Affordable Health Care

Say no to socialized medicine and cast your vote for excellence in health care. Vote for Steve Clark.

Everyone wants a more affordable health care system, but are we ready for a "government single-payer system" (aka socialized medicine)? We all agree that the skyrocketing cost of health care is a problem, but socialism is not the answer. Consumerism is.

Anytime a third party (the biggest of which is the government) assumes payment for any good, concern for price deteriorates. Do you care how much the repair cost for your car is if your insurance is paying for it? This holds true for health care as well.

Patients become more cost conscious through participation in consumer driven health plans, and the cost of care comes down. Take, for example, plastic surgery and LASIK eye surgery: while health care costs have been increasing by more than double the rate of inflation for years, these procedures have actually come down in price, at the same time becoming better. They used to use knives on our eyes but now use computer guided lasers; recovery time is hours instead of weeks; and the results are superior. And it costs less! How can this be? Because most third party payers won't pay for these procedures. Rather, they are consumer
driven: consumers demand the best product at the best price, and vendors (even doctors) accommodate them.

Government involvement (i.e. Medicare/ Medicaid), on the other hand, almost always spurs higher spending in health care, then further inflates the cost of care for private payers who must subsidize the government's "allowable" fees. (For example, if the cost of care is $100, but the government's allowable fee is only $80, the market compensates by charging private payers $120.)

Massachusetts' experiment with health care isn't doing much better: almost three times over budget already,¹ how long will it be before Massachusetts-care goes bankrupt?

The free market has proven it is a better solution than the government: While Congress was making deals with drug companies disallowing negotiations for lower prices on drugs for seniors on Medicare, Wal-Mart (driven by profits) began selling $4 generics!² And remember the recent embarrassment of the rat and mold infested Walter Reed Army Medical Center; or Diane Sawyers' 2004 Primetime report on the sickening conditions in VA hospitals where patients wait eight hours to see a doctor.³

In contrast, Utah's locally (and privately) owned Intermountain Healthcare, a nationally recognized health care leader, operates hospitals ranking among the nation's best, with costs for care ranking among the lowest.^4,5 A Dartmouth Medical School study suggested that following Intermountain Healthcare's model would save Medicare a third of its costs while maintaining treatment quality.⁶

Republican Steve Clark has had a seat on Intermountain Healthcare's board and knows their model of excellence. On November 4^th, say no to socialized medicine and cast your vote for excellence in health care. Vote for Steve Clark.

1. Alice Dembner, "Subsidized care plan's cost to double," The Boston Globe, Feb. 3 2008.

2. Ralph Nadar, "If Sam's Club Can Negotiate for Lower Pharmaceutical Prices, Why Can't Uncle Sam?" CommonDreams.org, Nov. 28, 2003.

3. ABC, "Primetime," April 8, 2004.

4. Ty Bindrup, "How Intermountain Healthcare is Taking Mobility to the Next Level," eweek.com, May 28, 2008.

5. "Health Care," Life in the Valley Magazine (lifeinthevalley.com/ health_care.html).

6. Ibid.