I apologize for the lack of activity on this blog lately. School is either just out or finishing up, so I’m sure blogging will pick up in a few days or so.

Anyway, I found this article via Twitter the other day. It’s about the debate going on in Massachusetts about RomneyCare and how to control the costs that are spiraling out of control. Unfortunately, the article is a bit skinny on details and I am sure the debate is focused on keeping the status quo or giving the government an even greater role in health care markets, but I found this line from a state representative (and Democrat) to be most informing:

“The market is most certainly not working. The market is absolutely broken. Health care costs have been rising at 6.7-8% annually over the past decade.”

Yikes. I have a question: if you break a man’s legs and then tell him to run a five-minute mile, will he succeed? The rising costs, of course, are the real problem here, and one that won’t be fixed by introducing more incentives to keep prices both ambiguous and in some cases arbitrary.

RomneyCare, for those of you who don’t know (on this blog? yeah right!) has served as the blueprint for ObamaCare and it involves a nasty combination of forcing people to buy to buy insurance and subsidizing those who do not (or cannot due to the predictable price increase of insurance after the mandate went into effect).

There is no doubt in my mind that actual market-based solutions were proposed in the debates. Here are a couple via economist Tyler Cowen:

5. Make an all-out attempt, working with state and local governments (recall, since the Feds are picking up the Medicaid tab they have temporary leverage here), to ease the spread of low-cost, walk-in health care clinics, run on a WalMart sort of basis.  Stepping into the realm of the less feasible, weaken medical licensing and greatly expand the roles of nurses, paramedics, and pharmacists.

6. Make an all-out attempt, comparable to the moon landing effort if need be, to introduce price transparency for medical services.  This can be done.

7. Preserve current HSAs.  The Obama plan will tank them, yet HSAs, while sometimes overrated, do boost spending discipline.  They also keep open some path of getting to the Singapore system in the future.

There is more here, and Dr. Cowen is throwing out ideas that are politically palatable, but these three would be a welcome step towards decreasing costs and increasing quality.