Issue Position: Healthcare
Issue Position
Issue Position: Healthcare
Health care in the United States is facing dual crises: more than 47 million Americans lack access to health insurance and soaring health care costs are a burden on families, employers and the federal government. The answer to these problems is less government regulations, not more. The Federal government should not mandate HMOs and should allow all citizens to purchase insurance from outside of their home state (the Constitution grants the Federal government authority over interstate commerce) to encourage competition and lower prices from health insurance providers. Healthcare is nearly 17 percent of our nations GDP. Government healthcare proposals do not address the waste, fraud, over billing, over testing, and charges for services not provided; all of which are existing problems in Medicare and Medicaid. Furthermore the line we keep hearing is "we must do something now otherwise Medicare and Medicaid will take up the entirety of the federal budget"; if this is really true why will allowing more healthcare to be provided by the government somehow magically cost less? The answer is that it won't because there is nothing that government does that is more efficient or less costly than the private sector; government does not and will not ever have the same incentives to stay efficient like a business does because businesses must stay efficient or they will go bankrupt. Will socialized medicine reduce research and innovation in medicines and diagnostic tools/equipment? In the 1960's Western Europe was leading in the development of new medicines. Following the socialization of their health care, America has become the leader of new development and testing. Will waits increase for elective surgeries? Will a shortage of doctors cause rationing? These questions are dodged by proponents of universal healthcare. Furthermore if the citizenry really wants universal healthcare, it would be more cost effective at the state level; as bad as the state is at balancing a budget, the federal government doesn't even seem to try. States have Constitutional authority to address healthcare, not the federal government (though I would rather neither try to run healthcare and instead leave healthcare to the free market). When costs of a federal plan skyrocket, you can bet California will be the state that's taxed with the bill.
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