Health Care Pain Caused By Government, Not Liberty

Does this quote look familiar?

The achievement of equal access to quality health care at a reasonable cost is a priority of the Federal government…Increases in the cost of health care, particularly of hospital stays, have been uncontrollable and inflationary, and there are presently inadequate incentives for the use of appropriate alternative levels of health care…

After several recent weeks of continuous health care hype one might assume this is just another pronouncement from Nancy Pelosi, or Barack Obama or one of their media cheer leaders.  In fact, this quote is from the preamble to a 35 year old law called the “National Health Planning and Resources Development Act of 1974″

Perhaps the most significant excerpt, considering today’s debate was this paragraph identifying the cause of such serious problems:

The massive infusion of Federal funds into the existing health care system has contributed to inflationary increases in the cost of health care and failed to produce an adequate supply or distribution of health resources and consequently has not made possible equal access for everyone to such resources.

In 1974, after a decade of Medicare and Medicaid, Congress explicitly acknowledged the negative consequences of those programs.  They admitted that the state of health care in America had deteriorated, rather than improved as President Johnson had promised when Medicare and Medicaid were enacted.

This 1974 law, a conglomeration of new regulations and perverse financial disincentives was portrayed at the time as the smart, urgent “reform” that would overcome the negative consequences of earlier government intervention in the health care sector.

Today, after decades of adverse consequences from previous waves of government intervention, President Obama follows in Jimmy Carter’s footsteps with yet another tsunami of sweeping government intervention. Obama’s sales pitch is merely a recitation of all the complaints anyone has voiced against the status quo, coupled with the promise to make all those problems disappear.  He does not describe the new forms of government intervention being contrived behind closed doors, by a few Congressmen and Senators, in a process of political horse trading, heavily influenced by various factions with direct financial interests in the outcome.

By all accounts this latest scheme is designed to result in virtually total federal control of health insurance and medical services allocation.  The ultimate result will can only be worse than the status quo.

The Bottom Line

Health Insurance and Medical Services Delivery are already under greater government control than any other sector of the American economy.  The complaints cited by the President were either caused or made worse by government intervention.  Central government command and control simply will not deliver the lower cost, higher quality medical servcies politicians promise.