We Need To Get Serious About Health Care--Now

I believe that all too often in the past, conservatives have dismissed some issues because they didn't believe they were relevant.  Perhaps the best example is health care.  I would guess that the vast majority of conservatives have health care.  Likely for this reason, conservatives did not think health care ranked as a high priority.  We sort of ceded the issue to liberals.  The only thing we cared about was avoiding universal health care.  The ferocious backlash to HillaryCare was testament to this.  Conservatives were really good at identifying what they were against.

However, in the 15 years since HillaryCare, the health care system has deteriorated greatly.  The cost of providing employer based health care has skyrocketed.  Real wages for Americans have stagnated in the last decade, mostly because health care has been so expensive.  High gas prices get all the attention because gas prices are posted on signs outside gas stations.  But health care has been a greater burden on families than gas prices have.  Saying that we have "the best health care system in the world", as I hear talk radio hosts say on occasion, defines being out of touch.

So what is the solution?  I'm not an expert on the subject, but it seems to me that the best way out of this is to delink health coverage from employers.  The employer provided health insurance system is a product of World War II wage controls.  To skirt them, employers offered health coverage for competitive advantage.  Amazingly, this system survives to the present day.  What this system does is that it makes the costs of health care not apparent to those using it.  You are much more likely to demand that MRI or a 3rd ACL surgery if you don't see the bills.  Delinking employer based health coverage would lead to greater rationing of services, not through government fiat, but through market forces.

Creating a real free market health system (don't be fooled, the current system is already half government controlled) means creating a national market for health care.  If you are forced to buy a plan from an in-state provider, then you may be forced to pay much higher rates than if another less expensive provider from another state was available.

If we are crafting health insurance reform, we are probably going to have to make the painful concession of insuring the poor through the government.  I know that this will be costly and will be inefficient and be a raw deal for those enrolled in the program.  But politically, I can't see a way we can continue with a health regime where some aren't insured.  We may believe that we will avoid expenditures by not covering the poor, but we will pay another way, through emergency room visits from those who are uninsured.  The government picks up the tab for that anyway.

The goal of avoiding single payer health care is important.  But to be effective, conservatives must also be for something, not merely against something the Democrats advocate.  If we don't make health care a top priority immediately, then make no mistake, we WILL have socialized health care that ruins everyone's coverage, not just the poor's.  And if that happens, the conservative movement will have to bear much of the blame for dismissing the pressing needs of the health care system with a shrug.