TWIDDLE DEE AND TWIDDLE DUM

From: The LRC Blog:"The Two Planks of the Republican Healthcare Plan" by Lawrence Vance

1. I heard Lamar Alexander (R-TN) on NPR today talking about why the GOP doesn’t like the Democrats’ healthcare plan. It would cut Medicare, says Alexander. I thought Republicans believed that Medicare was socialized medicine?

2. I also heard a GOP partisan recently explain that the Republican healthcare plan includes making insurance companies take people with preexisting conditions. This means that one could purchase insurance after he gets sick, not before. Can I insure my home for fire after a fire starts?

Are there any Republicans besides Ron Paul who actually advocate a real free market in healthcare? That is, no medical licensing laws, no mandatory insurance, no FDA, no Department of Health and Human Services, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no SCHIP, no National Institutes of Health, no restrictions on the sale of medical devices, no federal laboratories, no federal funding of community health centers, no federal grants for medical research, no federal funding of clinical trials, no community rating laws, no federal databases, no special privileges for the AMA or Big Pharma, no restrictions on organ sales, no federal nutrition guidelines, no federal vaccination programs, no HIV/AIDS prevention initiatives, and no federal mandates, controls, or regulations of any kind.

Any Republican in favor of any of these things is not in favor of a free market in healthcare.

They still don't get it. We don't need or want a new Healthcare Plan. We want and need to get the government out of the Medical business.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Thomas-Sowell-Alice-in-health-care-85919882.html

Most discussions of health care are like something out of Alice in Wonderland.

What is the biggest complaint about the current medical care situation? "It costs too much." Yet one looks in vain for anything in the pending legislation that will lower those costs.

One of the biggest reasons for higher medical costs is that somebody else is paying those costs, whether an insurance company or the government. What is the politicians' answer? To have more costs paid by insurance companies and the government.

Back when the "single payer" was the patient, people were more selective in what they spent their own money on. You went to a doctor when you had a broken leg but not necessarily every time you had the sniffles or a skin rash. But, when someone else is paying, that is when medical care gets over-used — and bureaucratic rationing is then imposed, to replace self-rationing.

Money is just one of the costs of people seeking more medical care than they would if they were paying for it with their own money. Both waiting lines and waiting lists grow longer when people with sniffles and minor skin rashes take up the time of doctors, while people with cancer are waiting.

In country after country, the original estimates of government medical care costs almost always turn out to be gross under-estimates of what it ultimately turns out to cost.

Even when the estimates are done honestly, they are based on how much medical care people use when they are paying for it themselves. But having someone else pay for medical care virtually guarantees that a lot more of it will be used.

Thank you Mr. Sowell. Washington DC can you hear us?

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN