It was bad news for Americans last when the last candidate among the two entrenched major American parties, Ted Cruz, dropped from the presidential race.
Now, the three candidates left in both the Democratic and Republican fields - Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump - have all advocated for a government-controlled healthcare system in the United States.
That’s right, even the supposed free market-advocating Republicans have left the more than 50% of Americans, who disapprove of the so-called Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare), stuck without any hope of getting the law repealed within the next four years.
The Affordable Care Act has been deemed a categorical failure, and not just from Republicans and Libertarians. From NPR to Harvard the verdict is in: Obamacare is a disaster. Contrary to the name, the ACA has left Americans with higher premiums, higher deductibles, higher administrative costs, and fewer doctors and options.
We also can’t neglect to mention that, for the first time ever, Americans were forced to purchase something simply for living in the United States or else face a penalty. As we’ve now seen, the young and healthy are still not inclined to purchase health insurance and the model that was built on taking away insurance companies’ ability to create sustainable risk pools has led to more than half of the health insurance co-ops folding since 2014.
There are many reasons why Obamacare has failed - removing the insurance part of insurance was a big one - but the overarching reason that led to every other reason is that the government tried to artificially engineer a free market and, per usual with government interferences, it fell flat. Worse, it dug a regulatory hole and then stepped right into it. The cost of enforcing such regulations on consumers reaches into the hundreds of billions.
The way to fix healthcare is to get the government out of the way. While some economists argue that healthcare cannot work as other markets do, studies show that it shares many of the same characteristics as other competitive markets and that giving individuals and families the opportunities to purchase insurance that fits their needs and budgets, as with anything else, works. Removing the tax incentives that have kept most Americans on employer-based programs and allowing insurance providers to compete across state lines are just a few of the ways we can allow healthcare to be competitive and give consumers what they want.
The way to fix healthcare is to get the government out of the way. While some economists argue that healthcare cannot work as other markets do, studies show that it shares many of the same characteristics as other competitive markets and that giving individuals and families the opportunities to purchase insurance that fits their needs and budgets, as with anything else, works. Removing the tax incentives that have kept most Americans on employer-based programs and allowing insurance providers to compete across state lines are just a few of the ways we can allow healthcare to be competitive and give consumers what they want.
The Democrats, with Hillary Clinton, want to keep status quo with a failed Obamacare, which Clinton has vowed to continue to defend no matter what. Or, with Bernie Sanders, spend trillions of American taxpayers’ money to provide a single-payer system that would mean longer wait times and less quality of care. Meanwhile the Republicans have offered up the one candidate (who?) who has advocated for both single-payer healthcare AND an exchange system that sounds exactly like Obamacare!
Are these really our choices in America in 2016? Stand with a truly different candidate for president - one who believes in quality of care and Americans’ ability to choose for themselves - by voting for me as your Libertarian candidate for President of the United States.