The U.S. healthcare system is not privatized. [The U.S.] Government’s role in health care has been steadily growing since Medicare and Medicaid were established 45 years ago.
Mises.org editor Jeffrey Tucker said July 8, 2010: “I was just at the veterinarian’s office with a puppy, getting shots for the pooch and generally checking his health, dealing with fleas, and looking into this issue and that. The doctor spent quite the time with me and the dog, gave us free stuff, administered various shots, and helped in many ways.
As we explored various options, he mentioned the price of each service along with the prices of alternatives. In fact, prices were part of his language, same as with any service provider. As we left, the bill came. It was $65 for the entire treatment that day, which struck me as completely reasonable. Most importantly, it was fully transparent and open: fee for service and fee for goods.
In other words, it worked the same as any other normal market. There is no co-pay, no crazy federal programs funding my right to a worm-free dog, no vast subsidies or penalties, no schemes for redistribution and equality. There is private pet health insurance available for catastrophic things, but not regular maintenance, and hardly anyone goes for this stuff in any case. It wouldn’t make any sense. No employer is on the hook to cough up premiums for pet health insurance.
And guess what? Googleing around shows me that pet medical care prices are not beyond the normal inflation rate. There is no crisis, no frenzied attempt to over-medicate, no push to restrict services because that’s what the insurer wants, no vast distortions in the market, no waiting lines, no hysterical attempt to immunize the doctor from lawsuits, or anything else. It was as normal and predictable as going to the grocery store.
It strikes me that we have a pretty good model here for reforming human health care. Just treat us all like animals and the whole system would be largely repaired.”
Viception, the book I finished reading recently, covered healthcare: “Economic competition benefits buyers resulting in better cars, clothes, computers, and other things. Without nonconsensual initiatory aggression, good companies profit while bad companies do not, at least not as much. Competition and price-aware buyers help products become good. More competition and price-awareness would help medicine. For example, cosmetic and Lasik eye surgery prices are lower due to competition and price-awareness. Health insurance means the insured do not pay the full medical costs. Thus the insured demand the best and care less about cost. Buyers prefer surgery instead of drugs, even if the medical benefits are small. Buyers use every life-saving intervention despite costs and low benefits. Most people do not pay the full cost of their health insurance. In this country, the poor and the old get free or subsidized insurance via Medicaid or Medicare. Medicaid and Medicare helped raise healthcare costs because they subsidized healthcare usage. The more demand, ability and willingness to pay, that exists for anything allows its cost to rise. Health insurance hurts individual incentive to compare prices. What if you had gasoline insurance? Why would you care what gasoline’s price is since your insurance is paying for it? Health insurance should be for unpredictable, catastrophic events, not a pre-payment plan for routine care. Some homeowners have fire insurance, but usually not maintenance insurance. The fire insurance is for a catastrophic loss which is an unlikely, but costly event. Thus, fire insurance is affordable since the premiums paid by all the homeowners whose houses do not burn down pay for the homes that burn down. State governments require health insurance to cover routine physicals, mammograms, chiropractors, and hundreds of other procedures which raises costs. What is and is not insured should be determined by buyer preferences, not political lobbyists. Government healthcare, Medicare for example, is popular because people like getting free stuff, but Medicare is financially unsustainable. Medicare has low administrative costs while healthcare companies have higher administrative costs. How could the government be allegedly more efficient? The administrative costs are to prevent fraud. Government can lose money yearly, but healthcare companies cannot. They cannot tax, borrow, and print money to continue their business. If insurance companies accepted every sick applicant and never denied any claim, they would be out of business. Part of healthcare is taking care of oneself. Drinking too much alcohol, smoking, not exercising, unsafe driving and engaging in other unhealthy behaviors are choices that have costs. Unless the government is going to limit and monitor alcohol consumption, end smoking, have teams of exercise police to enforce mandatory exercise, and do other things to ensure people are healthy, then some people will remain less healthy. I believe everyone should make their own healthcare choices, not the government. One reason for rising healthcare costs in the United States is medical people practice defensive medicine: ordering excessive diagnostic tests primarily to avoid malpractice liability. To lower healthcare costs, end government interference. Allow health insurance purchases across state lines, raising competition. Allow drug imports. Abolish the drug-certifying Food and Drug Administration monopoly. The common problems with the Food and Drug Administration is that it approves a drug with little testing or it takes years to approve a drug. Private drug-certifying companies could exist. They would depend on their reputation. If they did a bad job, they likely would not continue to be funded, unlike the Food and Drug Administration. Legalize all drugs. End the state medical licensing monopoly. Private companies can provide certification. Monopoly licensing can restrict doctors from giving better advice. If a patient is stressed and depressed, maybe daily meditation can help, but that may not be government-approved whereas some drugs are. More healthcare liberty would allow different treatments, not just government-approved practices. This probably is not a complete list of ways to improve healthcare, but more liberty is the one-word solution.”