Thursday, January 21, 2010

Affordability of Health Care

A primary reason that health care is unaffordable today is that much of the system was designed to siphon off resources from patients to the special causes favored by the political class.

From an economic perspective, health care is simply the application of labor and knowledge to issues of health. Labor will rush to whatever areas give the highest return for the investment of time; so the costs of health care should be a pariety between health care and other segments of the economy.

Unfortunately, the political class is rife with Robbinhood-style delusions that they were endowed by the creator to rob from Peter to care for Paul, and end up pricing Peter out of care.

Our current health care system is defined by progressive tools for redistributing care. Doctors pay outlandish progressive taxes. They are burdened with onerous malpractice law and an inpenetrable wall of regulations. The flow of cash in health care is controlled by insurance (a mechanism to redistribute health care resource). There is very little honest human to human negotiation and trade in the system.

The do-gooders behind the money shuffle fail to acknowledge that this paper shuffle is the thing which prices people out of the market. By pricing people out of access to care, the Robinhoods of health care do substantially more harm than good through their efforts.

Looking at health care as a whole, one realizes that a system of fair pricing would do a better job of distributing resources. Conversely, the artificial acts designed to do good have the negative effect of concentrating wealth and pricing the lower middle class out of access to health care resources.

The do-gooder's efforts to save ten price a hundred out of the market.

As everyone needs health care, at some point in their lives, it is far better to design a system that empowers the people to one that empowers an elite that views itself as Gods.

If we pulled all of the garbage in the medical system that was designed to redistribute care, we would find the price of health care dropping and we would find more people getting better care a living longer.

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