House Budget Committee Paul Ryan is delivering speech, “The Optimist’s Guide to Repeal and Replace,” now at The Hoover Institute. You can read the full text of his speech here. Some highlights include:
- Markets require transparent prices, so that consumers can discover value. But in health care, the “consumer” is usually either a big insurance company, or the government. Health care providers have no incentive to provide transparent prices to their patients, because their patients don’t pay directly – it’s the government bureaucrat or the insurance company bureaucrat who pays the bills.
- Markets do not function well when consumers are insulated from marginal costs. We’re all paying more for health care, through much higher premiums and taxes. But the share we pay at the doctor’s office has plunged. The system that shields us from the cost of services, has actually left us paying much more.
- The three reforms I’ve just outlined – premium support for Medicare, block grants for Medicaid, and tax reform to correct the inefficient tax treatment of health insurance – must be present in our “replace” agenda.
