Scott Adams is right again ... nobody really understands all the ins and outs of Obamacare or Trumpcare ... "confusopolies" -- laws designed to confound voters with complexity ... see:
Dilbert Blog. However, there are some Occam's razors that can cut through some of this complexity. Let me offer a few that I think clarifies things a mite:
- In 1980, healthcare costs consumed 10% of the US economy. Today, after over 36 years of "solutions" this sector has grown to almost 18% ... see:
Commonwealth Fund. So, none of these schemes, including Obamacare, has bent down the cost curve. And, it seems problematic that Trumpcare will succeed where other confusopolies have failed.
- One reason for such a large share of our GNP, that healthcare consumes, is the false notion that healthcare insurance (including Medicaid and Medicare) equals healthcare. For years every American, including immigrants ... legal and illegal ...have been guaranteed healthcare. When you insert a middleman between a patient and a doctor, you by definition increase costs. The bill of goods that liberals have sold to Americans is that everyone needs healthcare insurance (i.e., a middleman). Why? Since this is one major reason for our inflation in healthcare costs?
- Flash ... the liberals ultimate solution to this confusopoly, single-payer healthcare (i.e. socialized medicine), does not eliminate these insurance middlemen ... it just replaces them with government bureaucrats. When was the last time that government was more efficient and effective than private industry? Conservative Charles Krauthammer believes that, within 7 years years, we will be forced into having a single payer system ... the
sotto voce goal of Obamacare. This will mean the ultimate distruction of what was once the world's premier healthcare system.
- Another reason that U.S. healthcare costs are so high is that, because of the insertion of insurance companies between patients and doctors, free-market forces have disappeared. A patient who gets a knee replacement does not know (nor care) if it costs $2,000 or $20,000 ... and, in fact, seldom actually sees the ultimate bill? So, what do you think the cost turns out to be?
- To make matters even worse, liberals have sold Americans on the notion that, even
without mandated healthcare insurance, people can wait until they are sick to buy such insurance ... or what has been known as "no denial for pre-existing conditions." This is like allowing you to buy home fire insurance just when the fire engines are on their way ... clearly fiscal insanity.
The real resolution for run-away healthcare costs, if the American people want a solution, would be disintermediation ... the elimination of the healthcare middlemen ... and the unleashing of free-market forces. Trumpcare takes baby steps in this direction. Will it, or its Senate remake, continue on this path? The 2018 midterm elections will be determinative. Let's hope Krauthammer is wrong for a change.
An easy way to tell whether the American consumer will be the winner when the Obamacare fix is finished ... watch to see if the stock prices of the healthcare insurers tank. If so, we win.
