Last week president Obama announced his $1.6 trillion “public” health insurance option—a government take-over of medical care—that is supposed to “compete” with private insurance companies and give health care coverage to uninsured Americans.
The so-called “public option” is already getting cut down by members of the president’s own party in congress, worried that their constituents won’t support more uncontrolled government spending for little to no benefit. The president argued, in his speech to the American Medical Association last week, that the plan would only cost $1 trillion dollars—although the Congressional Budget Office disagreed—and that this spending would in some way make health care cheaper. I’m not going to go through the specifics but, if you can find a way to cut costs by spending an additional $1.6 trillion dollars, I need you to help me balance my check book.
What’s interesting to note is that the president made it clear that he doesn’t intend to make American health care better, he only wants the American’s who don’t currently have medical insurance to be “covered.” The illusion of medical security however, doesn’t fix the problems with health care at all. Especially when the president’s plan won’t even “cover” everyone.
There is no question that something can be done to “fix” healthcare but government control of the system isn’t the solution. Why not control fraudulent malpractice suits to protect doctors, lowering their costs and, through that, lowering consumer costs? Or, why not cut back the FDA so that drug companies can create and test innovative medicines to care for and cure diseases without the burden government on their backs?
Congressional Democrats recognize the myriad problems with Obama’s “public option” and clearly didn’t buy the New York Time’s “poll” saying that most American’s want universal government run care. In the WSJ’s Political Diary John Fund discusses Senator Kent Conrad’s has proposal for a medical “co-op” system as a compromise. Instead of the “public option” states would subsidize “co-ops” directed by their participants instead of the government. It sounds ok, and even sounded good to Republican Senators Lindsey Grahm and Chuck Grassley. But like Republican Rep. Paul Ryan told Fund, “the co-ops the Democrats are talking about aren’t the real thing. They would be created and their boards would be appointed by government. It’s a backdoor approach to getting a government-controlled entity to crowd out the private insurance market most Americans are happy with.”
Government control of health care can’t “fix” the health care system, that’s why it’s been debated and struck down in Congress for years. Obama’s “public option” will only raise the costs and lower the quality of American medical care. By stimulating demand for care while lowering doctor’s compensation, our health care system would crumble under Obama’s plan just like system’s in the UK and Canada have.
From a young persons’ perspective, I’m worried that a government run health care system will add to the enormous debt my generation will already bear the brunt of in the future. Instead of government control of the health care system I’d like to see the government back off. The things that lower costs in a free economy are technical advancements, innovation, and education. If the yolk of government is loosened from the necks of doctors and medical companies, new drugs, new treatments, and newly invigorated doctors can work to cure what ails Americans—instead of working to meet government regulations and begging for appropriate compensation. In an advanced and energetic health care system people my age won’t have worry about both paying off the government program that funds our neighbors as well as paying bills for our aging family members. People say miracles don’t happen, but the medical miracles that eradicated diseases like polio, cholera, tuberculosis and many more from the US were made by doctors and scientists, not bureaucrats.
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