American Thinker: Why Should We Want Politicians To Redesign Our Healthcare?

American Thinker: Why Should We Want Politicians To Redesign Our Healthcare?

The first question we should be asking in the healthcare debate is: Why should anyone think that politicians would do a better job redesigning our healthcare than the free market?

After all, politicians have helped create the problems (healthcare costs increasing at an unsustainable rate and a growing number of uninsured) that politicians now are in a hurry to try to fix. For example:

• Tax subsidies for employer-purchased insurance have encouraged the overconsumption of healthcare (because many employers have purchased insurance tantamount to prepaid healthcare), limited employees' choice of insurance plans to whatever the employer offers, and required employees to switch plans (and sometimes lose coverage) when changing jobs.
• The medical liability system has encouraged healthcare providers to practice defensive medicine (i.e., order procedures and make referrals primarily to avoid liability for malpractice rather than to benefit patients) amounting to an estimated 8-15% of total healthcare expenditures (an estimated $201-$376 billion in 2009).
• The government has been mismanaging the trillions of dollars held in trust for current and future Medicare beneficiaries. The trust funds will be exhausted in 2017. Medicare fraud costs up to $80 billion a year (15-20% of Medicare spending).
• Because Medicare and Medicaid don't fully reimburse the costs of physicians and hospitals to provide services, purchasers of private insurance pay a hidden tax of almost $90 billion each year to make up the difference.
• Benefits that the government mandates insurers cover increase the cost of basic health insurance by 20-50%.

Now that politicians are putting their minds to "comprehensive" reform, it's fair to ask whether proposed reforms will improve healthcare. For example: