Atlas - Reforming Americas health care system: the flawed vision of Obamacare

A HIGHLY PARTISAN Democrat-dominated Congress passed President Barack Obama's sweeping legislation to fundamentally transform America's health care in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in March of 2010. The plan the president sought, known as ObamaCare, radically changes health care in the United States, audaciously imposing a strong-armed federal government onto perhaps the most personal of all segments of American life. Americans will be forced to buy insurance they may not want or value; businesses will be fined unless they acquiesce to government dictates about the composition, structure, and breadth of health insurance benefits; coverage must be certified as acceptable by government, not by the individuals and their families who receive the insurance; private insurance companies will be forced to price their products according to government fiat, rather than market forces; and doctors will be compelled to accept lower prices for medical care based solely on what bureaucrats determine to be appropriate.

In addition to the dramatic shift of power from individuals to the federal government, the plan significantly expands eligibility for government insurance like Medicaid. This irrational expansion of an entitlement health insurance programone that is already failing and widely acknowledged as financially unsustainablewill also conjure up massive tax increases, including taxes on insurance itself as well as on the very sources of innovative medical technology that have improved and prolonged the lives of Americans so dramatically since the previous era.

Inexplicably, the facts published in the world's top medical journals about our system continue to be ignored:

Americans have the best survival rates from cancer and most serious diseases, and the most rapid decline in breast and prostate cancer deaths despite being hindered with severe obesity and the largest burden of smokers over age fifty of any western nation.

Americans have the most successful, most available treatments for chronic diseases like high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Americans have the shortest wait times for life-changing surgeries, like cataract and hip replacements, that may not increase survival but greatly impact quality of life.

Americans have the best access to the newest, most effective drugs.

Americans have the quickest access to the safest, most advanced medical technologies.

Americans have the easiest access to specialty doctors, doctors of their choice, doctors who lead the world in health care innovation, regardless of what metrics are used in assessing the sources of medical innovation.

Despite that, most Americans want reforms to bring costs down if quality and choice can be maintained. And reforms could have been achieved without jeopardizing the superior medical care Americans receive right now. After all, the vast majority of Americans already report being very satisfied with their health care system. The would-be reformers could have built on this record with important changes such as breaking down anti-competitive barriers, reducing administrative waste, eliminating mandate-created distortions of the health insurance market, implementing creative tax reforms, introducing reasonable reforms to a medico-legal liability system run amok, and forcing doctors and hospitals to post prices, qualifications, and outcomesinformation that is essential to value-based purchasing and fundamental for stimulating competition. Such genuine reforms would have brought down the cost of insurance, reduced the number of uninsured, increased individual choice, and allowed Americans to make value-based decisions for their families. They would have left Americans free to keep their health insurance, retain their chosen doctor, and manage their own and their family's pursuit of medical care without government control.