Healthcare is a market industry. It needs to be treated as such. The environment for healthcare providers is unfriendly to free and fair competition. Too much government intervention and too little assistance to the poor.
The free market has caused food to be too readily available and consumers are now getting criticized for becoming obese. If America opens up the healthcare system to the free market, we should be able to complain in 20 years that Americans are too healthy!
1) Limit lawsuits. Doctors normally have 8 years of intense medical training. They work very hard to provide good care for their patients. Sometimes accidents happen, but that shouldn't put doctors out of business. Malpractice insurance continues to be a growing burden to independent doctors and causes medical practices to be consolidated into larger, more bureaucratic organizations devoted to limiting liability rather than providing new and unique ways to ensure care for patients.
2) Private Health Savings Accounts. This is a great idea from DC. Finally, they stepped up and started solving some serious national problems. It is too burdensome for employers to provide 100% medical insurance to employees and shouldn't be required anyway. Also, employer-provided insurance causes workers to be trapped in a job for longer periods of time than necessary. The workers must take steps to owning private savings and investment accounts to increase their ability to take new jobs when available. The HSAs allow people to save tax free money and shop around to doctors that are cheaper and better.
3) Lower Entry Requirements for New Medical Practices. The free market works most efficiently when new businesses can start up quickly and painlessly. This creates more competition, which increases choices for consumers and weeds out poor performing medical practices. Current regulations and training requirements keep good doctors from starting new businesses. Also, many tasks required to be performed by doctors can easily be performed by nurses. If more nurses and physician assistants could perform the same care, the cost of healthcare can be reduced dramatically.
4) Increase the Number of Doctors. The American Medical Association acts as a Doctor's Union to prevent large numbers of medical professionals from being trained. By limiting the number of doctors, the AMA has maintained high salaries for doctors at the expense of the consumer. This has also increased the cost of medical school as they can charge soon-to-be-doctors more money. More doctors opening up more private practices nationwide will go a long way to lowering overall medical costs. When more people have HSAs and can shop around to more medical practices, the healthcare "crisis" will be eliminated without sacrificing the care to patients.
One big problem we have in this country is the appeal of getting things for free or paid by "the rich" through taxes and wealth redistribution schemes. People love the idea of getting things for free and are increasingly expecting to get some things for free. Healthcare costs money. You either pay for it directly, send more income to DC to have them solve your problems or decrease the quality of care. I have heard the phrase in business "you can either get it fast, cheap or good...pick 2." This applies to almost anything in the market. Also, "you get what you pay for."
All freedom comes with responsibilities. Economic freedom make people responsible for their own economic decisions. If you want to not thing and worry about your retirement savings, cost of healthcare or other financial decisions, then you will never achieve economic freedom and will always be captive to politicians using your ignorance as a reason to further their own political agenda.
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