To those who claim insurance is immune to market forces, I would suggest that the problem is that it is not. If a grocery store was required to get a certificate of need to open up a new store and the competitors got to make the decision what would likely happen to the price of food. What would happen if an association of grocers could determine who is allowed to sell food? What would happen to the price of your auto insurance of you filed a claim for oil changes and preventative maintenance? What happens to anything when you restrict supply and expand demand?
Read More“Assuming some benevolent government will institute quick and perfect Keynesian business cycle corrections that maintain full employment, or that government provision or regulation will result in ideal outcomes in other markets, leads to unwise policy making—and to public displeasure with the outcomes of government.”
Read MoreBy defying the relationship of health care to basic economics we passed a bill that defied basic economics- the outcome was very predictable. Another example of promising a benefit without paying for it; hiding the cost in a maze of cross subsidies, mandates, proxies and obscure regulations.
Read MoreImagine the compromises when 100 Senators and 435 Representatives bargain to get their piece of the health care allocation in an atmosphere where bitter partisanship rules every issue. In other words what seems to work in Europe is not easily transferable to a radically different political and economic environment. And the complete comparative picture is not as clear as we are led to believe. Maybe we spend more on health care because we want to.
Read Morefrom the WSJ
“But new data shows that mortality rates have also increased, suggesting the policy may contribute each year to 5,400 premature deaths of Medicare patients with serious heart conditions. “
In 2010 during the health care debate Democratic Congressman Jim Marshall (GA- my district) published an article in National Review about increasing consumer pressure on health care. Read Real Health Care Reform- Why America must move away from its third-party-payer…
Read Morefrom The Wall Street Journal, How Democrats Learned to Love Insurance Companies by Ellysia Finley (paywall) The cost for the most popular ObamaCare silver plans will increase 37% on average next year. Democrats and insurers are both blaming soaring premiums on…
Read Morefrom my article in American Thinker a few weeks ago, The fatal attraction of single-payer Reform is seductive. It is like the curvy woman with the soft voice you met at the bar. The next thing you know, you have a boiled…
Read MoreFrom National Review Kevin Williamson writes McHealthcare Deluxe- The Affordable Care Act is a failed political product. There are better and worse ways to fail, and it pays to be conservative when trying out new products, most of which fail, or investing…
Read Morefrom Scott Atlas at The Wall Street Journal, The Health Reform That Hasn’t Been Tried Third, introduce the right incentives into the tax code. Today employees aren’t taxed on the value of their health benefits—and there is no limit to that exclusion.…
Read Morefrom Scott Atlas at The Wall Street Journal, The Health Reform That Hasn’t Been Tried A second tool for motivating patients to consider price is large, liberalized health savings accounts. These tax-sheltered accounts are generally used to pay for the noncatastrophic…
Read Morefrom Scott Atlas at The Wall Street Journal, The Health Reform That Hasn’t Been Tried First, equip consumers to consider prices. Critics always claim this is unrealistic: Are you supposed to shop around from the back of the ambulance? But emergency care…
Read MoreFrom National Review Kevin Williamson writes McHealthcare Deluxe- The Affordable Care Act is a failed political product. Emotionally mature people and highly effective institutions are quick to admit error. The best of them in fact embrace periodic failure as a necessary part…
Read MoreFrom National Review Kevin Williamson writes McHealthcare Deluxe- The Affordable Care Act is a failed political product. But whatever else you can say about the politics of health insurance, it remains the fact that the ACA does not work. Even if it…
Read MoreOne of the greatest advantages of market solutions is not that it always picks better solutions, but that it recognizes failures quicker and better. The opposite happens in government. Self serving bureaucracies institutionalize failures. Instead of admitting failure and redeploying assets into better and different solutions we institutionalize failures and increase their funding.
Read MoreWhy Medicare for All Would Damage our Republic by Jay Cost at National Review This is a very diverse array of policies, but they all exhibit a similar flaw. When the government wishes to accomplish some public purpose that it does…
Read Moreby Henry Oliner The reason ideology is relevant in the health care debate is that at the core of the difficulty is the separation of pragmatic solutions from sound ideological support. Our health care problem is an accumulation of short…
Read MoreThe health insurance controversy is the pragmatic apex of sharply conflicting ideologies and both will not easily coexist. It will take more than the repeal of Obamacare to fix. Obamacare was just a bad response to a history of bad policies. Trying a different bad response will not fix the problem either.
Read Morefrom Kevin Williamson at National Review, Apartment Fires and Health Insurance The problem for health insurance is the same as the problem for condominium sprinklers: The benefits are desirable, but they are not free, and many people, given a choice,…
Read Morefrom The Georgia Public Policy Foundation Friday Facts 7/7/17 Food for thought: A total of 31 states and the District of Columbia expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare. Oren Cass of the Manhattan Institute reports that in 2015, age-adjusted mortality rose and…
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