Can Bureaucracy Decide What is Best for Health Care?

Health care reform is something that is needed, but solutions can be found without threatening the free market or pressuring people to place aside their current coverage, which they are satisfied with or provides the right amount of coverage for their needs to being covered by a government run plan, which does not provide the options available for quality care. The current health care proposals are being decided by bureaucrats, who do not understand how this will impact small businesses and those who will stick with their current coverage, while the rest of America will be forced into the government run insurance plan.

One of the best op-ed pieces that brought this question into perspective was found in Reason Magazine. John Stossel makes a good point in his op-ed piece, The Arrogance of Health Care Reform, that many politicians and bureaucrats have no idea how the markets work, while forcing more government control over our lives. Stossel also made a great point that many of those in Congress and within bureaucracy have never been small business owners, which makes them unable to understand how the free market, free enterprise system works when it comes to health care. Case in point, Congressional Research Service created a demographic makeup of Congress only to find more former politicians and lawyers leading in Congress.

“Politicians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are. Every day people make countless tradeoffs, in all areas of life, based on subjective value judgments and personal information as they delicately balance their interests, needs and wants. Who is in a better position than they to tailor those choices to best serve their purposes? Yet the politicians believe they can plan the medical market the way you plan a birthday party.

Stossel’s assessment is spot-on. When it comes to health care reform, the best thing would be to create legislation with the free markets and what “We, the People” want. Universal health care that compromises the high quality of care in America is not the right solution.