It's The Free Market or 100% Government Medical Care

If you track medial costs, not insurance costs, but the actual price of medical care, you will find that every time the government created a new mandate for INSURANCE coverage, the actual cost of MEDICAL CARE went up, not just the insurance premiums. Every time the government increased spending on Medicare and Medicaid, the actual price of the MEDICAL CARE went up again. The reason is the same in every industry any government ever got involved in. When there is other people’s money to be had, ALL recipients will always find more reasons they need more of that money. Why? Because the government gives them the incentive to do so! They simply have to check a series of boxes, created by people who know little about the industry in question, and jigger a few numbers to justify an increase in what they are awarded. There are also the added costs of the bureaucratic nightmare that accompanies getting that money. Don’t I get money for doing that as well? Of course I do. Hospitals and medial firms are no different than any other. They pay people full time to find more and more ways to wring every dollar possible out of the government piggy bank. Remember the sick child from the previous essay? We’ll say she is still sick.   The family is on it’s heels because the parents didn’t plan for the future. I mean why should they have? Mommy government says they shouldn’t have to. No matter how stupid they were in the past, somebody ought to step up and pay their bills. Right? Again, that is what Medicaid is for. We’ll say this family has shot their financial wad and they still have a sick kid. Medicaid should step in. In a world without Obamacare and the constant money machine of mandated insurance coverage it would be easy to administer a program just for folks like this AND for folks who may have never been above the poverty line. This child will not die because she didn’t have healthcare. Now on Medicaid, getting care will come with a lot of hassle as all government programs do. (They are all created by bureaucrats and are loaded with needless nonsense). But hey, if everyone else is paying your bills for you, you can’t bitch too much. So mom might have to quit work to take care of the kid and get her to the doctor. Once the family has taken every step to they can, including the sale of golf clubs and moving to a smaller place without a pool, there is no reason why we can’t step in and help out. By this time, the government would be avoiding greater dependence. Either way, no one is going to die because they are refused treatment. Only the VA does that. And that is a function of government corruption and incompetence. So let’s wrap this up. A smart Mitch McConnell (figure the odds) should announce that in two-years time, Obamacare will cease to exist. All restrictions on competition and state-line restrictions will be eliminated from the federal registry. If people want to offer insurance plans to employees and employees wish to take the deal, fine. But now that we know the dangers in doing that, there should be NO INCENTIVES offered by the government to sustain such an arrangement. People would be better off buying into the huge cooperatives that will immerge in the new market. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that in less than a year a multitude of competent companies will announce their new medical plans. And they will cost far less than what Americans pay right now. A smart McConnell will say that if you are now being covered by a pre-existing condition under Obamacare or Medicaid, you will be kept on that coverage. But the coverage will be means-tested and if you are over the poverty line a graduated scale will be created under which you will share in the burden of your healthcare. Substantially! If you don’t buy your own insurance on or before the end date of Obamacare and THEN get sick and THEN try to get on Medicaid an additional penalty will be assessed to the deal in the previous paragraph. Since the advocates of Obamacare think that paying $6000/yr premiums and $6000/yr deductibles is perfectly okay, then that may be a good starting point for the two previous paragraphs. Woohoo! If the government does anything like this, you will be gob smacked at the numbers of people who will flea Medicaid AND SAVE MONEY! LOTS OF IT! The cost of doing business will fall into the basement! Everybody will make out…hospitals, insurance companies, and patients…everybody! If you need proof, look at the cost of auto insurance or homeowners’ insurance. Those are still REAL bets. [for the monumentally slow, that is what insurance is. It cannot work any other way.] These industries have been very stable for decades. Costs often lag behind inflation. That is because there is honest competition and less interference by the government. You cannot turn on the TV and NOT hear XYZ company offering a better deal than the others. They also have an endless variety of specialty coverage options, like “whole car replacement” (a gutsy bet at any price) you if you are willing to pay a tiny bit more in premiums. This should be the model for medical insurance. This is a great example of how ridiculously inexpensive basic medical care actually is before you add all the corruption and bureaucracy to the equation.  Click here! Another author's case for free market health insurance. Click here!  Matt Jordan is the author of Street Politics:  It Ain't Your Daddy's GOP Anymore! Grab your copy here.  

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