Senator Obama's health care plan involves a large dose of government control and regulation. He blames the health care mess on the failures of the market and business and seeks to remedy it with more government. This is a classic socialist position. The business is the sole problem and government must step in to solve it. He is so committed to his ideology that he fails to see that the government itself is the primary cause of the health care crisis. First, the government indirectly limits the number of doctors that can practice in the United States through strict residency requirements and limiting the number of accredited medical schools. The American Medical Association, other accreditation organizations, and the government perform this role. A shortage of doctors coupled with an increased demand for medical care means high salaries for doctors. The government and these organizations claim they are protecting the consumers from substandard health care, but even safety has a high economic cost at some point, a cost that often cannot be justified. There is a point when even substandard health care is better than no health care. Limiting the number of doctors practicing in the United States can harm people, when they are unable to access affordable health care. Second, the government provides too many people free health care. What do people tend to do with something they receive for free? They use it more often than if they had to pay for it. They also tend to take less responsibility for their own personal health decisions. Surprisingly, people tend to make better decisions in their lives if they must pay for the consequences of their decisions. I suspect that this shortage of health care started to show up around the same time that the federal government created Medicare in the 1960s. The government is the problem with health care. Anytime the government creates programs that shield a person from suffering the consequences of their poor choices, society as a whole suffers and the inevitable decline of the society begins. Signs of this decline include more crime and more economic distress.
WHAT BARACK SAYS: Obama will sign a universal health care plan into law by the end of his first term in office. His plan will provide affordable, quality health care coverage for every American.
WHAT HE FAILS TO SEE: It is economically impossible to provide affordable, quality health care to all if you fail to increase the number of health care professionals (the supply of health care) and/or decrease the demand for health care. Providing more people access to health care for below cost will only create more shortages, rationing of health care, increased prices, and declining quality. The only way to solve this government-created health care crisis is to make people accountable for their poor health care choices. Interestingly, this solution requires no more government spending, control, or regulation. In fact, it would mean that the government would spend less and tax less.
WHAT BARACK SAYS: Health insurance premiums have risen four times faster than wages over the past six years.
WHAT HE FAILS TO SEE: Why is this? Could it be because more Americans are living unhealthy lifestyles than six years ago? Could it be because more Americans are receiving free or subsidized health care from the government? Perhaps these people are using more than their fair share of health care. Could it be that private health insurance must make up for the poor reimbursement rates that the government gives to health care providers under Medicare (someone has to make up the difference)? The answer of course is all of the above and more, yet there is never a simple acknowledgement that the health care problem is really a personal lifestyle problem exacerbated by government restriction and control of the supply of health care. It's not due to a lack of money being spent on health care. It's a simple problem of limited supply created by the government and an increasing demand created by the government. But Barack's plan fails to acknowledge or see this.
WHAT BARACK SAYS: The Obama plan will create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals who wish to purchase a private insurance plan. The Exchange will act as a watchdog group and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible. Insurers would have to issue every applicant a policy, and charge fair and stable premiums that will not depend on how healthy you are. The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and have the same standards for quality and efficiency. The Exchange would evaluate plans and make the differences among the plans, including cost of services, public.
WHAT IT MEANS: Why do we need the government's help in choosing a health care plan? Why do we need the government watching to ensure fairness? If we don't like what we get for health insurance, can't we just go elsewhere? Why would we want an insurance system that does not penalize folks who choose to live unhealthy lifestyles? You and I will have to pay for their unhealthy choices. The government can dictate all it wants. It proclaim throughout the land that all health care plans must be as generous as the government's plan, but when push comes to shove, if there is not enough supply of health care and the demand has increased because the insurance plans are forced to cover more, we won't get better health care. We'll get worse health care. Why do we need reforms in private health care? If anything, the system that needs reform is public health care. Why do we need an exchange or the government to evaluate health care plans? It is a backdoor attempt to control the whole market for health insurance. Name one program that the government runs well. Social security will be bankrupt in less than a decade. Congress has spent the $2 trillion surplus. Medicare will be insolvent soon. The federal budget is in shambles. If Barack seriously thinks the government is capable of managing health care, he is seriously delusional, but then again, aren't all socialists delusional or in some state of denial at the true costs and suffering created by socialism and its welfare state?
WHAT BARACK SAYS: Obama will require hospitals and providers to collect and publicly report measures of health care costs and quality, including data on preventable medical errors, nurse staffing ratios, hospital-acquired infections, and disparities in care. Health plans will also be required to disclose the percentage of premiums that go to patient care as opposed to administrative costs.
WHAT IT MEANS: Instead of spending money on patients and health care, hospitals and providers will have to spend more money on reports that go to the federal government. How is generating a report and sending it to some bureaucrat in Washington that has very little medical or business experience going to increase the efficiency of health care? This is typical big government regulation. It is wasteful. It is unnecessary, but it is typical Washington.
In summary, Senator Obama seeks to solve the problem of health care by giving government more control over health care even though government is responsible for both the limiting the supply of health care while at the same time increasing the demand of health care. This is so typical of big government and its advocates. They create a crisis through poor government policies and legislation and then seek to fix the problem they have created by blaming business and offering to fix it through tighter control and regulation. They rail against monopolies, yet seek to create a monopoly of health care through crazy ideas such as health care exchanges where the government controls health care. The health care crisis is a government-created crisis and a personal choice decision. The government provides incentives to make poor health decisions and people naturally make those poor decisions. The only way to fix this crisis is to remove the incentives so that people feel the consequences of their poor decisions. Barack's solution will only make the crisis worse. But then again, socialists care little about the economic havoc they cause because their primary need is to stroke their egos by directing the poor, stupid masses.