WASHINGTON–“The White house says we ‘just can’t wait’ for its government solution to our health care problems,” writes Alex Epstein, a fellow at the Ayn Rand Center. “But today’s health-care problems were created by yesterday’s government ‘solutions.’
“Since the 1940s, on the idea that health care is a ‘right’ that others must provide, the government has made a growing number of Americans collectively responsible for each other’s care–through Medicare, Medicaid, and collectivized employer plans. These government programs incentivized people to spend much, much more on health care–since they were spending other people’s money–and warped the market. Without such intervention, we should expect health care to be like laser eye-surgery, which is not covered by Medicare or government insurance laws, but gets better and cheaper all the time.
“America ‘can’t wait’–for the government to get out of health care. Disentangling government from that field is the task of true reform.”
