Today, Cato releases The Cato Institute Handbook on Affordability. In our chapter, Cato Senior Fellow Jeffrey A. Singer and I explain:
If subsidies reliably delivered affordability, the United States would be a patient’s paradise. Instead, it is the world leader in subsidizing and mandating health spending. Between tax-financed government programs and compulsory private spending, government compels US residents to spend 14 percent of national income on health care, a larger share of gross domestic product than total health spending in any other advanced country. Subsidies and compulsory spending are so extensive, US patients are less sensitive to prices and wasteful spending than patients in nearly every other advanced nation.
Rather than create more government subsidies, policymakers should eliminate supply-side regulations that reduce price competition and affordability.
To make health care more affordable, federal policymakers must:
- Remove regulatory barriers to quality, affordable health insurance;
- Recognize foreign regulatory approvals of medical goods; and
- Remove unnecessary prescription requirements, ultimately by eliminating prescription regulation.
To make health care more affordable, state policymakers must:
- Remove state regulatory barriers to quality, affordable health insurance;
- Recognize clinician licenses from other states and ultimately eliminate clinician licensing;
- Free clinicians to practice to the full extent of their training;
- Remove employment barriers to international medical graduates;
- Recognize competing medical school certifications; and
- Repeal “certificate of need” laws.
