How Capitalism Can
Save American Heath Care
While American medicine has become both ground breaking and revolutionary over the past 50 years, concern that our system is failing has never been greater. That anxiety comes largely from a regulatory and insurance system based on outmoded and discredited ideas, says Dr. David Gratzer, author of The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care.
Gratzer outlines some of the current problems of the U.S. health care system. For example:
- Nationally, state spending on Medicaid exceeds state spending on K-12 education.
- Cost outlays for Medicare are projected to consume a third of all federal income tax revenue by 2030.
- The Federal Drug Administration’s (FDA) excessive regulations — since 1964 — have increased the total time required for drug development to more than 15 years.
The system can be improved, says Gratzer, and he outlines a blueprint for revolutionary change:
- America needs to make health care truly individual and portable, mainly through changes in the tax code and trimming of regulations.
- Downsize the FDA and return it to its original mission — judging a drug’s safety, and de-emphasizing “efficacy.”
- Shore up Medicare, in part by allowing today’s workers to save for the health expenses in their elderly years.
The actual costs of health care are invisible to most people who have insurance provided by an employer. For families who have to buy their own coverage, the prices are too expensive because
(1) they are not part of a group, and (2) uninsured patients abandon their costs at the hospital and those who pay for insurance must pick up the deficit, further increasing insurance prices.
The current system is unsustainable. Political demands to make health care “free” (as if it were “a human right” ) only confuse the issue further, leading to a momentum for complete socialization, with all the problems we see in Canada, Japan, and Europe.
For more on Health Issues, see NCPA’s fine archive.
Recommended: David Gratzer, The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care. New York, Encounter Books, October 2006.