Republican Health Care Contradictions
By Richard E. Ralston
August 25, 2004
At their National Convention, Republicans will complain of John
Kerry’s habit of complicating complex issues with even more complex
and mutually exclusive solutions. On the issue of health care,
however, the Democratic Platform has clear and straight-forward
proposals—everyone has a “right” to healthcare, no matter what it
costs—and the government should expropriate needed funds plus the
lives of health care professionals to provide and regulate health
care for all. Americans who want to turn ownership of their bodies
over to the federal government and trust Uncle Sam to meet all of
their needs at least have something to go on here.
According to the “GOP Agenda” listed on the Web site of the
Republican National Committee, they have some interesting proposals
that would reduce government controls and taxes and provide more
free market options. What they have actually done has been in the
opposite direction. Americans making their decisions on how to vote
in this fall’s elections are therefore left without much to go on.
Republicans take credit for the Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)
passed in last year’s Medicare Prescription Drug Bill. They do not
mention how the bill’s projected ten-year cost of $400 billion will
be paid for—nor the fact that within a few weeks of the bill’s
passing, the Office of Management and Budget corrected that to over
$560 billion, nor that all projections for the following tens years
are in the range of $2 trillion. It did create HSAs. That was
a minor improvement in tax law and a step in the right direction.
But it was rather like the Captain of the U-Boat who torpedoes your
cruise ship also providing you with a rubber raft. The deal just
wasn’t worth it.
The Republicans do advocate some good ideas. These include tax
deductions for the cost of high-deductible health insurance premiums
in conjunction with HSAs—and tax credits for low-income families
buying their own health insurance. Unlike the Democrats, they also
support medical liability reform that would reduce the increasing
share of our health care costs ending up in the pockets of trial
lawyers. Then they praise the largest expansion of government in the
last forty years, the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, as President
Bush’s primary “accomplishment.” Evidently 130,000 pages of Medicare
Regulations were not enough. The Bush Administration has just
released a draft 1300-page regulation to implement the new bill—and
thereby brighten the lives of pharmacists throughout America.
Unfortunately the choice for voters seems to be between bad
principles with potentially disastrous consequences (the Democrats),
and better—if superficial—principles to be implemented by
pragmatists looking for any political excuse to ignore them (the
Republicans). No one addresses the root problems.
One problem is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans
have any idea how to pay for what they advocate. They are only a few
decades behind the politicians in countries such as Canada, Britain,
France, and Germany who now struggle to ration benefits and add
private providers to systems whose costs are completely out of
control.
What would happen if everyone had the “right” to have the
government supply whatever food or housing they wanted? The cost of
food and housing would expand exponentially until government
controls followed suit, and everyone would find their choice of food
and housing determined by the government. Both would become
increasingly scarce for everyone except a government-sanctioned
elite. That actually has happened wherever it has been attempted.
With health care in America we can see this beginning already. The
only solution lies in dealing with the other root problem.
Government provided health care can increase only in inverse
proportion to freedom. Controls and regulations crowd out
individuals who manage their own health and physicians who manage
their own careers and the free choices that both make. Until one
party figures out that the only sound basis for health care is
individual rights and free choice in the market place, we won’t have
much from which to choose.
Richard E. Ralston is Executive Director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine.
Copyright © 2004 Americans for Free Choice in Medicine. All rights reserved.
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