Want to Cut Healthcare Costs? Make People Pay More

We can agree the system needs fixing. The real question is how to best do that.


By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Today's Wall Street Journal lead editorial is a long examination of the White House's argument that we must enact healthcare reform immediately because we need to control costs. But what if there isn't any cost savings? What if healthcare becomes a new entitlement that is impossible to repeal while further bankrupting our government? Before we nationalize healthcare, the Journal argues, we need to look at the arguments being used to "rush through the greatest social spending program in American history."

Rather than a single payer system—in the mumbo-jumbo language of healthcare, "single payer" means "the government"—providing "free" universal healthcare, here's what the Journal argues:


Increasing cost-sharing would discipline the health spending curve and give it a more rational bent. As societies grow richer, it makes sense that people will invest more in their own well-being ... The U.S. health cost "crisis" is that we spend so much without incentives to weigh the costs against the benefits.


The editorial uses a lot of healthcare jargon, but the arguments against government-run healthcare make a lot of sense to me. We all agree that the current system needs fixing; the only question is, what's the best fix?

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