What’s Missing in the Health Care Debate

Rick Fischer
Jul 25, 2017 · 2 min read

Well, actual debate is what’s missing. One side is debating with itself; the other side refuses to participate. Our system of government was designed to force the sides to debate and compromise in the passage of contentious laws, compromises that neither side may like, but both can live with. That was bypassed in the passage of ACA. One side rammed their bill through with tricks and gimmicks, and months of outright lying by President Obama. The whole time and to this day, a majority of Americans disliked the ACA.

The failure of ACA was predictable. Costs in premiums and deductibles have doubled and will soon have tripled; 40% of counties are down to a single insurer and 47 counties will have no insurer next year; CBO forecasts in ten years an additional 40 million people will be on Medicaid. Economist Herbert Stein’s law holds true: “What cannot continue will stop.” ACA as written is unsustainable; it cannot continue, so it will stop.

What is missing is any debate on what kind of rationing of health care Americans will accept in a replacement; because unlimited health care for everyone is totally unaffordable.

Prior to ACA, health care was “rationed” by insurance, and by a welfare system for the poor. The Veteran’s Administration rations VA health care by wait times and physician’s salaries. The single-payer systems of Europe, so much the desire of the Left in America, ration health care by access — long wait times for non-emergency care, fewer diagnostic machines, fewer specialists, lower physician salaries, disqualified drugs based on cost, hospital quality and quantity, and so on.

No matter what rationing scheme is used, rationing is unavoidable. Any attempt to run a health care system without rationing will quickly bankrupt any nation.

The Republicans will be unable to replace ACA, nor should they without a general agreement about how costs will be controlled, about what rationing scheme will be acceptable.

The vice of the Democrats is they try to convince America that their plans do not ration health care at all, that all will have unlimited health care at no cost to themselves, and the rich will pay for it all. That’s just another lie.