What Role Should Government Play in Health Care?

What Role Should Government Play in Health Care? in Politics and Legislation

Almost every politician in the U.S. will tell you the health care system needs to be reformed. So why can’t they find common ground on how to reform it?

To L.A. Times columnist Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, the answer is obvious: Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on the role government should play.

Democrats often claim the current system fails the people who need the most help, and programs such as Medicaid need to be expanded. Republicans counter that Democrats are trying to turn a social safety net into a middle-class entitlement — and eroding the private health insurance market in the process.

Republicans and their supporters like to charge that the Democrats’ vision of health care reform is “big government” at its worst. But a key fact is often left out: the federal government is already the biggest player in the health care market. If the current health care system were left as it is today, by 2017 the federal government would be paying for over half of the health services received in the U.S.

It’s a mistake to think that Republicans’ are always opposed to government programs. Despite having leveled the “big government” charge against Democrats, President Bush is responsible for one a major expansion of government-sponsored health care: the Medicare Prescription Program.

Said Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon: “I am still confident there is the capacity to deal with healthcare on a broader basis, and both sides can secure what they want most: Democrats making sure everybody gets covered — because that’s how you rein in costs — and Republicans being able to say, ‘Look, the government is not running healthcare.’”

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