Let the Miracle of the Free Market Work For Health Care

We have two problems with our health care delivery system: access and cost. In 2010, ObamaCare was passed to address both problems. Predictably, it failed.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made voting for ObamaCare very simple, instructing her fellow Democrats to “pass the bill so that you can see what’s in it.” All but 34 of them did. Not one Republican voted for ObamaCare.

The American people never did like the Affordable Care Act, especially after the President’s fake-out that we could keep our doctors and insurance plans. Costs have increased even more rapidly, and access to plans and care has become even ‘iffy-er’ as more insurers jump ship every day.

Throughout Obama’s term outnumbered Republican legislators set up “show votes” to signal their desire to repeal ObamaCare. But that talk was cheap when they knew the bills had no chance of getting past Obama’s veto. “There’s nothing we can do about it,” they whimpered, even though they had complete control of the nation’s purse-strings and could have cut off the funding.

So the people did the only thing they could do to get rid of this economy-crushing, freedom-sucking, unsustainable mother-of-all-government-programs. They elected majorities in both houses of Congress and a Republican president who promised to do away with ObamaCare, once and for all. “NO MORE EXCUSES”, they told Congress.

But it seems voting this hot mess out is not nearly as simple as voting it in. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is trying to ram his “ObamaCare Light” plan through Congress. But unlike Pelosi’s sheep, conservative legislators in the Freedom Caucus and Republican Study Group and a few brave senators want to see what’s in it and make it right before they pass the bill.

Ryan’s AHCA plan disguises and leaves in place many of the worst provisions of the ACA. There are so many details that I won’t even try to elaborate here. But I have one overriding concern about Ryan’s plan. It does nothing to reduce the cost of health care, and may have the opposite effect.

Only one thing lowers the cost of any product, and that’s competition. Until consumers make their own health care buying decisions in a competitive free market with transparent pricing, costs will never be reduced.

The GOP plan doubles down on the Medicaid expansion of ObamaCare, continues government subsidies in the form of refundable tax credits (some citizens will get cash back from the government because they pay little or no federal tax), and retains mandates that force individual and employer participation. This distorts the market and makes health care just one more entitlement, edging us ever closer to a single-payer national plan. And it further isolates the end consumer from health care purchasing decisions.

The first step must be the complete repeal of ObamaCare. In 2015 both houses of Congress passed a bill under reconciliation that would fully repeal ObamaCare at a future date. It was, of course, vetoed by President Obama. Why not present the same bill to President Trump? Then let the “invisible hand” of the free market find the appropriate price levels for health care instead of over-prescribing and over-pricing everything by running it through the same big-government machine that pays $700 for a toilet seat. With all the complexity and control of ObamaCare completely out of the picture, Democrats and Republicans would be forced to start fresh with new legislation to protect consumers and provide a humane, and hopefully more efficient, safety net.

Even before ObamaCare the federal government was the biggest purchaser of health care. The worst thing our legislators could do right now is pass a watered-down bill that leaves too much of the nasty old fat in the sausage, hoping to squeeze it out later.

Most of us can take care of ourselves and our families if the government will just get out of the way and let the miracle of the free market work. That would be a big step toward making American great again.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side