Healthcare

President Reagan frequently said that government is not the solution, government is the problem. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the cost of medical care. Until the federal government got involved, medial care was cheap and affordable for almost everyone. Then the government turned - over the years - what had been a very minor problem for a very few people into a major problem for almost everyone. There seems to be a pattern of the federal government getting involved to try to solve some minor problem; then people start gaming the system and getting rich; costs explode, and then the only solution people can see is for the government to take it all over. James K. Glassman wrote in U.S. News and World Report:

“One reason health care costs have been rising so much faster than inflation for so long is that we don’t pay for health care the way we pay for everything else. We’re removed from the buying process so we have less incentive to be frugal, to shop around, or even to pass up medical care altogether when we probably don’t need it. Suppose your employer gave you ‘food insurance’ that reimbursed you for all your groceries. Would you search out bargains in hamburger, or simply grab the best steaks without looking at the price? Sensible insurance should shield you from catastrophes but not routine wear and tear (you expect your homeowner’s insurance to protect you against a tornado, not a torn window screen).”
Total spending on Medicare, for example, has risen from $224.3 billion in 2000 to about $434.1 billion in 2007, an increase of 93%, or more than three times the rate of inflation.

Dr. Glassman and many others believe the only hope to keep from going to a totally government-run system (with declining quality, delays, and increasing costs) would be medical savings accounts. These accounts were first made legal in 2004 and have grown in popularity with now over 6.4 million in effect. However, the majority party wants to severely limit or do away with these MSAs so we will eventually be forced into government care, which is almost always called by the harmless-sounding name of “single-payer system”. A medical savings account system would put medical care back between the doctor and the patient. It could be supplemented by a medical voucher for those who could not afford a medical earnings account. To qualify for a voucher, a person would have to get a yearly checkup and then it would operate very much the same way as an MSA. Experts predict that we will soon be at 20% of our GDP on medical costs. Our present government programs have caused costs to explode, while allowing a few to get rich at the expense of the rest of us.

Two major factors in causing health insurance to be too expensive are the prohibition against interstate purchase of insurance and government mandates for specific types of coverage. A study by two health economists at the University of Minnesota said at least 11,000,000 presently uninsured people could afford coverage if certain individuals and small employers were not prohibited from buying health insurance outside their home states. Also, many people have pointed out that when all types of medical interest groups get state or national laws mandating that their type of service be covered by insurance, it drives the costs up and forces more people into the ranks of the uninsured. Some states have more than 40 types of mandated coverage.