I have been arguing in this series, and have argued in a previous blog series, that while market forces are in general beneficial, it makes no sense to subject health care to market forces. I want to add yet another reason to the ‘pile.’
One obvious problem with health-care in America is that we have a ‘sick care’ system rather than a health care system. That is, we take care of people who are already sick, rather than taking steps to make sure that people don’t get sick in the first place (this is not a partisan point – it was one of the talking points of Mike Huckabee’s campaign). Classic example: its costs a lot of money to treat advanced colon cancer, but relatively speaking almost nothing to pay for annual colon cancer screenings.
Now, why do we have a ‘sick care’ system instead of a health care system? The answer is simple: we have a system in America that does not reward insurance companies for preventing illness. Currently, most people have health insurance through their work or some other temporary arrangement. In our current system, why would an insurance company create incentives for you to get a colon cancer screening if you are going to be someone else’s problem in 5 years? Answer: they wouldn’t. The point of their business is to make money, not to keep you healthy. This does not make them immoral, but amoral: they are just good capitalists.
But if the government were paying for health care, they would indeed have an interest in paying for that extra colon cancer screening for two reasons. First, they would be on the hook financially if you did have to have expensive cancer treatments. And second, the government needs a healthy citizenry to keep its economy working. Now I don’t care if the government is federal or at the state level. But it should be the government, because the government has the dual motivation I just described, which will lead them to take common sense measures to keep its citizens healthy. A health insurance company has no motivation whatsoever – you will likely be some other company’s problem by the time you get sick.
