect. It does not use scientific principles utilizing reproducible double-blind studies.

Much of the traditional media sound like an echo chamber. It repeats the same soundbites over and over again rather than studying all the facts and reaching a logical conclusion.

In Carl Sandberg’s book, “The Prairie Years’ he said, If you tell a lie it over and over again it eventually becomes the truth.” If the confirmation bias is wrong, the public pays the price to correct it down the line.

Charles Blahous, a former Social Security and Medicare public trustee, has estimated that under Bernie Sanders’ plan of “Medicare for All”, the government could pay about 40 percent less than what private insurers now pay for medical care.

There are large discrepancies in these payments among experts. It has been estimated that there will be a 32.2 trillion-dollar deficit in a “Medicare for All” program over a ten-year period.

I would not believe the saving predicted by Chares Blahous. He was involved in creating a large deficit in our seniors’ Medicare program with the implication that Medicare would be financially viable.

It is predicted by a pro “Medicare for All” advocates, if this version of “Medicare for All” worked as planned, everybody would be insured, health care usage would rise sharply because it would be free without even a co-payment, and America would spend less overall on health care.

The math does not prove this theory. It does appeal to the notion that free is good.

This is a Democratic party pipedream to get more votes. I hope Americans do not fall for this false promise. The Democratic party has done this to taxpaying citizens of all ethnic groups over and over again in the past.

The New York Times has become a propaganda machine for progressives.

On March 3, 2019, David Brooks’ article headline washttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/opinion/medicare-for-all.html?searchResultPosition=1

David Brooks really didn’t mean it. He is just setting the reader up in order to express his confirmation bias.

“The Brits and Canadians I know certainly love their single-payer health care systems. If one of their politicians suggested they should switch to the American health care model, they’d throw him out the window.”

The reality is 80% of Brits and Canadian are not sick and do not interact with their healthcare system.

However, they have a false sense of security that they have good healthcare insurance. When they get sick or need emergency specialty care they realize the system is less than they thought it was. Both Canada and Britain have provider shortages, lack of access to care, long appointment waiting times and large financial deficits.

The defects in their healthcare systems can be followed in the local newspaper and not in the government’s press releases.

David Brooks goes on trying to convince us that “Medicare for All” is a good idea. Progressives have been telling us this since 1935 when Wilber Mills tried to ram a single party payer system down America’s throat in the midst of the great depression.

It didn’t work then, and I hope Americans do not fall for it now.

David Brooks says; “So single-payer health care, or in our case “Medicare for all,” is worth taking seriously.”

” I’ve just never understood how we get from here to there, how we transition from our current system to the one Bernie Sanders has proposed and Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and others have endorsed.”

He implies he doesn’t understand how it could work but says a lot of top-flight politicians have endorsed it. Therefore, they know more than he does.

“Despite differences between individual proposals, the broad outlines of Medicare for All are easy to grasp.”

“We’d take the money we’re spending on private health insurance and private health care, and we’d shift it over to the federal government through higher taxes in some form.”

I cannot think of a government-run agency that runs efficiently, without a large bureaucracy, red tape, or corruption. Inefficiency and corruption mean waste and higher cost.

“Since health care would be a public monopoly, the government could set prices and force health care providers to accept current Medicare payment rates.”

Price fixing has never worked. It leads to corruption

Medicare reimburses hospitals at 87 percent of costs while private insurance reimburses at 145 percent of costs.

The important question should be, why would the insurance companies pay a 58% premium when the healthcare insurance industry knows exactly what Medicare pays? The healthcare insurance industry knows exactly what the government pays because it does the administrative services for the government.

The answer is the healthcare insurance companies are competing with each other for providers, hospitals and patients.

On April 21, 2019, a New York Times headline read: “Hospitals Stand to Lose Billions Under ‘Medicare for All’

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/health/medicare-for-all-hospitals.html

A reaction by a reader is who cares if hospitals lose billions. They have been ripping off consumers forever.

The headline immediately established the enemy. The first two paragraphs of the article confirm the enemy. It also sets up the liberal or independent reader to develop the same confirmation bias the New York Times has.

“For a patient’s knee replacement, Medicare will pay a hospital $17,000. The same hospital can get more than twice as much, or about $37,000, for the same surgery on a patient with private insurance.”

“Or take another example: One hospital would get about $4,200 from Medicare for removing someone’s gallbladder. The same hospital would get $7,400 from commercial insurers.

Yes, this pricing is too high in my opinion for both Medicare and private insurance. However, it is the result of insurance companies lobbying and financial reporting that permits the rise in premiums.

As hospital systems become less efficient, they hire more administrators and increase executive salaries.

Many hospitals say they spend their last penny on excessive overhead. If they cannot raise prices, they claim they would go out of business.

The progressives like Bernie Sanders then chime in with their talking points that the New York Times keeps repeating.

“If Medicare for all abolished private insurance and reduced rates to Medicare levels — at least 40 percent lower, by one estimate — there would most likely be significant changes throughout the health care industry, which makes up 18 percent of the nation’s economy and is one of the nation’s largest employers.”

The propaganda worked. The confirmation bias of “Medicare for All” is solid.

The only problem is, it will not reduce the cost of healthcare. This has been proven over and over again in many countries and in many of our government run agencies.

“The Sanders plan would increase federal spending by about $32.6 trillion over its first 10 years, according to a Mercatus Center study that Charles Blahous led.

This is the same Charles Blahous that said the cost would be 40% less. What does that study do to the confirmation bias the New York Times tried to promote? Which one is fake propaganda?

“Compare that with the Congressional Budget Office’s projection for the entire 2019 fiscal year budget, $4.4 trillion.”

The 32 trillion-dollar deficit over ten years is a fair estimate. The estimate could be correct if one simply examines the Medicare and Medicaid deficits. All we have to recall is Obamacare’s website. It was riddled with inefficiency and was a financial disaster.

Usually, as a result of cost overruns, there is a decrease in access to care. The glaring example is the VA Healthcare System.

“That kind of sticker shock is why a plan for single-payer in Vermont collapsed in 2014 and why Colorado voters overwhelmingly rejected one in 2016.”

“It’s why legislators in California killed a single party payer system In the California plan, the taxes are upfront, the purported savings are down the line.”

All it takes is a little reading between the lines to realize that we are subjected to ideological manipulation. “The media is the message.”

The New York Times is supposed to be “the nation's newspaper of record with all the news that is fit to print.” With the advent of the internet and social media, Americans have more information to decide on what is the truth. People now have the ability to examine multiple sides of an issue.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.  

Copywrite 2006-2019

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