{"id":18053,"date":"2010-03-17T13:40:22","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T18:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=18053"},"modified":"2010-03-17T13:40:22","modified_gmt":"2010-03-17T18:40:22","slug":"the-real-problem-with-healthcare-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=18053","title":{"rendered":"The Real Problem With Healthcare In America"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t think anybody who regularly reads TAH would disagree that the healthcare bills that have passed the House and Senate are complete monstrosities. Even many Democrats that have voted for and supported one of the bills agree that they are “far from perfect<\/a>” but one must be passed for the sake of passing a bill with the word healthcare in it. I could take up the entire front page and spend most of St. Patrick’s day delving into the downright insane provisions in these bills, but I am not going to do that because I want to start drinking soon. Besides, they have already been well documented by other bloggers (especially by Michelle Malkin<\/a> and by the writers at National Review<\/a>) and I would just be repeating what they have already said.<\/p>\n

One thing I would like to discuss however is what the real problem is with healthcare in America. The media and pretty much everybody in Washington are saying the problem with healthcare is access<\/strong> to healthcare (or the cost of access to healthcare insurance) but the real problem is the cost<\/strong> of healthcare itself. Immediately, some would say that they are the same thing, but they are not. What drives the level of access to healthcare is the cost of healthcare services, equipment, and the cost to pay healthcare professionals. The higher the cost is, the less access many Americans have to healthcare. The Democrats (and even many Republicans) have bought into the idea that what is primarily driving the cost of healthcare higher is the insurance industry’s insatiable drive for profits. However, the insurance industry has some of the lowest profit margins<\/a> of any industry and the rise in premiums has matched the high levels of inflation in the cost of healthcare. This brings us to the fundamental issue with the healthcare reform bills being pushed today: THEY DON’T ADDRESS THE REAL PROBLEM<\/strong>. These bills address access<\/strong> and not cost. <\/strong>All they do is shift the burden of cost around.<\/p>\n

So what can the government do to reduce the cost of healthcare? Well, its not so much of what it should do but what is shouldn’t be doing. Healthcare is one of the most heavily regulated industries in America, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that more regulation inevitably drives up cost. Everything from the cost of getting a drug approved by the FDA to the cost of getting a license to practice medicine drives up the price of healthcare. Look at the price of medical equipment for example. Why has the cost of technology that contain microprocessors (from computers to PDAs to even flat screen TVs) gone down significantly over the years while medical equipment that contains most of the same technology continued to go up? I don’t think the insurance companies are to blame for that one.\u00a0 Then there is the contentious issue of tort reform. The amount that has to be paid by healthcare providers to cover potential liabilities, while not significant for some larger providers, has driven many smaller providers of healthcare (i.e. doctors in small offices) out of certain medical fields or out of the profession completely. This increases demand on fewer providers, and BOOM basic economics 101 you have higher prices. I could go on, but I think you can get the picture.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I don’t expect Washington to reverse course and address the real problem. It is much easier for Congress to blame the health insurance industry for the rising cost of healthcare than to look in the mirror and see who is really raising the cost of healthcare in America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t think anybody who regularly reads TAH would disagree that the healthcare bills that have … The Real Problem With Healthcare In America<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/607"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}