In the aftermath of the health care reform summit, it is obvious the two sides are at an impasse, and differences across the isle will never be resolved. Essentially congressional Republicans said, "Let's just pass what we can all agree upon." The Democrats claim, "We cannot take an incremental approach. All the problems are integrated. We have to do everything all at once."
FULL STORY
Congressional Democrats see only one way out: government must seize control of everything. This is the antithesis of the conservative vision that believes the government caused the problem in the first place, and in order to solve the problem, government must release control, allow the free market to flourish and let competition force prices down. To insure the millions of uninsured, the free market vision brings the uninsured into the system with lower prices. As premiums drop, more of the uninsured on the margins enter the market becoming insured consumers.
But the free market also has another effect. As premiums drop, so do prices of health care. As prices drop, even those without health insurance will find out-of-pocket health care more affordable. Before World War II nearly all Americans paid for health care out of pocket. Today, all Americans pay for cosmetic surgery out of pocket.
Cosmetic surgery is the only medical field in which relative prices have gone down in the past twenty years. Why? First, because cosmetic surgeries are not insurable procedures, and therefore not subject to inflationary pressures of third party payments. Second, because cosmetic surgery is not as strictly regulated as other life-saving procedures, such as oncology or open heart surgery. Government regulation adds exponential inflationary costs to any good or service.
Adding more government control to our health care system is like feeding double cheeseburgers and french fries to a cardiac patient--it will only cause prices to rise higher. But congressional Democrats and ObamaCare proponents are unable to foresee this. They are blinded by loathing of insurance company profits and thus become blind to the reality that insurance premiums rise due to the collusion of government and private industry. For example, nationwide there are 1300 health insurance providers, but in some states, only a handful are licensed to provide protection. Less competition permits health insurers to fix prices.
Our Democrat legislators are unable to visualize this. They are incapable of visualizing a system in which releasing government control benefits the consumer with lower prices. Instead, their system of draconian government controls simply fuels the fire of upward pressure on prices, which does not solve the problem, but rather exacerbates it for the rest of us to afford the health care we can ill-afford already.
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