Another Bad Idea on Healthcare

The Senate is set to vote on key aspects of the proposed healthcare bill. Specifically what they are voting on is whether or not to partially fund the bill by decreasing Medicare funding by $460 billion. The Democrats say this proposal wouldn’t hurt Medicare because it would simply eliminate waste and inefficiency from the system.

I don’t understand how these people think. It is truly beyond my comprehension how anybody can think this healthcare bill is a good idea. Even the most basic understanding of economics shows that it’s a terrible way to go about healthcare reform.

I have previously written about the massive failings of Medicare, and how much of our current problems with increasing prices and dropped coverage stem from this broken, socialist system. Now, their solution is to fix the problem that Medicare caused by making Medicare even worse.

This is just another example of government repeating its same mistakes. How on earth could we fix the problem by repeating the same mistakes that caused it in the first place? Not only does this current legislation seek to repeat the same mistakes, it actually aggravates them.

Medicare is already broken. It’s an inherently flawed system – something that can’t be fixed just by giving it more money. Simply providing more money doesn’t do anything to change the backwards incentives it creates nor does it change the inefficient, complex central planning that is inherent is such a program. So while Medicare can’t be fixed by getting more money, our healthcare system as a whole can be made even worse by cutting even more money from Medicare.

Already the reimbursement rates and formulas are inadequate, and to try to keep the system alive while cannibalizing it makes no sense. This bill is economically backwards and will do absolutely nothing to reform healthcare. It takes the lazy route by trying to address only the symptoms of a broken healthcare system, while completely ignoring the causes.

For true healthcare reform, in a way that will actually work, which includes eliminating Medicare and Medicaid, click here. We have all become so caught up in the details of Obama’s ideas for healthcare reform that we never stop to think if it’s the right kind of reform. Opponents to this bill are immediately labeled as anti-reform. That is absolutely not true. Instead we are trying bring some semblance to conversation and not rush hastily down a dead end street, but instead recognize there are other ways to go about reform that don’t include an eventual government take over.

You can craft the straightest, most perfectly designed arrow, but it will never hit its target if it’s shot in the wrong direction.