Healthcare

Overview

Medicare and Medicaid should be abolished.  Healthcare can be taken care of more effectively and efficiently in the free marketplace.  Government regulation and licensing unnecessarily inflate the cost of services and limit access to them.  Healthcare will always have a cost, and that cost will always continue to rise as long as arbitrary regulations place undue burdens on pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers.  By blocking interstate competition for insurers, the government guarantees the higher prices of a monopoly system.

Free people should have the ability to decide whether or not they want to use experimental, but potentially life-saving, medication.  Adding decades to the already too-high research costs of new medication and technology means people don’t have access to the things they need today.

Opinions

No matter who pays, healthcare will always be rationed as long as costs are high.  The only way to lower costs without compromising life-saving innovation is to do away with wasteful regulation that harm instead of help. 

For example, FDA regulations account for over 80% of drug prices.  These regulations keep life-saving drugs from the market for an extra 10 years, killing more people than they save.  Regulations preventing people from buying insurance across state lines keep prices high too.  Licensing physicians and other medical care providers restrict the number of practitioners, keeping fees high and limiting access.  If we continue down the road to a government-takeover of healthcare, the elderly will die waiting for the care that is promised, but can’t be delivered. 

Dr. Mary Ruwart, Author Healing Our World

Healthcare is just another service that is demanded and supplied in markets.  To ensure efficient services in this sector, healthcare and health insurance should not be constrained by state boundaries.  The Interstate Commerce Clause was included for such things. 

Richard Timberlake, University of Georgia

Congress could jump-start these [health] innovations with two reforms: letting individuals customers -- elderly and nonelderly -- control their health care dollars; and letting them purchase a health insurance plan regulated by the state of their choice.  Piling the regulations higher is a sure-fire way to block these innovations, and even more dramatic innovations that we cannot foresee.

Michael Cannon, The Cato Institute

Your health is your problem.

Doug Casey, Casey Research

The problems with healthcare are rooted in government policies that removed individual control over health care  and led to the growth of Health Maintenance Organizations.  The recently passed health care reform bill will only make things worse.  Congress should repeal all federal interventions in the healthcare markets, starting with the individual mandate, and instead make  it easier for individuals to pay for health insurance through Health Savings Accounts and individual tax credits. 

Congressman Ron Paul, (R-TX)

Healthcare should be based on consent and private transactions.  Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs should be privatized and marketized.  HAS’s and privately operated health insurance are fully legitimate as long as they are consensual.  Licensing should be ended as should all healthcare subsidies, taxes, and regulations.

David Theroux, The Independent Institute

There should be a true free market in healthcare without government restrictions or excessive limitations.  Consumers should be able to buy health insurance across state lines and without joining a group or in a market distorted by government incentives or subsidies.

Dave Nalle, Republican Liberty Caucus

Government can't deliver letters except at excessive cost, bureaucracy and inefficiency even when it arrogates to itself a legal monopoly on first class mail. What on earth makes anyone in his right mind think it knows how to handle health care. My health and yours is simply too important to be dependent in any way on the likes of politicians, demagogues and bureaucrats.

Lawrence W. Reed, Foundation for Economic Education