Posted on 06/20/2009 6:14:17 PM PDT by secretagent
It's true that the U.S. health care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing government controls.
It's time to get serious about health care reform. Tax credits, vouchers, and privatization will go a long way toward decentralizing the system and removmg unnecessary burdens from business. But four additional steps must also be taken:
1. Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health care personnel. Their supply would almost instantly increase, prices would fall, and a greater variety of health care services would appear on the market.
(snip)
2. Eliminate all government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and medical devices. This means no more Food and Drug Administration, which presently hinders innovation and increases costs.
(snip)
3. Deregulate the health insurance industry.
(snip)
4. Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy. Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. Subsidies for the ill and diseased breed illness and disease, and promote carelessness, indigence, and dependency. If we eliminate them, we would strengthen the will to live healthy lives and to work for a living. In the first instance, that means abolishing Medicare and Medicaid.
(Excerpt) Read more at mises.org ...
I'll add that the order of change matters a lot: eliminate welfare for the rich first.
Ending the War on Self-Medicators would help as well.
Written in 1993, but still fresh.
Written in 1993, but still fresh.
What health care system will the Canadians use when we ruin ours??
Not only is it not true, it's a gargantuan lie.
4. Cap all medical suit settlements and create barriers to spurious suits.
5. Get the Gub’mint out of health care by phasing out medicare and medicaid over the next two generations.
Without the pressure valve that the US system provided, Canada’s will change... or melt down. There’s no way it can go on as is without a place to deal with the people who need real treatment.
4. 1. Cap all medical suit settlements and create barriers to spurious suits.
5. 2. Get the Gub’mint out of health care by phasing out medicare and medicaid over the next two generations.
One of the stupidest things I have ever read. This should embarrass even the staunchest libertarian.
parsy, who is ROTFLMAO
No Healthcare Plan is complete without the removal of OBAMA!
Unlicensed doctors and hospitals? Whoa! Zap, I'm a doctor! That means anyone could open a "hospital" staffed with "doctors?" Sure, people would eventually find out they were bad, but what about the first people who went to them? Tough luck? Buyer beware?
Eliminate all government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and medical devices. Snake oil salesmen can now sell you their miracle product to cure cancer AND baldness. I'm thinking of cooking up my old recipe to cure herpes. Orange crush mixed with Cherry Coke and a little Mountain Dew. Also a slug of ethanol and a free condom with every bottle. Guaranteed or your money back! I aim to make a fortune.
Tax credits and deregulation?? So Ludwig von Mises institute ( a libertarian organization) supports using tax credits and deregulation to solve the “health care” issue.
Didn’t some one who ran for President in 2008 support a $5,000 tax credit and deregulation to allow people to purchase their own heathcare?? What was his name?? Wasn’t it Mc Someting..?
Yes, yes, yes, kinda. For some people, there is no free market solution to their medical problems, and hoping private charity will fill the gap is naive, IMO. For example, psychotic and schizophrenic homeless people, who need medication or even psychiatric care. Let’s do the first three, give the industry time to adjust, and see what happens. It may be that health care services and products become cheap enough that private welfare systems (families, churches, charities, etc.) can fill this gap. But it may not. Consider viral outbreaks, for example. Is there no role at all for the government here?
The Lew Rockwell types are too dogmatically anti-government, rather than pragmatic and wise, like Hayek, Friedman, or Coase. They could learn from those guys.
Whenever a politician or a pundit says health “care” when they mean health “insurance” you can be sure you are on the recieving end of a snowjob.
5. Get the Gub’mint out of health care by phasing out medicare and medicaid over the next two generations.
I like your #4.
#5 - good, though it sounds like it might take too long.
I think that that Hoppe agree with you on the tax credits - not a free enterprise solution. Perhaps a step towards one, though.
Good point.
Easily contagious diseases could be said to "initiate force", meriting a libertarian government response.
Quoting the article:
"Competing voluntary accreditation agencies would take the place of compulsory government licensing--if health care providers believe that such accreditation would enhance their own reputation, and that their consumers care about reputation, and are willing to pay for it."
"Because consumers would no longer be duped into believing that there is such a thing as a "national standard" of health care, they will increase their search costs and make more discriminating health care choices."
To which I'll add this example: people already try to determine who's a good doctor through word of mouth. They don't just depend on government licensing.
Interesting. Would you expand on that, please?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.