GREAT article!
Here are some inconvenient truths we need to beat into the heads of Congress (some of which are already alluded to above):
1. Insurance is a tool for mitigating financial risk; it is NOT a viable mechanism for funding a routine cost of living.
2. Insurance is not health care. “Coverage” is not health care.
3. Group insurance is just a way to spread the wealth around – by spreading the costs around. Not only will it never perform this socialist function fairly, but its use encourages prices to increase.
4. Tort liability forces overtreatment.
5. Comprehensive coverage encourages over-consumption.
6. Health care costs increases correlate exactly with the federal government’s meddling in the health care market – first with Medicare, then with HMO’s, then with tax incentives that push group comprehensive, employer-paid benefit policies, next with conversion of those benefits to statutorally mandated entitlements.
7. Increasing quasi-competition between insurance provideres will NOT bring down health care prices – see #2. Only by reinstating the direct relationship between health care provider and consumer will we ever bring health care prices down.
Extra-constitutional government meddling in the free market for health care is the cause of skyrocketing health care costs. MORE extra-constitutional government meddling in health care will NOT reverse that trend.
