Gop Fights Against Free Market Measures in Health Reform

Yes, the world is topsy-turvy these days.  The GOP is fighting against the very end-of-life care they proposed and supported in 2003 and have taken to calling it “death panels”, Patriotic Glenn Beck hopes for another attack on the US by Osama bin Laden, and the supposedly capitalist right wing is fighting to defend a health care system in which there is no functioning free market.

In order for a free market to function and produce good outcomes, you need for consumers to (at a minimum) know the cost and quality of the services they’re paying for, and you need for them to have a genuine choice.  That way, the providers of those services must compete for customers by lowering costs and/or increasing quality.  That’s competition the health care industry doesn’t want, because they would have to charge less and invest in quality improvements to attract customers, cutting into their massive profits.

In the current HMO system set up by Nixon, there is no free market in any meaningful sense.  Americans don’t have free choice of their insurer when insurers can turn away people based on pre-existing conditions, or drop them when they get too sick.  They don’t have free choice of care when an insurance company bureaucrat decides what procedures and medicines are medically necessary and which aren’t.  They don’t have free choice of doctors when they must pick from a list provided by their insurer.  The most basic element of the free market – free choice – is missing in the current system.  The author’s friend has moved from Canada to the US and complains about the lack of choice here.

And even if American had free choice, there is no transparency in cost and quality.  Americans generally don’t know how much a procedure will cost until it’s over, and there’s no independent review board to tell you which doctors are better at what. American health care consumers are flying blind.

The reform proposed by the President increases consumer choice by banning discrimination based on pre-existing conditions and ends the insurance company practice of dropping coverage for the seriously ill and guarantees insurance renewal.  In other words, it ends “rationing” by health insurers.The public option would increase the choices available to consumers, and would force private insurers to compete.  If the private sector can provide a better product at lower cost, no one will choose the public option anyway.   

The reform doesn’t fully solve the problems of transparency in cost and quality, but at least it makes small steps in that direction. The plan brings more cost and quality information to consumers by allowing for coordinated care and providing for end-of-life counseling.  It provides for medical forms to be standardized and easier for the consumer to understand.  It’s not much, but it’s a start.

So, the tea-partiers can continue to shut down debate and defend a system that costs us more, gives us less, and covers fewer of us.  Or, they can stand up for the free market by supporting the President’s health care proposals.  Alas, even with the perfect policy, conservatives seem too full of hate to get behind the president on anything.  Ah well, a person can dream…

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