Free Market Fundamentalist Opinion

Getting the Government Out of Health Care

One year after Obamacare, it’s clearer than ever that health care needs less government, not more.

On the one year anniversary of the president’s health reform effort, more Americans than ever favor repeal of “Obamacare.” That alone would not free the health insurance market from government interference, though.

Massive government intervention in the health-care industry preceded Obamacare and so distorted market incentives and competition that today, half of all health-care spending in the United States is government spending. It is why America’s health care system is broken and why more government won’t fix it.

In anticipation of Obamacare’s full implementation, private insurers are already raising premiums. Medicare and Medicaid spending are expected to skyrocket in the next decade. Medicaid alone grew by nearly 10 percent in 2009 as people lost their jobs and with it, their health insurance and because Democrats expanded coverage for children of the working poor.

With tens of millions of Americans dependent on their government for health care and tens of millions more joining their ranks under the new health reform law, the entitlement mentality that presumes health care to be a “right” will likely be amplified in the years ahead.

Health care cannot be a right for it requires that others provide it. Doctors should not be forced by law to do their job if they chose not to.

There is no reason to suppose that more regulation will fix the problems caused by regulation in the first place. The only viable and the only righteous alternative is to privatize health care entirely.

As Grace-Marie Turner, president and founder of the Galen Institute said on the Fox Business Network’s Freedom Watch Wednesday, people “need to be consumers.”

If patients chose their own doctor and doctors chose their patients, people will receive the best care their money can buy, with the doctor’s voluntary consent. It might leave millions irresponsible and uninsured but without government coercion, health care can be affordable.