Seeking to focus the final month of campaigning on healthcare and away from immigration, inflation, and violence both abroad and at home, V.P. “Harris proposes Medicare pay for home health care.” She claims to have a fully developed policy for the healthcare market in contrast to Trump’s mere “concept of a plan.” Never mind she has no idea how to pay for it. What does she have in mind for our future?
Based on her actions, V.P. Harris intends the healthcare marketplace to be under complete federal control, devoid of free market forces or personal choice. As president, she would institute a centrally controlled economic system.
If Medicare “pays for” home health care, that means Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would dictate both benefit and payment. In market terms, government would determine – balance – both demand and supply. That is the definition of central economic control, the opposite of a free market.
Earlier this year, CMS adjusted the market ratings of insurers Elevance and UnitedHealthcare based on “arbitrary,” “capricious,” and “unlawful” actions according to a lawsuit against the government agency. Together those two companies enrolled more than half of all those who signed up for Medicare Advantage. Obviously, seniors wanted to purchase these policies, but CMS chose to control the market rather than letting consumers decide.
Millions of Americans have purchased short-term health insurance. The Biden-Harris White House labelled these policies “junk insurance,” and “protected” Americans from their own stupidity by instructing CMS to prohibit them. Removing these plans from the marketplace limits consumer choices – demand for services – to what Washington approves.
As all providers know, price or charge in healthcare is meaningless as payments are dictated by Medicare “allowable reimbursement schedules.” Harris has also made clear her desire for price-fixing. Recall her solution for what she called “price-gouging.” The Biden-Harris Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 gives Medicare the authority to fix prices for drugs though they call it a negotiation.
Thus, Washington controls supply as well as demand.
Harris says, “her values have not changed.” So, keep in mind her full-throated, in fact passionate, support of Medicare-for-All, H.R. 1384. This is Bernie Sanders’ plan for unabashed total take-over of the entire healthcare market, one sixth of the U.S. economy. The Senator admits his plan could cost up to $40 trillion, one third of the combined GDP of all nations on planet earth – for a healthcare system that doesn’t care.
In addition to bankrupting the U.S., Medicare-for-All will drive more clinical doctors to quit (there will, however, be more bureaucrat doctors like Fauci); will make the wait for medical (health) care interminable; and death-by-queue will become an hourly rather than daily occurrence.
Consider what the progressive, sixty-year expansion of the federal role in healthcare has accomplished. In 1960, the U.S. spent 5.6 percent of GDP on healthcare, you got an appointment within a week, and your doctor knew your first name. Last year, the U.S. expended 17.8 percent of GDP, $4.8 trillion, on healthcare. Approximately half was spent on BARRCOME – bureaucracy, administration, rules, regulations, compliance, oversight, mandates, enforcement – and thus produced no patient care! Despite spending more on its healthcare system than the entire GDP of Japan, Americans can wait more than 130 days to see the doctor and die while waiting.
According to its Trustees, Medicare will be insolvent by 2036. At that time, the program will be unable to pay for in-patient care for seniors.
Trump’s intentions for healthcare may be vague but Harris’ plan for the healthcare market is clear: total central economic control as in the U.S.S.R., Venezuela, China, and North Korea.
Whether you call it Medical-for-All, single payer, or HarrisHealth, the V.P. wants the federal government to make all fiscal and thus all medical decisions for Americans. Judging by what federal control of the healthcare market has done to America and to Americans over the past sixty years, that will be the end of health...care.
Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science; former Director of Center for Healthcare Policy at Texas Public Policy Foundation; former Director of New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange; and author of 12 books, including multi-award winning, Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare: StatesCare and Market-Based Medicine. Follow him on X.com at @DrDeaneW or contact via www.deanewaldman.com.
Vance Ginn, Ph.D., is president of Ginn Economic Consulting, host of the Let People Prosper Show, and previously chief economist of the Trump White House's Office of Management and Budget. Follow him on X.com at @VanceGinn.
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