Free Market Healthcare

I believe that the first step in returning our healthcare system to normalcy is to conclude that privatization of health care is essential. Getting our government out of health care and letting the free- market forces regulate our healthcare system is a priority. Economists around the globe agree that ANY form of government intervention and/or regulation impedes the natural and efficient flow of free market forces. Politicians have never understood the law of unintended consequences when moving toward public venues and they certainly didn’t understand the disastrous impact that Obamacare would have on our nation.

Many economists argue that Obamacare represents as much as one-fifth of our gross domestic product. We should all be clear on what the intent of the Obamacare legislation represents. It is simply another form of the redistribution of wealth doctrine. It is a very bad experience and the first step toward a single-payer health care plan, which is essentially a Medicare for all, to be administered and run by our government. In 2019, unfunded liabilities for Medicare (our current single-payer experiment) were projected to be well over $50 trillion.

Besides the military, when has big government ever been able to efficiently manage a large bureaucratic institution? What do you think about the efficiency of the I.R.S? Department of Education? Social Security? EPA? United States Postal Service? Veterans Administration? We have all heard the horror stories about how poorly run these organizations are and the gross inefficiencies in each.  

I would like to first lay down a list of key assumptions of what great health care and the systems that deliver great health care look like. This list is just the starting point for a full-blown recommissioning of what a free-market health care system should represent.  

1. Competition that produces high quality services with improved patient outcomes
2. Reduced overall health care costs 
3. Results metrics that include end to end patient care
4. Incentivized clinical wages (advancement, cost of living increases, etc.) based on patient results
5. Reduced administrative burdens
6. Integrated systems of care with full visibility through advanced technology
7. Increased specialization 
8. Full pricing visibility for patients 
9. Increased patient choice
10. Group coverage offered across state lines
11. Broadening the types of concierge medicine business models that are practiced today
12. Reduced cycle times for patient delivery services
13. Robust analytics that help determine causal links  

The above assumptions will never be achieved with a government run and administered single-payer health care plan. It is a utopian world (socialist candy store) where everything is free and there is a limitless amount of funding. It sounds very pretty on the front end but is extremely unrealistic in practice.

Therefore, we must repeal and replace Obamacare with a system that ensures maximum competition to drive prices down and quality up. It is a value-based system where patient outcomes are the foundational anchors for success. The democrat socialists and progressive liberals in our country contend that healthcare is a “right” of every individual. I disagree. I believe that it is a privilege that can only be maintained through competition and free market forces. Let’s start stripping away and dismantling the flawed remains of our current healthcare system and replace it with a system that requires limited government oversight.

Command and control government intervention in our healthcare system is an additional power grab toward a socialist form of government. Allowing government-controlled health care is nothing more than ceding additional freedom and liberty to an unwanted intruder. I believe that freedom and liberty ring loudest when a capitalist orientation is allowed to function in plain sight for healthcare consumers.