Progressives Intervening is Destroying US Health Care

The Mises Institute published an article today on progressive interventionism that’s ruining American health care.

“Congress is almost entirely unified behind a specific pace of progressive interventionism where the predictable consequences of previous interventions are perpetually used to justify more intervention,” writes Connor O’Keefe at Mises.

In other words, we’re in a cycle of never-ending and ever-increasing failure where doubling down is the answer to a failed program, causing worse failures.

The author gave an example of a man who sent a letter to the HHS department asking the agency to address one of the consequences of Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

This was in response to a Wall Street Journal investigation. It seems some insurance companies were paying marked-up prices for generic drugs. Some drugs were “100 times more expensive when paid for through insurance plans. They could do this because they are the owners of the pharmacies on the other end of the transaction. They are often the pharmacy-benefit managers who negotiate the drug prices with the pharmacies.”

“This is all a consequence of a provision in the Obamacare Act called the medical loss ratio championed by Senator Warren. It imposes a cap on insurance company profits. It requires them to spend 80% to 85% of the revenue from premiums on medical claims.”

As a result, insurance companies merged with acquired pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers.

“The Obama administration forced every American adult to buy health insurance. It imposed a cap on insurance companies’ profits. The cap allows insurance companies to purchase pharmacies and become pharmacy-benefit managers.”

“In other words, the very interventions we were told would make health care more affordable have only allowed pharmacies, insurance providers, and drug companies to extract even more money from American consumers,” writes the author Connor O’Keeffe.

This is how Washington works.

When something doesn’t work, they intervene with the same crazy policies that caused the problem in the first place.

Read the story at the Mises Institute for more information.

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