A July 2023 study touted a 13.4 percent return on investment for healthcare stocks, when returns on T-bills and I-bonds were 3.96 percent and 4.3 percent respectively.  According to one analyst, “Whether you're seeking dividends or explosive growth, the economy's most reliable sector [healthcare] has something for you.” 

For private investors, both individual and corporate, the first goal is always financial. When politicians expend taxpayer dollars, i.e., investing our money, it is presumably to create a better life for Americans. 

1.    What are politicians’ goals when investing, specifically in healthcare?

2.    How does investing in healthcare, private or public, affect patients? 

Judging by both rhetoric and behavior, Washington seems to have two goals for federal investing in/spending on healthcare: reducing the cost of care, most recently drugs; and giving government insurance to everyone. Biden’s disingenuously titled Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will establish prices for drugs and severely penalize companies that charge higher prices. Medicare will be allowed to “negotiate” prices for medical care with individual providers. This brings an image of a provider in a rowboat negotiating right of way at sea with nuclear aircraft carrier. 

Such investments in healthcare, like every regulatory solution from Washington, generate BARRCOME (bureaucracy, administration, rules, regulations, compliance, oversight, mandates, enforcement). 

BARRCOME is massively expensive: in dollars, in patient care, and in freedom.

Between 31 percent and 50 percent of all U.S. healthcare spending goes to pay for BARRCOME. That is roughly $2 trillion of patient care that Washington denies those it supposedly serves.  

Patient care suffers from BARRCOME by “bureaucratic diversion.” The dollars used to pay bureaucrats is taken from dollars to pay providers, hospitals, and suppliers like pharmacies. 

The result is called the seesaw effect. As more money goes to BARRCOME and for insurance procedures, less money is available for care. Thus, as BARRCOME drives the number of government-insured individuals up, access to care goes down!

Excessively long wait times for care leads to death-by-queue in Medicaid enrollees, veterans covered by Tricare, and Medicare patients, even privately insured persons. 

Just as government investing in BARRCOME hurts patients, so does private investing in healthcare. A ten year study, spanning before and after the ACA 2007-2017, showed that as healthcare insurance stock prices rose, access to care declined. Wait times increased and Medicaid acceptance rate by physician fell. The seesaw effect applies to private investment in healthcare just like government. 

The most egregious cost of BARRCOME is individual freedom. Washington and their insurance proxies use federal regulations to control both financial and medical decision-making. This denies Americans their legally protected medical autonomy, one of the many freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. 

The solution to unsustainable medical spending, insufficient access to care leading to death-by-queue, and denial of freedom is as obvious as it is politically radioactive. We the People, not We the Elites, should be free to decide how to spend our healthcare dollars, what doctors we choose to trust with our lives, what care we receive and when.

All it takes is reconnecting patient directly with physician, taking away decision-making capability from third parties. We should decide our fate, not them. 

Scary? Absolutely. 

Hard? Yes. 

Impossible? No! 

Not unless we refuse to use our ballot box power and reclaim our freedom. If we moan it is impossible, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science; former Director of the Center for Healthcare Policy at Texas Public Policy Foundation; and author of the multi-award winning book Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare: StatesCare and Market-Based Medicine. 

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