Price Controls

Limit Supply, Increase Costs

The government must stop manipulating the health care market. Its policies and practices are artificially driving up costs and restricting supply. Get out and stay out of patient health choices, price control schemes, over regulation and massive new government programs this nation can’t afford.

This is the wrong plan. Health care is expensive for everyone else in part because government Medicare/Medicaid only reimburse for sixty percent 60% of costs. Non-government patients, insurance companies, and your Doctor must pay the other forty percent 40% or transfer the unpaid costs to other procedures artificially raising the costs paid by all patients.

There is already a shortage of primary care physicians, emergency services, and rural, small town and intercity clinics, especially in areas where most patients are Medicare or Medicaid users. If they can’t recover their costs, they will quit those services and places.

Want lower costs? Get government and their mandates out of health care, and encourage increases in health personnel, training, facilities and services; increase supply!

Stop providing health care to adults who do not pay. Continue to provide health care to any child that needs it. These are mostly people not eligible for Medicaid, why? They are here illegally. If they are citizens and poor, they can get Medicaid.

Stop mandating government’s experimental solutions; instead turn to freely chosen, private, open market based solutions. A constructive solution could be very minimal nationwide health insurance; provided by competitive insurers at very low premiums, not subsidized by taxpayers. An insurance voucher or credit card only good for health insurance could be issued to the poor giving them the opportunity to buy insurance for their children, and themselves, but nothing else.

The government could make changes that encourage more health care and medical service diversity like out-patient clinics, mobile diagnostics, non doctor medical practitioners, or convert more drugs to non-prescription and encourage location to underserved communities.

If government health care services or insurance are so valuable, let them be offered to all in a fair and open marketplace. Let’s see if Native Americans, Veterans, inmates, the elderly (Medicare), the poor (Medicaid), unemployed (COBRA) and the 270 million insured and the 30 million uninsured choose it freely with their voucher or their own resources over competitive private insurance and medical services of their own choice.

Stop demonizing health care providers, health insurance companies, and citizens who take care of their own health care needs, and don’t penalize them for taking care of themselves. If the government wants to provide health care access to those who haven’t earned it or are ineligible, cut many non-health government programs and send them health care credits, vouchers or health credit cards.

I doubt that government health services would be chosen freely by anyone, either currently conscripted or new users. All those currently provided health care by the government should immediately be allowed to take their benefit to any provider they wish, let see if they stay with government services. I doubt many would.

We all want a wide variety of possible choices, not mandates and compulsory conscription.