Okay, I was trying to stay away from this because I admittedly haven’t been following it as much as some other topics in the past, but things that I’ve been hearing lately have been bothering me.
First off, I don’t really think you’re going to find many people that would disagree that the cost of health care is becoming an increasing burden on a significant portion of the population. I know personally, the increases in my insurance premiums have been outstripping the yearly increases in my salary. So in terms of the work to fix health care in the country, here are some problems I have with the current situation.
I’m generally in favor of a free market for the exchange of goods and services, but I am concerned that we currently rely on such a system for the provision of health care. Basically, health care providers are primarily concerned with making money, not providing quality health care. The same goes for insurance companies, who make it more and more difficult for health care providers to not worry so much about money, but providing good health care. The problem, as I see it, is that there’s no natural downward pressure on health care prices, which is how a free market would ideally regulate itself. There’s no natural downward pressure because the demand for health care is never ending, and people will only do without it as a last resort.
