HEALTH CARE?
OR HELL CARE?

Why do some people believe government can run health care better?
Here's why it can't really work:

TROUBLES WITH NATIONAL HEALTH CARE

It is easy to predict the troubles that national health care will cause:

1. Many patients are coming to the US from Canada, because the Canadian health bureaucracy has either deemed their procedure or medicine "nonessential" or "unevaluated" (they haven't added it to the system yet), and won't allow it.
2. Doctors are fleeing Canada to the US. Canada doesn't pay them enough.
3. People forget the high taxes that replace the business insurance premiums in countries with national health insurance. The businesses don't complain, because the workers pay the taxes.
4. Government officials fail to realize that government can't create any wealth. Only work can create wealth.
5. Because government can't create any wealth, nothing that costs money to produce can be a civil right. This includes health care.
6. Only workers pay taxes. Businesses must pass all taxes on to customers in higher prices.
7. Walter Reed Hospital is an example of what we would get under a national health care plan? That's h-e-l-l care!
8. Government can't do anything right. They haven't been able to get anything right yet. Why would they start with health care?
9. The medical conditions of patients are none of government's business. It's an invasion of privacy by government.
10. Any nationalized system of health care payment with an ID number violates many religions (See Revelation 13:16.).
11. It will cause religious rights lawsuits.
12. If it is implemented, many religious people will be unable to use it, due to the prohibition in the Bible.
13. Because government can't create any wealth, the workers will pay for national health care through increasingly high taxes.
14. Either the costs will stay ridiculously high, or medicine will be rationed.
15. Alternative medicine will be outlawed.
16. People will not be allowed to choose or control their own health care. We saw a sample of this in May, when a Minnesota judge ordered a child to undergo a medical procedure, against the wishes of the child and the parents.
17. The total cost to each person will be much higher, because of the bureaucracy and the monopoly power of the AMA doctor union.

TROUBLES WITH ANY SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM

It is easy to predict the troubles that any single payer system will cause:

1. Part of the problem is that the doctors already have a good monopoly:
   • The American Medical Association has monopoly powers, controlling prices by limiting supply.
   • Doctors are organizing themselves into cartels, with common pricing and billing.
2. Already, we have a very limited number of payers in the various health insurance companies. A limited number of buyers form an oligopsony (a buyer cartel).
3. A single payer system forms a monopsony. A monopsony is like a monopoly, but monopolizing buying instead of selling.
4. The economy always suffers whenever anything with "monop" or "oligop" in it is allowed to exist.
5. Combining a monopoly with a monopsony will cause prices to go totally out of control. And because both insist on their terms, service will be greatly reduced. It will be like Congress, when the Senate won't agree with the House.
6. The real problem is the existence of both the monopoly and the oligopsony.
7. The solution is to get rid of both the monopoly and the oligopsony.

HEALTH INSURANCE IS THE DISEASE, NOT THE CURE!

The existence of health insurance distorts the market for health care, by removing it from the normal rules of supply and demand.

1. Doctors raise their prices, because they can, and because they have to pay their malpractice insurance.
2. Medicare and other government-subsidized health care plans increase these distortions, driving prices higher.
3. Insurance companies usually negotiate a percentage discount with hospitals. But then the hospitals raise the base prices so the discounted prices still pay the bills. This raises the price for the uninsured.
4. Coverage for routine medicine is not insurance. It is instead a very expensive credit card that results in increased premiums.
5. Government has required insurers to cover medical procedures that are routine, but not necessary. This raises premiums.
6. Too often, the owners of expensive medical devices set their prices so they can pay off the devices in a short time. Then they continue to charge the same prices afterwards. They can do this, because insurance will pay it - and later raise the premiums.

TRULY AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE

How to make medicine affordable again:

• Health insurance covering everything becomes a very expensive credit card. Abolish blanket coverages.
• Abolish health insurance for routine care. This insurance raises the prices above the ability of the uninsured to pay.
• The only insurance allowable should be catastrophic care and extended care.
• Prohibit health insurance payments for ANY elective treatment, including birth control, abortion, fertility treatments, cosmetic surgery, sterilization, sexual enhancement, sex change, and hair replacement. These are not necessary, but legislatures have mandated health insurance to cover them. These mandates drive up health care costs.
• Stop government from mandating that insurance companies pay for unnecessary medicine.
• Antitrust the American Medical Association. It is a union for doctors, which makes rules to increase income for doctors.
• Abolish doctor cartels. These are companies that hire all of the doctors in an area, and charge a noncompetitive price for medicine.
• Stop paying medical schools to produce fewer doctors (you didn't know they were doing that, did you??). Having fewer doctors means higher prices.
• Abolish medical school quotas. Prohibit medical schools from changing standards to limit the number of doctors produced.
• Reduce the monopolies of patent protection of pharmaceuticals by requiring compulsory licensing.
• Prohibit the FDA from removing cheaper medicines from the market at the request of the drug companies (so they can sell their more expensive medicines that are still under patent).
• Malpractice insurance is the biggest expense a doctor has. Regulate malpractice lawsuits in the following way:
  • Restrict damages to actual costs, and spread them out so only the costs actually incurred are paid.
  • Require proof of malice to award punitive damages and pain and suffering compensation.
  • Don't penalize the doctor if something unusual and unpredictable goes wrong.
  • Make filing a false malpractice suit a crime.
  • Require the jury to be instructed on how large damage awards raise health care prices.
• Prohibit excessive hospital charges. Examples:
  • The patient now pays for all of the disposable items in the room, including all towels, bedding, utensils, plates, cups, pitchers, tissues, wipes, soaps, shampoo bottles, bedpans, blankets, and other items. This includes all items placed in the room, but never opened or used. When the patient checks out, he can take them all home, or they are must be disposed of as hazardous medical waste.
  • Hospitals charge rent for the room, on top of these charges. The hospital is not in the business of rental property.
  • Hospitals charging "technology fees". Those are used to pay the payments on equipment the hospital bought, whether the patient uses that equipment or not.
  • Companies making medical equipment charging "per use" fees as patent royalties.
• Prohibit government from charging for police, fire, and ambulance runs.
• Stop taxing medicine. Abolish sales and use taxes on medicines and procedures.
• Cut taxes. One BIG reason people can't afford health care is that they can't afford anything. We are now paying an average of 75 percent of our incomes in taxes. Many of those taxes are hidden, because the worker pays ALL business taxes when he buys the products. The taxes must be included in the product price, for there is no other source of income for the business to pay them from.
• Stop treating AIDS as a civil right, and require patients with HIV to attend special facilities. This reduces the costs to the rest of the patients by nearly half, because the precautions for dealing with contaminated body fluids are expensive.

National health insurance is NOT the answer. Here is a comparison of three health care scenarios:

GENERAL PROPERTIES AND FUNDING SOURCES

* If government sets low prices, doctors will leave the industry, driving the price up anyway.

ROUTINE HEALTH CARE

CATASTROPHIC CARE

LONG TERM CARE

REPRODUCTIVE CARE

* Includes prenatal, fertility, birth control, sex enhancement, and abortion.

ELECTIVE CARE

ALTERNATIVE CARE

* Includes care deemed by bureaucrats as nonessential, untested, or unevaluated.

The only way to have affordable health care is to stop trying to get someone else to pay for it.