Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation
For Immediate Release
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
202-285-0244
www.freedomandprosperity.org
New CF&P “Economics 101” Video Demonstrates Need for New Direction in Health Care
(Washington, D.C., Tuesday, July 10, 2012) The latest “Economics 101” video released today by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P), explains how free markets can make health care more affordable, efficient and effective. The video, entitled “Third-Party Payer is the Biggest Economic Problem With America’s Health Care System,” shows how government intervention has promoted inefficiency and higher prices by having consumers indirectly pay for health care with higher taxes and oft-hidden insurance premiums.
Narrated by Julie Borowski of FreedomWorks, the central lesson of the mini-documentary is that an increasing reliance on third-party payers has made health care unnecessarily expensive. Thanks to the growth of government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, tax distortions that encourage use of employer provided insurance, and a greater reliance on insurance to pay for routine medical costs, the health care market is no longer constrained by normal market forces.
This was the case before Obamacare and it will become an even bigger problem as Obamacare is implemented.
Links to the video: YouTube | Dailymotion | Blip.TV
“Even government officials like Medicare’s chief actuary admit that Obamacare will not reduce health care costs,” said CF&P Foundation President Andrew Quinlan. “Now that the Supreme Court has failed to overturn the law, it’s time to actually address the root causes of the problem, such as the market distortions created by government promotion of a third-party payer system,” he concluded.
“Markets work in health care,” noted Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute, who added that “When consumers pay for care directly, such as is the case with cosmetic surgery and laser eye surgery, we see falling prices and rising levels of quality.” The most important policy goal in health care, Mitchell explained, “is to end third-party payer, which is why repealing Obamacare is just the first step if we want to bring down costs and improve the health care system.”
Executive Summary
This mini-documentary from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation explains that “third-party payer” is the main problem with America’s health care system. This is why undoing Obamacare, while desirable, is just a small first step if we want to reduce costs and boost efficiency.
This new video is part of CF&P’s Economics 101 video series, which is designed to explain free market concepts, with particular emphasis on reaching students and young people. This is the eighteenth video in the series.
The other Econ 101 videos: The Dangers of Government Dependency; The New Deal Was A Failure: Hoover and FDR Prolonged the Great Depression with Big Government; The European Fiscal Crisis and Lessons for America, Free Markets, Not Redistribution, Is Best Way to Reduce Poverty, Seven Reasons Why Tax Increases Are the Wrong Approach; Tax Competition: A Powerful Force to Restrain Big Government; Four Reasons Why Big Government Is Bad Government; Keynesian Economics Is Wrong: Economic Growth Causes Consumer Spending, Not the Other Way Around; Indexing the Capital Gains Tax to Protect Taxpayers from Inflation; Repealing Obamacare and Restoring a Free Market in Healthcare; The Job-Killing Impact of Minimum Wage Laws; Deficits, Debts and Unfunded Liabilities; Cost of the Internal Revenue Code; Lessons Learned From Sweden; Government Monopolies; Moral Hazard; and Don’t Copy Europe’s Mistakes.
Web Page for Economics 101 Videos:
http://freedomandprosperity.org/videos/economics-101-series/
CF&P Foundation has also released more than four-dozen mini-documentaries since 2007. These videos include Tax Competition Primer, VAT-Hidden Tax, Global Flat Tax Revolution, Cutting the U.S. Corporate Income Tax, Promoting Prosperity, Obama’s So-Called Stimulus, Obama’s Deferral Proposal, Case Against Class-Warfare Tax Policy, President Obama’s Dishonest Demagoguery on Tax Havens, Six Reasons Why the Capital Gains Tax Should Be Abolished, a three part series on the Benefits of Tax Havens and another three-part series on the Laffer Curve.
Link: http://freedomandprosperity.org/videos/economic-lessons-series/
Web Links:
Youtube
http://youtu.be/Pl3LwMGFAFM
For additional comments:
Andrew Quinlan can be reached at 202-285-0244, andy@freedomandprosperity.org
Dan Mitchell can be reached at 202-218-4615, dmitchell@cato.org
###
