Wherever we look around the world today, we almost always find that normal market processes have been systematically suppressed in health care. As a rule, no one ever sees a real price for any medical service. No patient. No doctor. No employer. No employee. Further, we have not replaced the price system with an alternative that would allow people to make rational health care choices.
As a consequence, in virtually every health care system in the world, people face perverse incentives. When they act on those incentives, they do things that make costs higher, quality lower, and access to care more difficult than otherwise would have been the case.
In the United States, federal policies are a key source of many of these problems.
Coming to the rescue is a remarkable health plan, introduced by Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX), who, as Chairmen of the Rules Committee, is thought to be the second most powerful member of the House of Representatives, and Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who is probably the most knowledgeable person on health policy in the Senate.
The two gentlemen immodestly call their proposal “The World’s Greatest Healthcare Plan” (hereinafter, WGHP).
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