Why Are We Letting the Government Control Our Healthcare?
Think about this for a moment. We are debating how the government should control our healthcare choices by taking away our choices and our money. In essence, we are debating how the government should control our lives. It’s maddening that we are sitting back and letting it happen.
We are a political version of zombies.
I realize that we voted for people who said they would repeal Obamacare, but they are unwilling to do it. Five unelected Supreme Court Justices ruled that healthcare is the province of the State. It’s maddening.”O well, I guess we’re going to have to let them do this to us.” This is a tyranny of the first order. It’s creeping fascism.
Who believes that our elected officials are competent to tell the market how healthcare should be run and financed? These are the same elected officials who get us into wars that they can’t win and spend money they don’t have.
We’ve already let it happen with education. The government is educating our children and turning them into wards of the state intellectually and morally, and yet there are people — conservatives included– who continue to support government-run education financed by stolen money. If it’s OK to turn our children over to the government to be educated, then why not our whole lives?
We need a massive nation-wide uprising. I’m not advocating violence but a loud voice and movement that says, “Stop controlling our lives and stealing our money!”
Let us make our own healthcare choices. Once this is done, we can’t go back and say, “I can’t afford it. Plese, save me.” There are free-market ways to take care of the indigent. It might mean medical savings accounts to prepare for a medical emergency that would require driving a car a year or two longer or backing off on extravagant vacations or not eating out as much.
We might have to take better physical care of ourselves. Even with all the information we have on smoking and the higher taxes, people still smoke. I watch unhealthy-looking people stand in line and pay $45 or more for a carton of cigarettes. I see fat people waddle around who can barely step up on a curb.
We don’t need the government when it comes to automobile insurance, life insurance, or homeowner’s insurance. I can go online and shop for a policy and price for all three of them.
Why not do the same for health insurance? Let the market take on the job. Amazon could get into the insurance business. What about Wal-Mart? Why not let churches create their own insurance pool. Why does it have to be a business?
Government mandated healthcare has driven up costs. My mother had 11 brothers and sisters. My father had 10. They did not have health insurance, and yet they were able to pay the doctor. How did they do this? Health insurance is the product of government interference in the economy. It was a way to get around wage and price controls after World War II. The marketplace did a workaround to beat a government edict.
At the present time, “healthcare is plagued by barriers to entry for potential new suppliers of services” and “patients do not see bills until after services have been offered.” What other industry does this? How many people sign a contract to buy a car before they know the price?Government regulations often won’t allow medical facilities to build in certain areas because the government has decided that there is no “need.”
Government regulations often won’t allow medical facilities to build in certain areas because the government has decided that there is no “need.” This means a new facility will mean competition.
There are two competitive pizza businesses near where we live. When we first moved to the area, there was one. A third one is opening soon. The pizza at Johnny’s New York Style Pizza is great, but the decor was shabby. My wife and I went in the other day and saw that the owners reupholstered the seats and put in a new hardwood floor. Why? Competition.
Evidence from other countries illustrates why lowering these barriers to entry is important. In India, Devi Shetty, a surgeon, has taken advantage of economies of scale to develop large, 1,000-bed hospitals that make health care more affordable. Dr. Shetty’s heart treatment hospital charges $2,000 for open-heart surgery—American hospitals average slightly more than 150 beds and charge between $20,000 and $100,000 —while providing high-quality care. Dr. Shetty is currently setting up a chain of similar hospitals in the Cayman Islands to make his services more accessible to patients from the United States as well as the rest of the world.
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The U.S. health care system is generally not a competitive marketplace. In particular, current law largely restricts consumers to purchasing insurance within their own states. Additionally, current tax policy offers a tax advantage to employer-based health insurance but not individually purchased insurance, causing most Americans to gravitate toward job-based coverage instead of buying insurance on their own. These distortions, generated by government policy, have largely insulated consumers from their health care choices. (Heritage)
We’ve seen what the market can do with the airlines after deregulation. More options. The government controls broadcast television. The market found away around it and we got the cable and satellite industry. When consumers grew dissatisfied with fewer options and higher prices, the market stepped in. Now we have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and a slew of other competing options. Cable companies are now offering a version of ala carte services.The government has a monopoly on mail. UPS, FedEx, and others got in the package delivery service and the world is better for it.
The government has a monopoly on letter mail. UPS, FedEx, and others got in the package delivery service and the world is better for it. Email has had a devasting effect on the Post Office.
Our tax system is already a nightmare, but if healthcare is so important to our elected officials, why not make out-of-pocket payments deductible? Why take money from tax payers and then send money back to them through a government-run program? Of course, we know why — power and control. I want the power and control over my healthcare decisions.
There will have to be a transition period to the free market. But the way we are going, we’re going to get the Post Office version of healthcare.