John Stossel Takes On The Health Insurance Industry
Conn Carroll /
Car insurance doesn’t pay to fill up your gas tank, why does health insurance pay for your flu shot? ABC’s John Stossel explores how third-party payments are driving up are nation’s health care costs:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WnS96NVlMI[/youtube]
Obamacare would only make the status quo worse. Heritage scholars Bob Moffit and Nina Owcharenko explained how when Obama first unveiled his plan last year:
The current structure of third-party payments—which Senator Obama wants to preserve—creates serious problems in the delivery of care. In this system, insurers and medical professionals have little direct accountability to individuals, either as consumers of insurance or as patients. The existing financial and insurance arrangements compromise both the interests of consumers who demand health insurance that meets their individual needs and the interests of patients who demand the best and highest value of medical services. Insurance may encourage either too much or too little of certain types of care. As many prominent economists have suggested, the best policy response to that problem is to restructure the market to align the incentives of insurers, doctors, hospitals, and patients to ensure the delivery of value to patients.
The better policy approach is consumer driven health care. Heritage scholar Ed Haislmaier detailed six key principles of reform that will bring sanity to our nation’s health care system: (more…)