Scott Cumbie

It has amazed me to watch as the current Democrats in Congress have tried all sorts of tactics to pass their wildly unpopular healthcare bill. If this bill is finally forced through Congress and is signed into law so that the government is able to take control of the healthcare industry, we can expect the following to happen:

• The cost of healthcare will go up
• The quality of healthcare will go down
• Access to healthcare will be limited and will be more difficult for any of us to see a doctor

The current healthcare bill fails to address the most important issue. Most arguments for this bill revolve around providing insurance for people who are currently uninsured and controlling costs. However, these are merely symptoms of a larger problem. Congress has yet to diagnose the real problem.

So, what is the proper diagnosis? The underlying problem of healthcare is high costs. Congress should focus on reducing the cost of healthcare, not on controlling the cost. History and experience shows us that when any government tries to control the cost of a product of service, that product or service becomes more difficult to find and its quality goes down. If Congress attempts to control the cost of healthcare, we can expect the same: costs will go up, quality will go down, and care will be rationed.

So, how do you reduce the cost of healthcare without controlling the cost? As any decent high school economics textbook will tell you, there are two ways to reduce the cost of a product or service:

• Increase the supply of the product or service. In the case of healthcare, if supplies of doctors, nurses, physician’s assistants, medical facilities, hospital beds, etc. are increased, competition will increase. This will result in lower costs.
• Reduce taxes and regulations. When a regulation requires doctors to do something or not to do something, the regulation creates costs that doctors must pass on to their patients. The same is true with taxes. Taxes that doctors pay to run their practices must be passed on to patients. Reducing excessive regulations and reducing taxes will result in lower costs for doctors and lower costs for the patient.

If we want to reduce the cost of healthcare, it is imperative that Congress focus its attention on encouraging more people to pursue careers as doctor, nurse, etc. by eliminating unnecessary regulations that drive up costs.