More on the Medical Sector

On the heels of a recent post in which I discussed the latest incarnation of single payer care, Universal Health Care Vouchers, come two good articles in favor of keeping medicine free of the government yoke.

First, at RealClear Politics is an article by Michael Barone that debunks the idea that health costs are going through the roof. According to Barone, recent legislative reforms and market trends are helping to keep medical costs from increasing as fast as some fear.

One thing that HSAs and high-deductible health insurance help do is to make employees more cost-conscious when it comes to health care decisions. HSAs allow employees to keep money they don't spend on health care this year and to roll it over to next year, and on and on -- therefore, there is an incentive not to fritter it away. High-deductible health insurance operates the same way high-deductible auto insurance does: It does not pay for the equivalent of your oil change but does pay you when your car is totaled.

For many years, the World War II decision to make health insurance coverage tax-deductible for employers and non-taxable to employees has driven health insurance to a different model, one that pays for virtually every procedure but in a surprising number of cases does not cover catastrophic costs.

In other words, the problem caused by low deductibles (and which the various single-payer plans would only make worse) -- artificially high demand -- is being ameliorated by these two small moves in the direction of capitalism.

The second article, in the Wall Street Journal, provides an interesting discussion of a recent ruling by the Canadian Supreme Court that likely will deal a serious blow to that nation's single-payer system. The following is interesting for three reasons, one amusing and two pertinent to the topic at hand.

The ruling stops short of declaring the national health-care system unconstitutional; only three of the seven judges wanted to go all the way.

But it does say in effect: Deliver better care or permit the development of a private system. "The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance might be constitutional in circumstances where health-care services are reasonable as to both quality and timeliness," the ruling reads, but it "is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services." The Justices who sit on Canada's Supreme Court, by the way, aren't a bunch of Scalias of the North. This is the same court that last year unanimously declared gay marriage constitutional.

The Canadian ruling ought to be an eye-opener for the U.S., where "single-payer," government-run health care is still a holy grail on the political left and even for some in business (such as the automakers). This month the California Senate passed a bill that would create a state-run system of single-payer universal health care. The Assembly is expected to follow suit. Someone should make sure the Canadian Supreme Court's ruling is on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's reading list before he makes a veto decision.

(1) That ruling on "quality and timeliness" should prove the eventual death knell for socialized medicine in our neighbor to the North. (2) Leave it to a conservative to think that two pro-individual rights rulings (the one under discussion and the gay marriage ruling) are somehow contradictory. And (3) Whoa! California's on the precipice! How did I miss that?

All this talk about the medical industry is not going to go away. I think the debate will intensify. The time to prepare for it is now.

-- CAV