Isn’t ØBAMACARE supposed to fix our healthcare system?
While some will say that the complaints about ØBAMACARE (I am making this Øbama’s trademark, since there is a move to restrict the use of the term in political advertising) are “future hypotheticals”, there are aspects of ØBAMACARE that are occurring as we speak, and they do not bode well.
The Wall St. Journal recently printed an editorial titled The Bush-Øbama Rx Shortages. It indicates that a number of lifesaving cancer drugs are in short supply due to price controls. ØBAMACARE us all about “keeping prices low”, i.e. price fixing. As we learned during the Nixon years, price controls do little but cause supply to decrease.
We are seeing analogous effects in the number of physicians that will accept Medicare patients when challenged by more and more payment cuts. More cuts, fewer doctors. In this case, cut the price, less medicine. To be sure, as the title indicates, this legislation started with Bush, and to his credit, Øbama has actually recognized this growing problem, but the proposed fixes are as incompetent (read it: government based) as the original legislation.
The inevitable problem arises from the fact that ØBAMACARE’s solutions are all based in government control of prices and services, and as this “anecdote” indicates, the unintended consequences of these price controls are certainly not unforeseeable. Couple this with FDA delays on drug approval extending as long as two and a half years, you have a perfect storm of legislative stupidity that will effectively destroy a system that was, at least as far as these drugs were concerned, working well. But politicians always think they know best, and will continue to monkey with a system that had worked out a price/supply balance for effective cancer drugs. Isn’t it better to have available but expensive drugs rather than unavailable inexpensive drugs?
As the article concludes, this is a problem that leads to compromised care and will allow people to die. If you think ØBAMACARE will fix this, you are laboring under an unsupportable misconception. It will do nothing but make the situation worse, in the short and long run.
Politicians simply don’t know what they are doing, and should not be allowed to tinker, excuse me,and effectively nationalize the country’s healthcare system.
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More disasters and more to come beyond the post.? Since we DO have politicians making laws and setting policy, I wonder who else should be making policy. Since the experts (health providers and health insurers) have been unable to “fix” the system (isn’t broken?), I suppose it’s left to the blogosphere to bring forth the “fix”.
The point is that we don’t need a “policy” or a law for everything that moves or doesn’t move.? A wouldn’t define a “fix” as something that makes the system more broken.? Not all of us place our trust and welfare in politicians.? Or want to.
This is simple economics.? If the government controls the price of something, unless someone can produce or provide that something for less than the “controlled price”, that something will not be produced or provided.
Government (of whatever stripe) ?seems incapable of?understanding ?this.
No business will will ever?simply ”swallow the loss”.? And, if they do, they will not be in business for very long.
We are at a point that In the real world it doesn’t matter who we elect. When they get to Washington they swallow the pink pill and they all think the same. Learn new ways to spend more money. Now it is as well new way to get rid of useful drugs for ill people.
You do seem to be correct. Perhaps the “Tree of Liberty” will need to be watered in blood.
Down, boy. We can do this, be patient (oh I guess we will all be patients sitting in waiting rooms soon).
Obamacare is just horrendous & any qualifying of it is a waste of time-IT MUST GO. Or see previous comment.
How’s the availability of Obama’s Red Pill doing??? 8}
I thought that simple economics said that supply will rise to meet demand. I think there will be plenty of sick people for the foreseeable future.
You are correct, sammy…supply will rise to meet demand, but only in a free economy.? Here, the government (Medicare and Medicaid) has capped the price that can be charged for these drugs at an amount less than?it costs to produce those drugs.
If the government would get rid of the price controls, yes, the cost would be higher, but at least the drugs would be available.
Supply will never rise to meet demand under the current circumstances.? No company in their right mind will produce something when, for every something they produce they will lose money.? Would you?
Economics does say supply will rise to meet the demand.? The demand was always defined by the price the consumer was willing to pay (not how many people “wanted” something).? If people were not willing to pay the higher cost, supply would remain low.? If there is a problem, why do we think government could ever fix it?? They will “fix” it to fit their own agenda.
Isn?t ?BAMACARE supposed to fix our healthcare system?
No…it’s about control and taxes.? If they really wanted to do something about health care, rather than control you and the market, they would have repealed the McCarran?Ferguson Act.? This is the reason why you don’t see a lot of health care insurance providers in your state–they’re protected from certain acts of anti-trust–protected markets, price fixing, etc.
Remember when you had to pay 25k for a digital TV?? Now for just a couple of hundred bucks?? Open up healthcare to the free market and watch competition play to the individual’s advantage.? But that will never happen–because it is about control and taxes.? They’ll tell you what you will buy and when you will buy it.? Just don’t step out of line…
WKU, Absolutely correct!