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Redstate
When
Will Republicans Understand
Free Market Healthcare?
By: Daniel Horowitz
April 18th, 2013
Healthcare
is one of the most
complex policy issues. The
lack of free
market healthcare, engendered by endless government interventions (and
secondary interventions to fix the original interventions), has made
policy
solutions even more cumbersome. But
the
overarching principle of any reform must begin with the understanding
that
federal intervention in the healthcare industry has inexorably driven
up the
cost of healthcare and health insurance.
As such, no healthcare policy panacea
can begin with growing government
and further distorting the already grossly-altered healthcare market.
Instead
of proposing more free
market solutions, Republicans are offering pale-pastel versions of
Democrat
government intervention as solutions.
Here are two examples.
Last
week, Congressman Larry
Bucshon (R-IN) introduced the Orwellian-named “Truth in Healthcare
Marketing
Act of 2013” (HR 1427) – a bill that forces optometrists to disclose
all their
licensing and qualifications in all advertising.
It grants wide latitude to the Federal
Trade
Commission to regulate and penalize offenders.
The bill is heavily backed by special
interest hustlers like the AMA and
American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO).
The ophthalmologist lobby doesn’t want
competition from cheaper
healthcare providers (optometrists), and they want to use the boot of
the
federal government to ensnare them in red tape.
It
is this sort of anti-free market
special interest legislating that has crowded out choice and
competition from
the marketplace. The
reality is that
there are already strict laws in most states to punish those
optometrists who
step outside of their scope of service beyond their qualifications.
There is no
reason, beyond special interest politicking, for the federal government
to get
involved. The bill
was introduced on
April 9, a day before the AAOs national meetings in DC commenced.
John
Sullivan of Oklahoma
introduced the same bill during last Congress (along with his special
interest
T. Boone Pickens Nat Gas handout).
He
was defeated. Enough
said.
The
second example is Eric Cantor’s
bill to spend $4 billion on an Obamacare program to cover pre-existing
conditions,
a program that even Obama doesn’t want.
Cantor plans to bring the Pre-Existing
Conditions Insurance Plan (PCIP)
(HR 1549) to the floor next week…
Read
the rest of the article at
Redstate
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