Health Care Taker Over, Or Health Care Reform?

Personally I would prefer reform of our current system to allow true competition between both insurance companies and doctors. In other words let's put the free market to work along with tort reform to bring down costs for health care and health care insurance. We do not need to allow the big finger of government to impact the cost of health care anymore than it does today.

Because of current Government intervention we should all ask ourselves along with our Senators and Congressmen these simple questions:

1. Why is it that I can only buy insurance from companies operating in the state I live in?
2. Why don't doctors post their basic costs for basic services like a physical exam, or blood test, or to sew up a cut that requires 10 stitches or so?
   
3. Why can't one have a health savings account that grows like an IRA for medical needs in later years of life in addition to regular insurance if one so chooses?

These are thee very simple questions, but questions that must be answered. Do you really think that insurance companies choose not to sell their products outside the states they operate in, or do you believe there must be some federal or state regulation that keeps them from doing so? Have you ever looked at your insurance summary after a doctor visit where the doctor may charge $200.00 for a procedure but the insurance company only covered $105.00 plus your co-pay and wondered what that procedure is really worth? Do you believe that because insurance companies operate only in the states they are based in that they can dictate what they pay doctors? Do you believe that if we operated a true free market system with health care providers that they would not advertise or promote costs for basic straight forward procedures?

In most every case here, some form of government regulation has impeded the free market system and the rule of unintended (well, perhaps they are unintended) consequences comes into play. We do not need more government intervention, we need less!

All this talk of a single payer system is quite frankly; Stupid. In my opinion, anyone that thinks a single payer (the government public option) will bring down costs by forcing private companies to abide by the same rules and the government option is either naive, completely uneducated in economics, a fascist, or all of the above.

Let me ask this simple question: Has anyone out there ever made a choice to shop at Wal Mart before Wal Mart became a convenience? Probably so, and probably because they offered lower prices than their competitors. Pretty good reason. What if Wal Mart was never allowed to operate beyond the state lines of Arkansas, would they ever have had the same impact on the marketplace as today? Or think about this.; if Wal Mart had no competitors, in other words, there was only one option for your shopping pleasure; would their prices be as low as they are today? Would they respond to any of your product requests? Would their check out service be worse or better than it is today? Do you think they would worry about keeping the shelves stocked, or the floors clean?

What about suppliers? Would there be any incentive to come up with as many new items if they could sell to only one distribution channel and that channel could dictate how much they would pay? Would there be an incentive to improve on the items produced today? What if the only option available to sell goods to could dictate what the profit structure of the supplier should be? What would that picture look like? Well, if you have not figure it out, I will tell you. It would look just like our health care system with a government take over.

Look, Wal Mart has achieved what it has because of our free market system; more power to them. But consumers can also thank our free market system for our shopping OPTIONS. We can still choose to shop at Whole Foods, Publix, Harris Teeter, Kroger, or any number of other supermarkets because we do have a choice, we have OPTIONS. And its because of our Free Market System that we have those choices, not in spite of it. Not only that, our free market system keeps each of those competitors on their toes!

We do not need a government take over of our health care. We need government to allow the free market to work in our heath care industry just like it does in retail or any other segment of our economy.