Your editorial, “Repair, don’t replace, health system” (Nov. 1), does not give President Clinton’s plan enough repudiation. Health care is a market. No other market exists in such a mess as health care. No other market has as much government interference and involvement as health care. The correlation is quite clear.
The government brought about this crisis by penalizing, through the tax code, individuals as the primary purchasers of health insurance, by strangling the market through regulation and licensing, by retarding the growth of life-saving drugs through the burdensome Food and Drug Administration, and by allowing the American Medical Association to dictate the supply of doctors while the government’s anti-trust division hunts down Bill Gates. Brevity precludes the Medicaid and Medicare debacle from discussion.
The only scenario that provides a rational for government is when significant “neighborhood effects,” as economist Milton Friedman calls them, exist. If an uninsured motorist is placed in a coma from an accident, the state may end up paying for the bill. To solve this, the state could require citizens to purchase catastrophic health insurance from a number of private insurers.
If we heed the 10th Amendment, the free market versus socialism debate will end. Enact the president’s plan in half of the states. Slash government control and interference in the other half. The nation will soon learn. The only trouble is we can’t remember the lessons.
