United Liberty

Note: I intended to merely comment on this chart when sharing it via my Posterous. During the 5 or so minutes I was commenting, it grew to be something more substantial, and at the urging of others, it has been cross-posted here.

Since the 1960s, the percentage of total healthcare cost paid directly by the end consumer, aka patient, has dropped drastically, but out of pocket costs have risen and the cost of healthcare has risen drastically over that same period.

What has happened between then and now? The intervention of government into the marketplace. Insurance regulations, government mandates about what MUST be covered, Medicare/caid, and inflation make costs skyrocket, but the opacity of the prices keeps patients from seeing what each visit, prescription, and procedure actually costs. With that opacity, there is no competitive pricing, because the prices paid by patients are merely co-pays and the withholding from their paycheck for employer-sponsored health plans, insurance companies, and government programs that pay negotiated rates. Without competition and price transparency, prices will continue to rise.

In addition, patients largest out of pocket expense is their insurance coverage, which does not fluctuate to accommodate the amount of healthcare services consumed. The patient knows they only pay $10-$50 for each office visit, but the overall costs of those visits can be thousands of dollars. The patient rarely, if ever, sees the actual cost… Usually only if their insurance claim is denied.

Jason and Brett were joined by Luke Brady, contributor here at United Liberty, and our “go to” tech guy when it comes to this site.

Together, they discuss:

Jason and Brett were joined by Chris Moody as they interviewed Adam Kokesh, a candidate for U.S. Congress in New Mexico’s 3rd district.

After interviewing Adam, all four discuss these issues:

• Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi unveils the newest health care reform legislation.
• 3rd quarter GDP numbers released, showing a 3.5% increase.
• An open discussion on Oathkeepers.
• Also, there was a “hit & run” discussion of the likelihood of Barack Obama’s Presidency only lasting one term and the prospects for 2012’s Republican Presidential candidates.

You can download the podcast here (almost 66 minutes/60 MB). The intro music is “Jammin’” by Bob Marley.

Also, you can subscribe to the RSS of JUST our podcasts here.  We can also happily announce that it should also be appearing on iTunes sometime this week. We are now live on iTunes, and you can find our podcasts on iTunes here.

Interestingly, government intervention in the 1960s introduced a third party (insurance co/HMO/PPO, etc) into the one-on-one relationship between doctor and patient. Prior to that, people paid premiums for medical insurance policies designed to cover catastrophic medical events like cancer, serious accidents and the like, NOT for physicals, check ups or routine visits. Instead, the DOCTOR and the PATIENT negotiated a rate for services based on the patient’s ability to pay on an individual case by case basis. The introduction of a third party shorts the doctor AND raises the costs for the the patient, as the third party must also be paid. Yes, health costs have soared, but further government intervention - especially a government takeover of a free market healthcare system - is NOT the answer.

Would you hand over your car keys to a stranger with a drinking problem who had a history of smashing his own cars into telephone poles?

Neither would I. Which is why I am puzzled as to why there is so much excitement over handing health care over to the federal government, thereby giving them responsibility over roughly 1/6th of the nation’s economy.

Before we hand over the keys, let’s go back to the scene of the accident. That accident, of course, is Medicare, a monopoly program that drove private insurers out of the market for the elderly population and is facing huge deficits. If a government takeover of the entire health care system would be so successful, why is Medicare so bent out of shape? Looks a lot like a broken telephone pole with red white and blue paint scraped all over it to me.

The editors of the Washington Examiner ask the same question:

So there are two very disturbing new stories I came across today, and I just have to share them.

The first news story originated on The Drudge Report. Basically, on June 24th programming will indirectly (or directly, depending how you look at it) be given over to the Obama Administration for an hour to push the Democratic health care agenda. Charlie Gibson will be airing World News from the White House and it will be talking specifically about health care reform. Problem is, there will be no representation from a free market health care advocate, just the socialized health care side. Yikes! Luckily Lost (the best show on television) will not be back until winter so I can join in the boycott of ABC.

John Killian

National
* Barack Obama will realize that Congress is not ready to go along with his progressive agenda. Many Southern and rural Midwestern Democrats were elected as pro-life conservative Democrats. Hence, his Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) will never see the light of day.
* With nervousness on the economy, Obama will not push for Nationalized Health Care. You will see some adding around the edges, but no major increases in federal programs. Obama’s advisers will warn him about the effect of more spending and especially, more taxes on our fragile economy.

Now that I have alienated all of the conservatives that read my articles, it is only fair that I explain how I should not be classified as a liberal either. I made my case for most of the tenets of liberalism I support in part one, so let’s see how I stack up against “the other side.”