The most recent issue of National Affairs contained a very insightful article on health care entitled “Health Care and the Profit Motive.” You can find the whole article here (it’s long, but worth a read). In the article, author Avik Roy explains the history of health insurance in America, the factors that have brought about our dysfunctional system, and background on the differing views between liberals and conservatives. While Roy focuses on the economic arguments moreso than concerns over constitutionality and political philosophy, the article is a very helpful. On the economics, Roy concludes, as I do, that the true solution needs to be based soundly on market principles. Here is an excerpt:
At the heart of the problem is the rising cost of insurance coverage. Costs are rising because of our existing fourth-party system, driven in particular by the very health-care entitlements that liberals seek to expand. To address that problem, we need incremental reforms to bring about greater market competition. Replacing the entire system with a sweeping government program might feel good — and might seem like a way to address the moral element of the problem — but it simply would not work. Given its economic inefficiencies, it could never be a serious answer to the question of how to fix American health care.
So even if the purpose of our health-care system is both economic and moral, the solutions to its problems must be economic. They should apply market forces, including the profit motive, to curtail the growing cost of health care. As much as possible, they should place the power to make difficult decisions into the hands of patients and their doctors. And they should liberate the forces of medical innovation to increase quality, improve affordability, and extend lives.
State Rep. Mike Bell said today that, since the U.S. House approved a health-care reform bill Sunday, he has received a huge outpouring of support for a bill declaring Tennesseans can ignore federal health-care mandates and calling on the attorney general to fight them in court.
“The actions of the federal government yesterday have made Tennesseans mad from Memphis to Mountain City,†said Bell, R-Riceville. “My phone has been ringing off the wall … and I haven’t been able to deal with all the emails.â€
Jonah Goldberg has a great article in the Los Angeles Times today:
Insurance companies are now heavily regulated government contractors. Way to get big business out of Washington! They will clear a small, government-approved profit on top of their government-approved fees. Then, when healthcare costs rise — and they will — Democrats will insist, yet again, that the profit motive is to blame and out from this Obamacare Trojan horse will pour another army of liberals demanding a more honest version of single-payer.
This is big. With the passage of the health care bill – especially the way it was passed – the political landscape of the United States has changed, perhaps forever. And I am not referring to the inevitable growth of statism that has resulted from nationalized health care in Europe. I am referring to a clear demarcation between the parties that was not evident in the last election. If John McCain had been elected, we would have had something like this bill enacted last year in a bipartisan fashion – as was Social Security and Medicare. Such a bill would have been irreversible.
Now the political consciousness of an enormous number Americans is entirely focused on government and the political class. There is a genuinely grassroots “liberty movement” in this country that has not existed in my lifetime – perhaps not in a century or more. And they are not interested forming in a third party.
If the Democratic Party could survive slavery, it should be able to survive the passage of this health care bill. But then again, until the Civil War, slavery was less unpopular in the United States than is this bill.
Analysis | Lucius Junius Brutus | 
March 26, 2010 10:01 am | 
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