Conservatives and liberals can agree that there are problems with America’s health care system. There they part ways. Conservatives see these problems as stemming from too much government meddling in the health care sector, whereas liberals see government as a central part of any solution.
House Republicans are expected to pass a bill Wednesday repealing President Obama’s national health care law. The vote, as with previous ones, is only symbolic for now, because the repeal bill won’t stand a chance in the Democrat-controlled Senate. But that could change next year if Republicans gain control of the Senate and White House. Though a wiping of Obamacare from the books is necessary to prevent a further expansion of the government’s role in health care, it will not be sufficient to create a truly modern, market-based health care system.
Even before Obamacare passed in 2010, the American health care system was far from a free market. In 2009, government at all levels accounted for $1.1 trillion, or 44 percent, of all health care spending in the U.S., according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Beyond this, the federal government grants tax advantages to those who get insurance through their employers. This may sound appealing in the abstract, but the result is that people are given fewer choices over the type of plans they want, and if they like their plan, they cannot keep the coverage when they change jobs. Those who don’t get insurance through government or their employers are forced to navigate a tightly regulated individual insurance market without enjoying the same tax advantages.
In a free market system, individuals would have more control over their health care dollars, and the health care industry would be competing for their business. By exercising choices, consumers could drive down health care costs as they do in other, freer sectors of the economy, thus improving access and the quality of care.
Instead of giving Americans more health care freedom and reforming existing government programs, Obamacare pumps more money into a broken health care system and imposes a raft of new regulations on individuals and businesses. As originally conceived, it adds 15 million people to a Medicaid program that is bankrupting states and providing substandard care for the poor (this number could change as a result of the recent Supreme Court ruling). It forces nearly all Americans to purchase health insurance — and not insurance of their choosing, but insurance that meets the politicized specifications of Washington bureaucrats.
It calls on states to set up government-run exchanges in which individuals can use government subsidies to purchase government-approved insurance policies. With the economy weak and the nation’s debt exploding, the law is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to cost $1.76 trillion from 2013 through 2022, increase taxes by more than $800 billion and raise premiums on individuals by 10 percent to 13 percent compared with the pre-Obamacare status quo.
In the wake of the Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the law, repeal remains the only viable course to rid the nation of this destructive law. But repeal is only the first step on the path to a system that puts consumers in the driver’s seat rather than politicians, bureaucrats and malpractice lawyers.
