Health Care

The biggest benefit of the free market is that it gives each person the ability to allocate their time and resources in the way that benefits him or her best. In the market, this means that producers have to provide the highest quality goods at the lowest possible price, or people will go somewhere else. This system would of course be best for health care, as well... but in America today, does such a system exist? Not at all. If the cost of health care is rising, and the cost of providing care isn't rising, then this cannot be a free market system.

What is it then? Our system seems to have the downsides of a bureaucratic system with the downsides of a free market system, and few of its benefits. The problem stems from WWII wage controls (see, the government removing choice from the people) - sometime during the war, the government imposed a wage freeze, looking to provide stability in the labor markets, most likely. Of course, this didn't work. Some businesses were still expanding and were willing to pay more for employees - so they offered non-wage benefits that were tantamount to a pay raise. Now we have employer provided health insurance. This is stupid for several reasons: it impedes the freedom of workers to go to the best jobs, out of fear that something will happen in between jobs, making them uninsurable. It's also stupid because insurance came to cover everything - the price signaling that is so important in a free market does not exist when the customer never sees the price tag; why go somewhere that charges $100 for a physical, when you can go somewhere where it costs $300 - it makes no difference to the consumer, because the insurance just covers it. It makes sense to have insurance for emergency situations, you aren't going to shop around for the lowest price if you're having a heart attack.

What are the solutions offered? There's single payer nationalized health care, where we just decide to end the market for health care. Prices go up (though consumers don't see it directly - only through their taxes), quality goes down (and consumers can no longer decide not to patronize the poor quality places, since they would all be the same), and waiting times go up, and people have no incentive to take care of themselves, since no matter what there will be no cost to taking care of them. The benefits: everyone has access to at least some health care. The rising prices under the employer-based system, which hurts the poor most, would be taken care of.

I think the two front Democrats' system is that the government would become an alternate health care provider. The government offers health care at an artificially deflated price, and you can choose between that and the current options for health care. (Under Barack's system, you still have the option to decide not to have insurance, but you must cover your children somehow. Under Hilary's system, everyone's a child and has no choice but to get some sort of insurance). This doesn't solve any of the problems of the increasing price of health care, and has the further disadvantage of screwing up the market for health insurance. The advantage seems to be that there would be fewer uninsured people demanding care, who drive up prices by being unable to pay; health care would be available to a lower class of people (but it doesn't solve the problem of illegal immagrents being uninsurable).

I think both of these alternatives are worse than our current system. What needs to happen is insurance needs to be shifted to covering only emergencies, and it needs to be moved out of the hands of employers. It wouldn't cost workers more: their wages would go up, as the money that was spent on insurance would instead be given out as wages. People then have greater choice in getting insurance, and can buy a program that best fits them, and they are no longer tied to their employers (how lame would it be if you got a car and house leased to you by your employer? Noone would ever change jobs). We would see prices drop - this would make health care accessable to even more people, and it would give everyone more wealth. For those who truely cannot afford the bare minimum of health insurance, charity would be able to cover this (as it is now, the high price of care makes the government the only charity that can possibly afford to cover everyone). I think our system is slowly moving this way, and is likely being impeded my the government, and the health lobby's control over regulation. The best thing the government can do, if it wants to improve the quality of life for people, is to do nothing.