by Linda Gorman

Repealing ObamaCare would produce better outcomes for patients, those who care for them, and those who pay their bills. To understand why, policy makers must recognize that national expenditures on health care are not the same as health care costs, admit that international comparisons omitting the costs of waiting lists are invalid, and refrain from the nasty habit of cherry-picking the data used for international comparisons.

An end to the fetishism about “coverage” would also help. Coverage is not medical care. Too much coverage adds insurer overhead to the basic cost of producing medical care. Forcing everyone to have coverage encourages wasteful utilization. Efforts to control utilization end up extending government price and quantity controls to every aspect of medical care, misallocating resources and reducing productive efficiency.

Read the whole article originally published in The Hill on September 21, 2017.