Voodoo Health Economics
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Elizabeth Edwards has cancer. John McCain has had cancer in the past. Last weekend, Mrs. Edwards bluntly pointed out that neither of them would be able to get insurance under Mr. McCain’s health care plan.
It’s about time someone said that and, more generally, made the case that Mr. McCain’s approach to health care is based on voodoo economics — not the supply-side voodoo that claims that cutting taxes increases revenues (though Mr. McCain says that, too), but the equally foolish claim, refuted by all available evidence, that the magic of the marketplace can produce cheap health care for everyone.
The marketplace CAN produce cheap health care IF we do away with all the insurance programs. Medical care is expensive only because insurance companies make it so by destroying the marketplace. If no one had insurance, physicians and surgeons would have to accept what their patients could afford. $30,000 fees for one hour in the operating room would disappear and those providers considered too expensive or incompetent would be forced out of the profession. We don’t have insurance to help us pay for our homes or cars or children’s education. If we did it would take nothing for a similar situation would develop in those situations also.