How do we fix healthcare?

Some Democrats are today attempting to pass legislation providing government-sponsored health care. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others have even gone as far as saying Americans have a "right" to health care and that the national government has a responsibility to provide health care to those who cannot afford it.

Interestingly, the health care and insurance system has developed into its present condition largely as a result of previous congressional decisions not to consider health care a commercial activity. Those decisions have left states to develop regulations for health care and insurance within their borders.

Today, after more than two centuries of relatively little federal regulation, Democrats say that Congress now has an important responsibility to provide health care for "every American."

Democrats argue that the present condition of the health care system indicates that we cannot trust the system to develop efficiently; therefore Congress must regulate and support it.

The problem with this argument is that it takes two steps at once. The system is currently state-regulated and primarily supported by non-governmental sources. The Speaker of the House would change the system to be Congress-regulated and primarily supported by governmental sources.

Those who desire government-provided health care assume it is commerce and therefore properly regulated by Congress, but they would skip the intermediate step of private support regulated by Congress. Nearly every other commercial activity has thrived under this capitalistic structure. Congress should attempt to regulate one private system before it attempts to take over and coordinate fifty different systems.