State-Of-The-Art Health Care For Everyone? | William Poole | Cato Institute: Commentary

State-Of-The-Art Health Care For Everyone? | William Poole | Cato Institute: Commentary: "A nation cannot afford state-of-the-art health care for everyone. The current effort to expand health care insurance is designed to make the same health care available to both those with extensive insurance and to those currently uninsured. This effort ignores the fact that resources to make such care available to everyone do not exist.

For every major category of goods, higher income families spend more than lower-income families. Health care is not an exception."

"Let's assume that the highest income group can afford state-of-the-art health care, which we would like to make available to everyone. Based on these data, that would increase national health care outlays by 70%. To achieve this outcome, the nation would need many more physicians, nurses, medical technicians, hospitals, medical schools, MRI machines, drugs and so forth. It would be easier for the space program to send astronauts to Mars than to increase the scale of the medical establishment by 70%.

Providing today's state-of-the-art health care for everyone is simply impossible. Moreover, relentless and highly desirable technical improvements keep pushing the health care frontier outward. An ambitious goal, like sending astronauts to the moon, may be desirable, depending on a calculation of benefits and costs. An impossible goal, like state-of-the-art health care for everyone, is foolish."

"There are only two ways to say no. One is through bureaucratic processes that approve some insurance claims and deny others. The second is for society to put the decision in the hands of families and their physicians. Their decisions will necessarily be based in part on what families can afford. Higher income families can afford insurance policies that cover a wider range of ailments and treatments. From their own resources, they can pay expenses not covered by insurance. In some cases, families and their physicians may choose not to incur certain expenses the family could otherwise afford, choosing instead to leave larger bequests to children and grandchildren.

It is surely true that there are ways to improve the efficiency of existing health care resources. However, it is a pipe dream to believe that the nation can get 70% more health care from existing resources."