Health-Care Reform - Part 1

I have stayed away from the healthcare contract on Intrade for many reasons. One, I consider myself very emotionally charged on the subject and I do no think that I can make an objective decision right now with regards to whether or not it will be passed. Two, the political situation regarding the public option changes quickly and suddenly with every newscycle. One day it looks like public option is going to be passed and then the next it looks like it is going to die. I don't want to get involved right now and have to pay attention to every little news story to make sure that my money is safe. Granted, every contract on Intrade that one acquires requires some constant attention, but the US.GOVT.HEALTHPLAN.DEC09 contract on Intrade is a little too demanding on my time considering how volatile the contract has been.

My thoughts on the public option are these. I think it is a terrible idea. Having the government getting more involved in health-care is not a solution to control costs. If anything the costs of health-care will go up as a result of a public option. The state of Massachusetts has been running a similar health-care program and the costs have gone up and not down. The CATO institute has a good paper detailing the failures of the Massachusetts model here.

What seems to be the primary goal of the Democrats in passing the public option is to have the health-care business under government control and kill the insurance industry. I am no fan of the insurance companies and I think they have been doing a terrible job of helping their own customers but having a government run insurance company doesn't solve anything but getting more people crappy coverage. Now we as taxpayers are going to have to pay for an insurance company to run at a loss.

The Democrats want a single payer healthcare system, they cannot pass it right now so they want to have the government at least become heavily involved and take out some of the insurance companies. How do we expect private run companies that are trying to run a profit to compete with a giant subsidized insurance corporation that can provide more then they could at the expense of us, the taxpayers? The simple fact is that some of them will but many will not. They will be forced out of business and more and more people will have to go to the public option. Once enough people are using it and the insurance industry is all but dead, the Democrats will try to pass a single payer health-care system.

Now, I know we have problems in today's health-care system and costs are burdening the American public. But we need not sacrifice a private industry which is responsible for many of the great advances in medicine that we have seen over the past decades. Tomorrow, I will introduce reforms that will reduce costs, expand coverage, and keep the health-care business in the private market where it belongs.

Here is a recent special by John Stossel on Health-Care reform.