The recently proposed GOP health-care plan aims to create a health-care system that empowers patients. To build on these efforts — to fuel innovation, lower costs, and expand access — the administration should also scale back onerous regulations in the health-care sector, which have the unique potential to be harmful.
In other industries the costs of regulations are typically passed along to the consumer by increasing the price of goods and services. In health care, by contrast, since there is a third-party payment system, limited price transparency or flexibility exists. This limits the ability of suppliers to raise prices to account for the increased operational costs of regulations. In fact, as costs increase, reimbursements are actually declining. In light of this paradox, the costs of health-care regulations get passed along to patients in the form an inferior product: less face time with doctors.
