Universal health plans won’t work

Walter F. Johnson Albemarle County
Published: June 5, 2008

Most of the universal health plans, as currently being proposed on the campaign trail for president, won’t work. In fact, they will be counterproductive to our current quality and availability of medical services. Here’s why.

There is a major problem of supply and demand. Our availability of doctors is now almost insufficient and the operating number of nurses is woefully inadequate. This is a supply that is nearly inadequate to meet the existing demand. In any operations, when the demand exceeds the supply, the availability of the product decreases and its quality suffers.

Most of the proposed universal health plans only involve increasing the government budget for health care or requiring participation with health insurance. This will significantly increase demand, without expanding supply, further aggravating the current discrepancy.

In order to make improvements, the supply of providers needs to be greatly expanded and costs controlled. These can be best accomplished by accepting qualified foreign personnel into our country, increasing the outputs of our professional training facilities and substantially reducing government regulations and controls. The open competition of private enterprises must be allowed to function. With the strength of competition and individual rights to choose coverage and services, costs will be reduced and quality protected. Government has yet to provide cost-effective services for any civil operation.

Only Sen. John McCain has proposed a health plan involving increased participation of commercial enterprise. That, and an increase in the supply, are the only effective methods to provide and extend real, affordable, high-quality medical services.