Thursday, February 19, 2004
How should politicians address the health care issue?
[John Hood, "Diagnosing the Health Care Issue," Daily Journal, The John Locke Foundation, 17 February 2004.]
In this column by John Locke Foundation president John Hood, he asks the important question: What are politicians supposed to do about health care?
As he explains, the best thing they can do for consumers and taxpayers is to simply get out of the way:
[I]f all American voters mean by "address health care" is that they want the government to deliver it, finance it, or regulate its cost, then their sentiment is nothing more than a dressed-up demand for income redistribution. The "government" has no money. Taxpayers have money. Governments exist to do coercive things. If you want the government to give you free or cheap health care, what you really want politicians to do is force some of your fellow citizens to pay for their own health care and for your health care.
If, on the other hand, American voters have the sense that their choices within the medical marketplace are unnecessarily constricted and unnecessarily costly, then the government can address the problem without having to expand the income-redistribution schemes they already operate, and preferably while reducing said schemes. For example, the federal and state income-tax codes warp the market for health care by imposing punitive levies on people who buy their own medical services and (though this is improving somewhat) their own health plans. Additional government-imposed regulations and premium taxes made it hard for individuals to own their own plans and make their own decisions, which is the real answer to the problem of controlling cost without depriving people of needed health care.
For all its faults, the new Medicare legislation has authorized health saving accounts to give Americans more latitude to take the same tax deductions for their medical savings and spending as they -- and to a larger extent their more-affluent peers working at large companies -- have enjoyed for years with regard to employer-based health plans.
If voters want more power, more control, more options, and more savings, the good news is that politicians can certainly deliver without picking someone else's pocket. All they have to do is get themselves, and their biased tax and regulatory policies, of the way.
[Richard B. Warner, M.D., "How Would You Like Your Medicine?," The Flint Hills Center for Public Policy, 24 July 1999.]
[John Hood, "Diagnosing the Health Care Issue," Daily Journal, The John Locke Foundation, 17 February 2004.]
In this column by John Locke Foundation president John Hood, he asks the important question: What are politicians supposed to do about health care?
As he explains, the best thing they can do for consumers and taxpayers is to simply get out of the way:
[I]f all American voters mean by "address health care" is that they want the government to deliver it, finance it, or regulate its cost, then their sentiment is nothing more than a dressed-up demand for income redistribution. The "government" has no money. Taxpayers have money. Governments exist to do coercive things. If you want the government to give you free or cheap health care, what you really want politicians to do is force some of your fellow citizens to pay for their own health care and for your health care.
If, on the other hand, American voters have the sense that their choices within the medical marketplace are unnecessarily constricted and unnecessarily costly, then the government can address the problem without having to expand the income-redistribution schemes they already operate, and preferably while reducing said schemes. For example, the federal and state income-tax codes warp the market for health care by imposing punitive levies on people who buy their own medical services and (though this is improving somewhat) their own health plans. Additional government-imposed regulations and premium taxes made it hard for individuals to own their own plans and make their own decisions, which is the real answer to the problem of controlling cost without depriving people of needed health care.
For all its faults, the new Medicare legislation has authorized health saving accounts to give Americans more latitude to take the same tax deductions for their medical savings and spending as they -- and to a larger extent their more-affluent peers working at large companies -- have enjoyed for years with regard to employer-based health plans.
If voters want more power, more control, more options, and more savings, the good news is that politicians can certainly deliver without picking someone else's pocket. All they have to do is get themselves, and their biased tax and regulatory policies, of the way.
[Richard B. Warner, M.D., "How Would You Like Your Medicine?," The Flint Hills Center for Public Policy, 24 July 1999.]
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