Since more government regulation and intervention makes the healthcare situation worse, there is only one solution left to consider: deregulation of the healthcare market. This is the only to decrease the price of healthcare, increase innovations in the healthcare market, and improve the quality of care, solving the healthcare crisis.
A Right to Food
Food is a basic substance that every human being needs to survive. Since such is the case, then does it not seem logical that all human beings have the right to food? As a result of this right, people without enough money to pay for their food should be allowed to enter a supermarket and take whatever they need to survive at the expense of everyone else. And, since food is such an important product to sustaining human life, then, in a free market system, consumers are at the mercy of the greedy food producers who could artificially raise prices to whatever obscene amount they pleased. At the same time, people in higher income brackets are able to afford better quality food than those in the lower income brackets, creating a two-tier food market.
So what is the solution to this horrific problem in the food market? Well, it seems obvious that everyone should have equal access to food via government funded grocery insurance. That way anyone could walk into a grocery store and pick up whatever food they wanted. Soon shopping habits would change and most people would walk past the ground beef and head straight for the prime rib, not worrying about the cost. The two-tier food system would be eliminated, and everyone would be equal.
Of course, this scenario is not the reality of the current food situation in the United States. Food, like most consumers goods, is provided by a free market system. Prices are actually in the range of most individuals because there is competition in the marketplace. This competition leads to quality food and low, competitive prices that benefit every individual. This is because the food market actually operates under economic principles with little government intervention.
According to the basic economic principle of supply and demand there are only two ways for a product or service to become cheaper in the market place. One of those ways is if the demand for that product or service decreases. Since the population of the world is constantly increasing, this seems very unlikely to occur in the case of healthcare. The other way for prices to decrease is if the production of the product or service increases. This means that the only economically feasible way to decrease prices in the healthcare market is to increase the supply of doctors, hospitals, medical supplies, and prescription drugs.
Herein lies one major fault of Universal Healthcare. Proponents of such plans assume that the current supply of doctors and other important medical supplies and facilities is a fixed number and they only aim to redistribute these products in a manner that they deem to be more just. In other words, they are not striving to increase the supply to make healthcare services more affordable for every individual. Instead, they are taking healthcare services from some people and giving them to others. How fair is that?
Looking back at the fictitious example of government-funded grocery insurance reveals how to make healthcare costs decrease. Current government interventions into the healthcare market through arbitrary licensing of doctors, hospitals, prescription drugs, and other medical goods actually cause the supply of these goods to decrease. This decrease causes the prices of the products to artificially inflate out of the reach of many individuals. Just imagine if every grocery clerk, stock boy, grocery store, and store manager had to be licensed by the government. This would undoubtedly cause the price of food to skyrocket. Loosening, or even abolishing, the restrictions in the medical field would allow more competition into the marketplace. This would cause the prices of healthcare services to dramatically decline. If we can allow such an important product as food to be offered without such arbitrary licensing, then why not allow healthcare to do the same?
The Market Leads to Innovations
Under a free market healthcare system more innovation would occur than a situation with high levels of government control. This is because governments do not have the same incentives as individuals to invest in new technologies or try new approaches to healthcare.
In countries that have Socialized medicine, for instance, we typically see fewer innovations in medical technology, leading to a decrease in the supply of these important medical tools. In these systems the healthcare budgets are usually very tight, and bureaucrats and politicians often see investing in new technology as too costly and risky. Take the Socialized system in Canada as an example. A study by the Fraser Institute has found that among the countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Canada ranks fifth in terms of total amount of healthcare spending. Yet, at the same time, they rank 21st out of 28 in CT scanner availability, 19th out of 22 in lithotriptor availability, and 19th out of 27 in the availability of MRIs (Matthews 41). This shortage in accessibility is a huge problem in Canada.
