An oft-repeated liberal response to complaints about the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare in common parlance) is that Republicans, and their conservative and libertarian allies, have no alternative plan for “fixing” the current healthcare mess. Costs are prohibitive, access is limited, and when a personal health disaster strikes, too few are prepared or have the financial resources to cover.
Next time you hear it, correct that person. There are alternatives. They just aren’t getting the billion dollar advertising that comes with government endorsement that ObamaCare has had for the last four years.
A more accurate description would be that no alternative plan has been debated and discussed to the extent that Obamacare has, largely because Obamacare passed, has worked its way through the courts, and has dominated news during the Obama Administrations largely clumsy and half-shod roll-out.
(Seriously: if the Department of Health and Human Services had implemented Obamacare with the efficacy that Organizing for America rolled out the Obama reelection in 2012, the President might be talking about something else. Heck, we all might be talking about something else.)
As it is, the litigation and roll-out, accompanied by repeated efforts at defunding (which, to be clear, have been better at raising money for Republicans than actually stopping Obamacare and should bear little blame for the Administration’s roll-out problems), have sucked up any attention at alternatives that have been out there. And just because liberal commentators don’t want to do the homework to find the alternatives it doesn’t mean they don’t exist or aren’t serious.
Which is why I found an op-ed published on Christmas Day in the Wall Street Journal interesting. While I can’t say that I endorse its main proposal–that we transition to fully individual-based health insurance–I can’t disagree that the argument has merit. As CATO’s John H. Cochrane argues, health care should bear more similarities with the other innovators in our market:
We need to permit the Southwest Airlines, Wal-Mart, Amazon.com and Apples of the world to bring to health care the same dramatic improvements in price, quality, variety, technology and efficiency that they brought to air travel, retail and electronics. We’ll know we are there when prices are on hospital websites, cash customers get discounts, and new hospitals and insurers swamp your inbox with attractive offers and great service.
If we can make health care as accessible and reasonably priced as Wal-Mart and Amazon, I think we might be on to something. (And for all you Wal-Mart haters out there, just remember that not everyone can afford to be as snooty as you).
What’s your take? With a rising chorus of voices on both sides of the aisle decrying the repeated and continued failures of the Affordable Care Act, what do you think the alternatives should be?
Read Cochrane’s full article–“What to Do When ObamaCare Unravels–here, and sound off below.
Related articles
- WSJ: “What to Do When ObamaCare Unravels” (joshblackman.com)
- John H. Cochrane: What to Do When ObamaCare Unravels (online.wsj.com)
- Free Market Options to ObamaCare Already Exist (rinf.com)
- Spot on: John H. Cochrane on how America should have, and still could, reform health care (canadafreepress.com)
- 6,171,890 Americans have lost health care because of ObamaCARE (fireandreamitchell.com)
About Daniel Burton
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I absolutely agree with the op-ed. Capitalism tends to be the scapegoat for failed government policies but people need to understand exactly how government created this mess and that a reversal of those policies or “liberalization” is the solution.
Fortunately Milton Friedman always does a good job of explaining:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/7298
Ah, Milton Friedman. Always on point.
“And for all you Wal-Mart haters out there, just remember that not everyone can afford to be as snooty as you.”
🙂
You mean you don’t think that everyone should shop at Costco and overpay for bulk items (other than cheese) just because they treat their workers well (beyond giving them a job, Imean)?
Shocking! But I agree. Apparently we can root around in the gutter of selfish exploitation together!
I know, right? I’d love the world to be fair, and I strive for it in all that I do. But let’s be honest: we can’t all shop at Trader Joe’s.