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Ryancare is failing. What Should Happen Next? By Tho Bishop
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Ryancare is Failing — What Should Happen Next?
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TAGS Free MarketsHealthU.S. Economy
16 HOURS AGOTho Bishop
The beltway Republicans are scrambling now that it seems the Obamacare replacement package put forward for Paul Ryan and endorsed by Donald Trump can’t get enough support to get through the House. The failure of the American Health Care Act should surprise no one, as it is a piece of legislation that managed to please no one. The Freedom Caucus, made up of the “true believers” of the Tea Party, balked at its similarities to Obamacare, while more moderate members found the bill’s modest change to the ACA too radical for their tastes.
While the failure of the Ryan/Trump/Whatevercare represents a political defeat for the president and GOP leadership, it is probably a net-win for those who oppose socialized healthcare. After all, nothing could be more beneficial to the Bernie Sanders-wing of the Democratic party than for the nominally “free market” Republicans passing its own brand of reform that fails to fix America’s insurance market. Much like the 2008 financial crisis, its collapse would absurdly be seen as a defeat for “capitalism” and be used as justification for even more government control.
The unfortunate reality going forward is that more significant approaches to healthcare reform, such as the bill pushed by Senator Rand Paul and his allies in the House, are unlikely to find enough support in the Senate. Further, considering the way the media portrayed the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the ACHA, which noted that 14 million consumers may no longer purchase healthcare without an individual mandate and therefore are “losing coverage,” any healthcare plan that comes close to pricing real healthcare risks (like properly accounting for the costs of those with pre-existing conditions) will be skewered relentlessly. This is all before even addressing the problems caused by Medicare and Medicaid.
This is precisely why attempts to push grand “free market” reforms in the Federal government end in failure. Few politicians in DC have the economic lens required to appreciate how necessary these tough decisions are, so Federal politics simply becomes a race to see which party can buy more votes than the other.
Given this grave reality, is there anything that can be done to improve American healthcare?
The answer is it is already happening because of the market.
Increasingly, doctors are abandoning the broken insurance model and claiming their own independence by offering direct patient care. As Business Insider profiled recently, around 1,000 doctors (and counting) are moving toward charging patients a monthly membership fee for service and then patients pay a la carte for the services they actually need. This allows clinics to eliminate most of the administrative costs and it restores the relationship between doctor and patient that has been undermined by a century of government intervention. For more specialized care, clinics …read more
Source:: The Korelin Economics Report
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