Sheldon Richman makes the case that “health care reform” is not about health care, medical care or health insurance at all. It’s about government power.
If the politicians who are bent on redesigning the medical and medical-insurance industries really wanted only to curb rising prices and help the uninsured get coverage, they would have zeroed in on the previous government interventions that created those problems. Instead, they are pushing grand schemes to turn our medical decision-making over to bureaucrats. That indicates that the so-called reform campaign is about power.
Rather than a 2,000 page bill to centrally micro-manage the medical care and insurance decisions of hundreds of millions of individuals with diverse and unique needs, a much better approach would be to simply repeal previous government intrusions dominating and so grossly distorting the medical care industry today.
From unequal tax treatment of employer-provided health insurance, to costly insurance coverage mandates, to massively bankrupt government programs (just for starters); there are countless government interventions already in place in the medical care market.
True “reform” of the medical care industry would be to de-politicize the marketplace as much as possible. But politicians are more interested in increasing their power than doing what is right.
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