Free Free Market vs. The Party

The recent health care summit tells the whole story of what this administration is all about: a quest for authoritarian, dictatorial power. The president pressured Republican congressional leaders to attend a meeting with him and Democrats. The Republicans were reminded that they must address BHO as President Obama or Mr. President. Yet he addressed them by first name. What ever happened the the co-equal branches of government? After months of stating that the Republicans had proposed no health care ideas of their own, he summarily dismissed their proposals as unacceptable. He then lectured the Republicans for using "talking points" and for "campaigning." In point of fact, his and the Democrat's only arguments against the Republican proposals were that they could not be passed by Congress. In other words, they would vote against them. That is precisely why the republicans don't have bills being considered in congress. Since they are a minority and the Democrats are not in a bipartisan mood, any Republican bill is dead on arrival. BHO and the Democrats have constantly claimed that the Republicans have no ideas. One Democrat, who was quoted for a week in the press, stated that Republicans' only health care plan was that if you are sick, you should die. These types of statements by BHO and the Democrats are in fact only propaganda, campaigning talking points. Just because the press didn't point it out, does not mean it isn't so.

The Republican ideas include removing state regulations so individuals can shop for any type of health insurance policy that they want. Income tax deductible of individual health care and insurance should remove the bias in favor of employer provided coverage and promote portability. Insures would be required to participate in high risk pools to take pre-existing conditions and other high risks at a predetermined rate. For those who cannot afford available coverage, the state would subsidise care on a sliding scale. Private charities could also play a roll. Private insurance companies and all types of providers would be in constant competition to provide the best and lowest cost care. Some providers would of course contract with insurance companies to provide specialised care for certain expensive cases. The roll of the state could be minimal. Consumer protection agencies could closely police any violations of the contractual responsibilities of the parties involved. This would augment normal legal remedies. Tort lawyers would play the roll that they currently do of obtaining compensation for those who are seriously injured by negligently shoddy care or by breaches of contract. As far as tort reform, some sort of limits on judgements could be set. Judges and juries do a fair job of doing this already. The benefit of this type of tort reform would be to keep down the number of expensive tests. This would happen by reducing defensive medicine and by reducing expensive procedures preformed under the pretense of defensive medicine.

There are many market refinements possible that would need only minimal and probably no new types of government involvement. What is needed is less regulation to let the efficiencies of the market do the job, not the bureaucrats. This is what Republicans, at least the conservatives, want. This is what Democrats, at least the Progressives, Communists, and Socialists do not want. With little or no government involvement, we would not need them.