Affordability, Not Access

Of all the flaws present in the president's and Congressional Democrats' approach to health-care reform, one of the more fundamental ones is the avenue through which they have approached it, which has been as a matter of access. Constantly citing the millions of Americans currently without health insurance, they propose decreasing that number through a "public option" in which the federal government will provide health-insurance and/or through an individual mandate that will compel Americans to buy a specific kind of policy or pay a fine.

The problem with addressing access in this direct manner is that it will lead to a myriad of problems like government rationing, higher insurance premiums, exacerbation of an already exploding national debt and, most worrisome, diminished individual freedom.

President Obama and Congressional Democrats ought to alter course. Instead of trying to remedy the problem of access to health-care through the federal government they should attack health care's growing un-affordability. The advantage of doing this is that it will reduce the costs of health-insurance for those who already have it while also indirectly addressing the problem of accessibility. The reason for this is that cheaper health-insurance is health-insurance that is open to a greater number of Americans.

Two obvious solutions stand out.

One is to strike down the legal restriction that prevents individuals from buying health insurance policies across state lines. Doing so will give relief to people who live in states with high insurance premiums by empowering them to shop across the nation for more affordable alternatives. This will also create an increased atmosphere of competition that will in turn exert downward pressure on medical insurance costs everywhere.

The second solution is to enact long overdue tort reform. Putting an end to outrageous rewards in medical malpractice cases will immediately begin to decrease the price of insurance and medical care by simultaneously decreasing the liability insurance that physicians are being forced to pay under the present system. Right now doctors are either priced out of their practice or are compelled to pass their liability costs on to everyone else through higher fees.

The advantage of these two reforms is that neither will require exponential increases in federal spending or the creation of dozens of new governmental boards, commissions, and bureaucracies. What they will do is lower the costs of health-insurance and thus make it available to the millions of Americans who cannot currently afford it.

Accordingly, if giving every American access to health insurance is the national and moral imperative Washington Democrats declare that it is than they must waste no time in adopting these reforms. The reality presented by their current proposals – which all amount to a stunning increase in the size and reach of the federal government – promise only to make health-care more accessible in theory, not in actuality.

Only by attacking the rising costs of medical care will the president and Congress accomplish what they have set out to do and make quality, affordable health-care accessible to all Americans.