Correction, please!

Mandates & Medical Costs

ITEM: The August 21st USA Today declared, "Finger pointers [who] can't settle on who's to blame for health costs" aimed in all directions. "Patients and employers should not expect relief from rising costs anytime soon. The blame game is heating up because no one really has an answer on how to slow the increase."

CORRECTION: Let's think how costs might be contained. Perhaps more health care decisions might be returned to individual Americans operating in a competitive free market with less government interference. If the government or other third parties provided, say, free or subsidized automobiles, no doubt there would soon be a "car crisis."

Some factors driving up demand simply involve human nature -- such as wanting something for nothing, or calling for the latest well-publicized treatment. Spending on health care is growing rapidly, says the Cincinnati Business Courier, "as new drugs and technologies become available, more people use more services and hospitals and physicians demand better pay from insurers. 'We seem to have this insatiable appetite for care and coverage,' said Doug Miller, vice president at Horan Associates, an insurance brokerage. 'And as long as someone else is paying for it, the price goes up.'"

Advances in technologies and pharmaceuticals often do cost more. But government particularly drives increases, as shown in a recent study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. For example, there are over 1,500 mandated benefits at the state and federal level, with more looming. "Man dates increased 25-fold over the period 1970-1996, an average annual growth of more than 15 percent."

Mandates and regulations alone represent $10 billion of the overall increase in health premiums -- yet another indication of the expense of supposedly free benefits.

A Case of the Vapors