Health Care

Proposal 1

by Pat Goltz

Posted August 16, 2005

Issues:

Recent decades have witnessed growing government involvement in the health care system. That involvement has led to bureaucratic top-down management, rapidly escalating prices, costly regulations, the criminalization of the practice of medicine and a host of other problems. None of these problems was prevalent prior to the time when government began to increase its involvement. We believe that government involvement is the principal cause of many of the problems we face in the health care system today. The high cost of health insurance is largely due to government's excessive regulation of the industry.

Principles:

We recognize the right of individuals free from government interference and its harmful side effects to determine the level of insurance they want, the level of care they want, the care providers they want, the medicines and treatments they will use and all other aspects of their medical care. Government's role in any kind of insurance should only be to enforce contracts when necessary, not to dictate to insurance companies and consumers which kinds of insurance contracts they may voluntarily agree upon. We support the individual's complete and unfettered right to use any alternative health modality he or she chooses.

Solutions:

We favor restoring and reviving a free market health care system. We advocate a complete separation of medicine from the State. We support an end to government-provided health insurance and health care. Both of these functions can be more effectively provided in the private sector.

Benefits:

1. It would recognize the right of self-ownership.

2. It would allow different modalities to compete with each other so that the most effective ones would become known.

3. It would leave people contractually free to arrange any method of meeting health care costs they desire.

4. It would restore accountability so that doctors would stop doing unnecessary tests and treatments to avoid liability.

5. It would encourage the abolishment of licensing as an absolute requirement, and allow knowledgeable practitioners who have been educated and trained by methods other than recognized formal schooling to practice. The decision to seek a given provider should lie with the individual. Private licensing entities would be permitted, but there should be no legal penalty for failure to accept licensing from a particular entity.

Author's Comments

This is the existing plank with very few changes. The ethical objections have been removed. You will drive a lot of people away from the LP by giving people a blank check to engage in research with no accountability for unethical practice. The original plank was also insufficiently protective of the right of the individual to choose alternative medical modalities. The part about licensing is put in the benefits because I sense that a lot of people are not ready to give up the protectionism that government licensing currently provides.

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