Gale

He's missing the idea of Libertarian healthcare, entirely, lol. We had libertarian healthcare and it was *orders of magnitude* cheaper. The government shut it down. You were able to purchase a plan with a doctor network who had all of the hardware you needed to keep you healthy. Doctors with MRI, CT, X-ray, chemical testing, blood testing, etc. partnered. The types of doctors and techs would partner, as well, so if you needed specialized surgery? It was included. You could pay them a fee for yearly care plus a $25/visit fee. Not per test, but per visit. Don't use it? You're only out the yearly fee. That fee? About $200/yr in the early 1990s. The per capita expenditures for the government-backed insurance system in 1990? $2566 with personal healthcare expenditures of $2255 per person. The average person goes to the doctor fewer than three times per year. So 10 TIMES cheaper than the government solution. And you had better care. The networks were partnering for emergency care outside of the area and could work across state lines. So what happened to it? The government shut this down because it was "acting as insurance," which doctors are prohibited from doing. These weren't hospital groups, these were doctors working with their own equipment and their own practices. The government forced certificate of need, reducing the number of private practices. They force private practices into hospital groups. They forced additional administration overhead (50% higher as a proportion of healthcare spending, more than 10x higher nominally). You're paying more for worse, less personal care versus the libertarian solution. Libertarians don't have three ambulance companies show up and you select one. You select your healthcare networks and they work it out on the back end for who picks you up and how to handle the pay. And if people don't like the system that's there? They can make their own superior one. There's actual competition. Versus right now where you're literally not even allowed to compete because the government says your healthcare is a natural monopoly and they can decide how much you should be paying for it. They decided it should involve record profits, even inflation-adjusted, consistently for the last 30 years. Since 1980, let's look at the healthcare costs, inflation-adjusted, shall we? Hopspital care is up 2.8x Physicians and clinics are up 4.1x Prescriptions (which are the most futzed with by government) are up 6.8x Nursing homes and home health up 3.8x Dental is up 4.4x Insurer overhead (which is DIRECTLY required by the government) is up 5.9x Government program administration up 4.1x Public health is up 4.3x Research and construction is up 2.0x All health spending is up 3.6x So, the hospital care being up 2.8x? The government numbers don't break it out, so let's look at the studies, like Himmelstein, Campbell, and Woolhandler (2020) showing 34.2% of *all national health expenditures* are to administrative overhead. That's a more than 3x increase, inflation adjusted, from 1983. So the biggest increase for hospital costs directly come from the government. The government has never helped costs. It literally cannot, as it's a middle man.