Stossel also highlights two areas where the market is at work since health insurance companies don’t typically cover these procedures: laser eye surgery and plastic surgery. In both instances, doctors are more responsive to patients needs, treatments have become more effective, and costs have gone down.
One who watched this program would recognize that Senator Clinton’s plan moves the country in the wrong direction. She proposes requiring that all individuals obtain insurance, and offers government subsidies to encourage them to do so. She would forbid insurance companies from denying coverage or “unfairly” pricing them out of the market. She would mandate that companies have to offer health insurance to employees or pay a penalty. In other words, she would further loosen the relationship between what we pay and what healthcare we consume. This would encourage over-consumption, higher prices, and greater inefficiency.
Of course, the plan would also come with a hefty price tag for taxpayers. Initial estimates are that the plan’s annual cost would be $110 billion per year. But if we have learned anything from the past about government healthcare programs, it’s that such estimates are often wrong and costs tend to increase much faster than expected.
Almost 15 years ago, voters soundly rejected First Lady Hillary Clinton’s vision of a nationalized healthcare system. Clinton’s current proposal may be less ambitious, but it is still a move toward greater government mandates and government control. Instead of just defeating this initiative, opponents should consider the lesson of this latest 20/20 report and offer an alternative vision: a true marketplace with individuals in control of their resources and their decisions.