How Does Government "Control Costs?"

Obama Talks Health Bill With House Panel - WSJ.com: "the biggest focus of negotiations right now is on finding additional ways to curb the rapid growth of health-care costs for families and businesses, and in keeping the overall cost of the bill under control."

OK, I am relieved that we seem to be moving beyond the fantasy that the House bill as originally advised did ANYTHING to control health care costs. However, these negotiations, now going on primarily in the Energy and Commerce committee, are focused on containing costs within the framework of ObamaCare. In other words, the only ideas on the table are big-government, central-planning solutions, like the NICE board in Britain. Committees of faceless bureaucrats deciding who's health care procedure is worthy of funding, and who's isn't. Americans must be made to see that everything about this approach is ANTI-CHOICE and ANTI-LIBERTY.

In every part of our economy that works well, we use the power of the free market to make our choices on how scarce resources are to be allocated. This allows everyone to have input, not just a blue-ribbon panel. Government has proven over and over and over that it cannot hold a candle to the free market in making such decisions.

The reason that health care has so many problems is that government is already TOO involved. It distorts the economics of health care with its massive spending on Medicare and Medicaid. It shifts costs from those programs to private insurers and hospitals. It dictates and mandates the rules of private health plans, prevents purchase of health plans across state lines, subsidizes employer-paid health-care and disadvantages individual-paid health care, and enables the tort bar to suck $800B a year out of the system.

Even with all this meddling our healthcare system has managed to be the envy of the world. To make it better, make it freer:

Enable a national health insurance marketplace
Stop dictating what coverages must be in plans - let consumers choose
Give individuals the tax break or the tax credits for health care, not employers
Reform Medicare and Medicaid to encourage participants to be wise health care consumers
Encourage heath savings accounts

Of course, Obama and the Dems will never endorse such a plan - it turns over more power to the people, instead of piling up more wealth and power in Washington.