"It's truly a government-run system. We need to streamline it. I like a step toward free market principles. It would restore the relationship between the patient and physician. Congress and federal employees have a better healthcare system than the American people," McCaul said.
The biggest reason for escallating medical prices is that there is no price/service competition for routine medical services. Medical costs for procedures that are not covered by insurance have dropped. Consumers do not pay doctors - they pay insurance companies. Returning to direct payments would go a long way to reign in medical costs.
Ideally, individuals would buy health insurance like they buy car and home insurance. Insurance would cover catastrophic problems (like accident/fire/theft) and individuals would pay for regular maintenance issues (oil change = checkup, tires = common illnesses) directly. Competition would create different service/price markets. Providers would then have an incentive to be innovative and lower prices. Today they have an incentive to see as many patients as they can and give each one a prescription.
Since medical insurance was made deductible for employers, it has become an entitlement of employment. That must change for free market competition to work. Unfortunately, it will take a long time to declaw this monster. The huge insurance, hospital, HMO and pharmaceutical companies will not want anyone to take away the goose that is laying golden eggs for them even if the same goose is eating the shirt off of their customers' backs.
Both candidates seem to have a surface understanding that there is a problem but not much more detail.
In every single job where it's been offered as an opt-in package, I have chosen against taking the medical benefits plan and where possible asked them to simply substitute it with more in my paycheck. Sadly, people have grown accustomed to thinking they deserve medical as part of their employment package and seem to have no idea that getting it comes at the expense of their salary among other things. I figure I may need to get a non-emergency insurance package some day but simply don't find it economical right now as do millions of other young people who are similarly situated to myself - i.e. they could get it if they wanted but doing so would be throwing money down the toilet. I accordingly resent it more that all but a few other issues when some politician gets in front of a microphone, cites some uninsured stat that includes the voluntary members of that category including me, and then tries to inform me that he's going to "fix" that "problem" with some government handout. There is nothing in this world that even gives him the right to presume that I want what he's offering, much less to cite me as in need of his program thus I have very little tolerance for any politician who wants to do anything with government healthcare programs other than abolish them.
In fact, that leads to some more questions that McCaul and Streusand should answer:
1. As congressman will you vote to remove non-emergency health care payments to illegal aliens?
2. If you were a congressman at the time, would you have voted "no" on the Bush Medicare expansion act of 2003?
3. If the opportunity arises while you are in congress, will you vote to repeal the Bush Medicare expansion act of 2003?
A yes or no answer would suffice for all three questions and in fact I would be more skeptical of a candidate if he offered anything more than an unqualified yes or no on any of these question.