The “ER” Health Plan?

Even George Clooney can’t save what some in the press have nicknamed “The Republican E. R. Plan.” (This post is a follow-up to one I wrote yesterday about McCain’s top health care advisor, John Goodman, who thinks that access to the ER is the same thing as having health insurance.)

For someone with a PhD in economics, you would think that Goodman realizes that the emergency department is the most expensive way to access health care in this country. Moreover, treatment for a disease is almost always more expensive at later stages, and is definitely more expensive than preventing the disease in the first place. I can’t imagine telling diabetics to just sit tight and come to the ER when they have a crisis — that’s taking a problem that can be managed with relatively little expense if managed regularly and turning into a single episode of care that could cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Here’s exactly what was said:

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American — even illegal aliens — as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”

Yeah, problem solved, all right.  Thanks for making the world’s least efficient, most inequitable health care system even more expensive and dysfunctional. Or, as Steve Benen of CBS news puts it:

“In other words, the man responsible for crafting McCain’s healthcare policy effectively described the most inefficient system of socialized medicine ever devised.”