Here’s a great post with examples of how the free market is already solving health care issues. Now if we can just get the government out of health care completely, we’d be set.

So while Congress now debates how to control rising healthcare costs and expand access to medical care through government intervention and a public option, the private marketplace has already started many healthcare reforms on its own—providing affordable access at more than 1,000 retail clinics in pharmacies, truck stops, and workplaces around the country; lowering drug costs with prescriptions for $4 or less anywhere in the country; introducing innovative prepaid medical and concierge plans that restore the direct patient-doctor relationship; and covering eight million employees with HSAs.

When it comes to lowering costs and improving quality and service, government enterprises have a miserable track record, and competitive markets have a proven, excellent record. If we want to make healthcare affordable and accessible, we should encourage greater competition and more market-based solutions like the examples above; and less government intervention, not more. Unfortunately, the politicians in Washington have it backwards.

Check ou the full article at Congress to Healthcare Market: Drop Dead — The American, A Magazine of Ideas.

The truth be told.

The typical argument for ObamaCare is that it will offer better medical care for everyone and cost less to do it, but occasionally a supporter lets the mask slip and reveals the real political motivation. So let’s give credit to John Cassidy, part of the left-wing stable at the New Yorker, who wrote last week on its Web site that “it’s important to be clear about what the reform amounts to.”

Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. “The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment,” he writes. “Let’s not pretend that it isn’t a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won’t. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind.”

Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of “making the United States a more equitable country” and furthering the Democrats’ “political calculus.” In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.

This explains why Nancy Pelosi is willing to risk the seats of so many Blue Dog Democrats by forcing such an unpopular bill through Congress on a narrow, partisan vote: You have to break a few eggs to make a permanent welfare state. As Mr. Cassidy concludes, “Putting on my amateur historian’s cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted.”

No wonder many Americans are upset. They know they are being lied to about ObamaCare, and they know they are going to be stuck with the bill.

via John Cassidy on ObamaCare – WSJ.com.

Government’s role in society is to create criminals out of ordinary people.

Shout out to Hotair for the video

As usual, our government finds it wise to punish good behavior. If you are a small growing business, you better not hire anyone once payroll reaches $499,999. Once you cross over that line, you are in the cross hairs of government regulators who decide how you must treat your employees. If you don’t do what they say, you will pay more taxes.

The House bill mandates that employers with payrolls above $500,000 must contribute — for each full-time employee — 72.5% of the premium cost for single coverage and 65% of the premium cost for family coverage. The penalty for failing to do so is a 2%-to-6% tax on employers with payrolls between $500,000 and $750,000 and an 8% tax for employers with payrolls above $750,000.

via Small Business Crunches Numbers – WSJ.com.

So how does this promote job growth? Business aren’t in the business of charity. If they must spend more on health care or even worse send money to Washington, they are not going to have that money to grow and to create jobs. Those employees will get less pay, because businesses figure out the overall cost of employees. If they budget X for a certain position, the person will get X minus health care, minus taxes, minus social security, minus unemployment insurance, minus workers comp, minus other benefits, and minus any other business cost associated with that employee.

If an employee takes care of themselves and their employer didn’t pay for their health insurance, they would have more money in their pocket. The employer would be able to pay more for the position without the extra costs.  Shopping for themselves, the employee would get better rates and maybe buy a low premium, high deductible insurance plan. This would increase their income substantially. Because businesses are forced into buying health insurance for all regardless to health conditions of each individual, their plans are more expensive and eats more money out of the healthy worker’s pocket. This lowers the standard of living for all workers, and is more punishment for doing the right things.

This weekend the house moved the nanny state a little further down it’s evolutionary track toward tyranny. The statists, such as Nancy Pelosi, are acting like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. “Come on Charlie Brown. I swear I’ll let you kick the ball.” Falling for the same old trick, pro-lifers, so-called Blue Dogs and various health companies bought into the trick.

Mrs. Pelosi’s craftiest political turn was a last-minute compromise to strip federal funds from insurance plans that cover abortions. The deal—negotiated by Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak and supported by the National Right to Life Committee—gave cover to 40-some Democrats to support the larger bill.

However, as subsidized costs soar, government will have no choice but to ration medical care, starting with the aged and grievously ill. Is pre-natal life more valuable than the elderly? We’re reminded of the way pro-lifers supported Anthony Kennedy over Laurence Silberman for the Supreme Court in 1987 merely because Mr. Kennedy was a Catholic who claimed to personally oppose abortion. Mr. Stupak played the right-to-lifers like a Stradavarius.

The real importance of the abortion uproar is as preview of the politics that will dominate every medical coverage issue if ObamaCare becomes law. Every decision of what to insure or not—when an MRI can be used, or whether a stage-four breast cancer patient can get Avastin or some future expensive drug—will become subject to political intervention over moral disputes or budget constraints. Heretofore, these decisions have largely been made between a doctor and patient. This is the real “right to life” issue.

Perhaps the most unsurprising news in this drama was the collapse of the Blue Dog “deficit hawks.” Enough of them always cave in the end to give Mrs. Pelosi her way. It’s nonetheless worth noting the surrender of that most vocal scourge of deficits, Tennessee’s Jim Cooper, who voted aye on grounds that the bill can be improved in the Senate.

via Pelosi’s Health Care Means Rationing Politics – WSJ.com.

If the pro-lifers think for one second that ObamaCare won’t cover abortions shortly after it’s passed, they apparently don’t follow politics much. The same goes for so-called Blue Dogs. The government never stands at a steady state. Like the universe, it’s always expanding. Once it gets its hooks into health care, it will act like a parasite devouring its host.

Anytime the government is involved in the economy, it claims to have the “right” to tell companies, people, etc what to do. Just ask all those on Wall Street who’s pay is not regulated. They didn’t agree to bailouts with that as a stipulation. They signed on, and that was sprung on them after the fact. When the government is involved, contracts and agreements don’t count. You fell for it again, and Pelosi is about to move the ball.

By way of Mises.org, here is another great examples of the free market delivering a plethora of choices for consumers. Take note of the mention of the government forced recycling programs and why they started them.

Also, image what it would be like if the beverage industry was heavily regulated like health care. Think you’d have all these options. Inversely, if government would get out of health care, you’d see a plethora of options in that industry as well.

As I have said many times, the free market allocates resources based on their highest and best use. It is fine tuned by millions of decisions and transactions of individuals. This is why the market is so efficient, and meets the needs of society. On the other hand, government allocates resources based on politics. It has nothing to do with real needs, other than the need of a politician to get re-elected. The Wall Street Journal has  an article on how the Democrats are trying to please all their members with pay offs in order to get their votes. So how is paying off all members with pork for their state supposed to lower cost?

LAFAYETTE, La. — Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu says she generally backs President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul efforts. But she’d like to see a few items in the bill before voting for it, including bigger federal Medicaid payments for her home state of Louisiana, extended health coverage for her pet cause of foster children, and help for teaching hospitals in her state.

While pushing more spending in those areas, Ms. Landrieu also wants the plan to cut the overall amount the nation spends on health care.

via Democrats Pose Health Bill Hurdle – WSJ.com.

Some info on Republican plan via HotAir.

CBO director Douglas Elmendorf scored the new proposal from House Republicans on health-care reform and gave them plenty of ammunition to use against expansive and expensive Democratic plans for government takeovers. Their plan, which relies on interstate competition, HSAs, and tort reform, would only cost $61 billion in the first ten years of the plan — or slightly less than 6% of what Democrats plan to spend to overhaul the entire system:

This evening, CBO released a preliminary analysis of a substitute amendment to H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, proposed by Representative John Boehner, the Republican Leader in the House of Representatives. CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that the amendment would reduce federal deficits by $68 billion over the 2010-2019 period; it would also slightly reduce federal budget deficits in the following decade, relative to those projected under current law, with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between zero and one-quarter percent of gross domestic product.

Unlike the Democratic proposals, the bill would actually reduce premiums:

CBO anticipates that the combination of provisions in the amendment would reduce average private health insurance premiums per enrollee in the United States, relative to what they would be under current law-by 7 percent to 10 percent in the small group market, by 5 percent to 8 percent for individually purchased insurance, and by zero to 3 percent in the large group market. Those are averages, however, and they are subject to a great deal of uncertainty; some individuals and families in each market would see different results.

via Hot Air » Blog Archive » GOP health-care reform cost: $61 billion, cut deficit $68 billion.

In an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, Dr. Pardes, president and CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, talks about the coming doctor shortage.

It is important to note that the shortage the country will soon face isn’t just of primary-care physicians. It is true that there aren’t enough primary-care doctors and nurse practitioners. But it is also true that we need more cardiologists, neurologists, general surgeons, pediatric subspecialists, urologists and other highly trained specialists.

Nonetheless, the few ideas to address the coming doctor shortages that were briefly considered in Washington treated the problem merely as a shortfall of primary-care doctors. One idea is to shift unused federal training funds to hospitals that need more positions, but only if those funds are used for primary care. Another is to move primary-care physician training out of hospitals and into federally qualified health centers. A third idea is to take training dollars away from doctors and instead use it to train nurses and other professionals.

None of these ideas would actually increase the number of doctors. At most the first two ideas would increase the number of primary-care doctors at the expense of the number of specialists.

But that’s not likely to happen either. The fundamental reason why medical students are not entering primary care on their own is that they can’t afford it. Medical-school tuition can cost a student as much as $50,000 a year. Some doctors start out owing hundreds of thousands of dollars before they are even able to open a practice. Going to medical school is a little like taking out a mortgage, only without getting a house in return.

Once doctors do start treating patients, they are squeezed between what they earn from government programs and insurance companies on one side and escalating malpractice insurance rates on the other. Meanwhile, specialists can often charge more and pay less in other costs than primary-care doctors. The reality is that many physicians cannot afford to go into primary care.

To address the shortage of doctors and the incentives that compel young doctors to eschew primary care, Congress needs to think about how to increase doctor pay, institute malpractice reform, and provide subsidies to reduce the amount of debt doctors have to take on. Residency caps should also be raised so teaching hospitals can train more doctors. Without these actions new doctors would be foolish to enter primary care, and thankfully our medical schools do not recruit foolish people.

via Herbert Pardes: The Coming Shortage of Doctors – WSJ.com.

Unfortunately, the doctor seems to suffer from what most commentators and policy wonks suffer from. They believe that you can cure an illness by increasing the causes of the illness. It would be like telling an alcoholic to drink a different alcohol to cure his liver disease. The government creates the shortage by manipulating the free market. When the government implements price controls via program reimbursement rates, you end up effecting supply negatively.  The doctor also doesn’t seem to realize that part of the reason education is so expensive is there is a massive amount of government money chasing after education services. The more dollars chasing a good or service, the higher the price rises.

The doctors has many bad assumptions here that undermine his stated goal. He says that the cost of education is extremely high. He compares it to taking out a mortgage without getting a house. This is in my opinion economically silly. Tuition is in investment like any other investment. Actually, if you pick the right major, it can be a very high yielding investment. With the high cost of medical school, one would expect a high return on that investment. In the free market that would be the case. As I’ve already said, tuition has climbed year after year because of all the government money in education. Remove government, and you will lower cost. On top of that, the doctor says government programs squeeze doctors with government reimbursement rates. This alters the return on investment analysis as well. If your investment continues to grow larger because of government, and your return is “squeezed” by government, of course you are going to begin to see shortages. This is what government always does.

Unfortunately, he then argues the government should do more. He says Congress should be looking at ways to raise doctor pay. Are you serious? Government is the reason your pay is decreasing. Get the government out of health care, and you will begin to see salaries increase.  In the free market, if there is a shortage in supply, prices increase. Seeing the increase in price (or pay in this case), competitors enter the market (in this case doctors).

Also, as price is driven up, entrepreneurs will look for alternate solutions to doctors. An real world example of this are the clinics at many local pharmacies.

Government on the other hand will just hold prices against the will of the market. As Austrian economists will tell you, “You can control price or supply, but you can’t control both.” Because government is controlling price, they will drive down supply. This will ultimately lead in the opposite outcome that the doctor claims to want. Even if the government funnels money in to subsidize doctors, they are taking that money from another area of the economy. While they may be able to falsely increase the supply of doctors, they’d end up producing a shortage in another area. This is why we defeated the Soviet Union. Central planning never works. Government always gets it wrong. The free market does this on its own by the decisions of millions of people. While I appreciate the doctors concern, I wish he’d drop his assumption that government can fix this. They have never been able to fix a problem in the economy without creating multiple new and worse problems.

This is a great video from a post on HotAir that hits the nail on the head of why we have problems with our health care, THIRD PARTY PAYER.