Current Healthcare Debate

With President Obama and the recent healthcare summit it seems clear that nothing will get done in terms of healthcare. Although, this may seem bad it could be good for several reasons. I had not read the enormous bill is 1,990 pages long filled with 400,000 words. I don’t know about you but I don’t know how any politician has time to read that (I guess that’s what interns and aides are for). The House bill has an estimated cost of $894 billion over a 10-year period. My gut tells me the cost will be more than this but we can put that aside for now.

The problem with healthcare insurance is that it isn’t a consumer driven market. The problem with health insurance is that it covers everything that can happen to an individual which leads people to overuse it. For example, if the cost to go to the doctor is only $30 with insurance then people will continue to go to the doctor whenever they feel sick even if it really isn’t an emergency. One solution for this would be to just have insurance for catastrophic events just as a serious illness, surgery, or cancer. Car insurance works relatively well. Our car insurance doesn’t cover the cost of gasoline rising or allows us to change the color if we don’t like it.

Another serious problem is competition. State mandates don’t allow Americans to buy health insurance across state borders. I really don’t understand the logic behind this. If consumers were allowed to buy health insurance in different states it would bring down the cost of health insurance.

Many people talk about how many people die due to lack of healthcare coverage. A Harvard study, estimated that 45,000 people a year die from this. This is around .00148% of the entire population. More people die from fatal car accidents than die from lack of medical coverage. Why not make the speed limit 5 mph? Clearly, something has to be done about the uninsured. I would be in favor of a voucher system that would allow “qualified” people to get healthcare wherever they choose. This would create competition and force doctors to compete on costs and quality of service.

Speaking of doctors why are we limiting the supply of doctors. I mean why does the American Medical Association have a cartel on who can practice medicine? Why not have a voluntary system of people who want to help other people. We have voluntary associations for other professions.

In a related note why not decriminalize all prescription medication. If someone wants to take 10 Vicodin are they really hurting me? The only problem I could see with this is if there were any externalities (if the drugs cause them to be impaired which led them to hurt someone). I have a feeling many doctors appointments are solely just to get a refill on prescriptions. People have more information than ever in today’s society about how effective drugs are and their side effects. The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) claims that they want to help save lives. If they were so concerned about saving lives why do they block the approval of drugs that could save hundreds if not thousands of lives? People are not as ignorant as government officials believe they are. Decriminalizing drugs would also bring down the cost of drugs as well since they would be sold in many more places. Also more research could be done by scientists which would lead to more breakthroughs and discoveries than currently take place. The problem with healthcare is free markets it’s because of the lack of free markets.