- What aspect of access to healthcare is a right? What kind of healthcare? Acute, life-threatening? Chronic, annoying? Chronic, life-threatening? Cosmetic, vanity? Cosmetic, reconstructive? Evidence-based vs. non-evidence based? Who decides what’s a right? Who/what companies influence the czar who decides?
- Do we want Congress to decide the science behind medical interventions? Where is the line drawn? Do they have better things to do? Do they decide all acceptable forms of treatment? Do we think Congress is an expert? When evidence suggests one year that something is good for us and then the next year evidence suggests it’s bad for us (hormone replacement therapy), who is at fault and who must take the heat? The government who legislated therapies or Big Pharma who influenced these legislated therapies? Do we trust the government and corporations to decide therapies for us? Are individuals’ interests held higher than corporate interests?
- Are we really willing to turn over individual decision making in a doctor’s office to federal government bureaucracies? When a therapy is deemed no longer effective by the government, how long will it take to reverse legislation?
- Mandates increase oversight which increase human-powered processes which increase costs. Are we ready to make healthcare bigger, costlier, and even more inefficient?
- And the big one…how does even more increased government regulation stifle innovative payment and delivery processes? If the payment and delivery of healthcare is regulated, how can we quickly invent solutions on the fly that make sense? What are the incentives to improve the status quo?