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twitterLetter to the editor:
Let free market rule on health care
Thursday, July 2, 2009 | 2:01 a.m.
Regarding a story in Tuesday’s Las Vegas Sun: Rep. Shelley Berkley is correct in wanting a change in the paradigm of health care. However, when politicians discuss the costs of health care, they don’t say anything about which programs are costing American citizens the most money.
Medicare and Medicaid are the real culprits in this issue and yet the president and most Democrats want the government to run health care. What we need is a dramatic shift from government systems to a free-market system in which we are free to choose our doctor, our clinic and our hospital.
To her point about prevention, government programs designed to enforce prevention of illness didn’t work in the ’60s and they won’t work now. Programs of that nature work best when private companies form wellness programs to encourage healthy practices for their employees.
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Why do people in this country even talk about government and business in the same context anyway that alone makes no sense at all.
The writer was doing okay until the last word: "employees." Our current health care system is not a free-market system. It's a limited-market system in which choices are limited by states and employers, and insurance companies act as middlemen between consumers and providers. Insurance company decisions and government intervention through Medicare disrupts the normal pricing mechanism. In a free market, consumers would purchase what they want directly from providers. Prices for services would then reflect supply and demand, and all resources would be expended in providing health care, rather than complying with documentation requirements and bureaucracy.
"What we need is a dramatic shift from government systems to a free-market system in which we are free to choose our doctor, our clinic and our hospital."
Except it doesn't work that way - even in the most ideal free-market system, many of the most basic treatments would still be far out of reach for people without insurance. And if you put health insurance back into the mix, you have the same "irrational rationing" you have now where insurers (not doctors or patients) decide what treatments you can have based on how it affects their bottom line.
The free market does rule on health care, WITH AN IRON FIST!
You better be 100% healthy or you're on your insurance company's hit list.
In order for a free market to function efficiently, a consumer must have adequate information about the goods or services being offered. I wonder how hospitals, health-care providers and insurers would feel about publishing complete pricing information and statistics on patient outcomes and claim denials?
Em,
They already do that. Also, you can find doctors that offer price sheets for their services but most don't because a third party is taking care of the bill and most customers don't care to ask.