Should the Congressional Fox Guard the Healthcare Henhouse?

Those responsible for wrecking the healthcare market cannot be expected to save it.

Editor’s note: the second author of this piece is Deane Waldman.

Would you ask a hungry fox to guard the henhouse? Of course not. For the same reason, Americans should be very wary when “Congress debates solutions to soaring [healthcare] bills.”  

Most people do not believe that the mainstream media reports honestly and objectively. Some still do, likely due to some residual credibility that may cling to the highly partisan, opposite-of-objective misinformation masters called the legacy or complicit media. 

Consider the facts. 

Reporter Samantha Manning of CMG Washington News Bureau announced that Congress will discuss how to solve the problem of unaffordable healthcare prices. “Unaffordable” applies to both individual Americans and the nation.

Last year, the U.S. spent $4.8 trillion on its healthcare system, an amount greater than the entire GDP of Japan, which added $2.24 trillion to a Biden-Harris record debt of $33.17 at the end of 2022. The average U.S. family healthcare costs in 2023 were equally unaffordable, a staggering $31,065. 

To call healthcare bills “soaring” is no exaggeration. Where is the money going? Are the doctors responsible for “price-gouging,” to use V.P. Harris’ phrase? Data shows that payments to doctors – “allowable reimbursement schedules” released by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) – pay only a small fraction of physicians’ published prices. In many cases, physicians in their offices are paid below the cost of doing business, which is why solo practitioners have been driven out of practice. 

If not to physicians or hospitals, where is the money going? Studies estimate that between 31 percent and more than 50 percent of U.S. healthcare spending does NOT pay for patient care! It pays for BARRCOME – bureaucracy, administration, rules, regulations, compliance, oversight, mandates, and enforcement. In other words, Washington pays its bureaucrats $1.5 trillion to $2.4 trillion “healthcare” dollars, taking those dollars away from patients, taxpayers, and health care providers.

For proof, look no further than the Affordable Care Act (ACA). To pay for all the BARRCOME, such as 50 state Health Exchanges (Dr. Deane was a Director), the ACA took $716 billion from the Medicare Trust, money intended to pay for seniors’ in-hospital care. 

When most people read about a congressional commission to curb healthcare fraud, new rules to activate price transparency, or the recent legislative effort to reduce healthcare spending, they think price lists just appear. Recouping fraudulent medical bills is not free, and we’re already paying the salaries of members of Congress, so how can a new commission cost money? 

When the government does anything, it costs taxpayers and people in the marketplace lots of money and other resources. The Mueller investigation into the Russia Collusion scam by the Hilary Clinton campaign cost $32 million plus 2 ½ wasted years. Washington paid $80 billion to Pfizer for a self-styled CoViD “vaccine” that didn’t work and harmed the health of millions. 

The ACA cost $2.6 trillion. Bernie Sanders admits his Medicare-for-All plan could cost $40 trillion, which represents one-third of the combined productivity of all nations on Earth. 

Imagine how much more care providers could have given patients with $32 million plus $80 billion plus $2.6 trillion, or how much more money could stay in people’s pockets.

Every time Congress legislates a fix for our failing healthcare system, three things happen. First, they move us closer to national insolvency by spending trillions of more dollars we don’t have. Second, they worsen the doctor shortage and make it more difficult for families to pay expenses by taking money from paying care providers to compensate bureaucrats.  Third and worst, with each new regulation, access to medical care goes DOWN – the seesaw effect. Paraphrasing an old beer commercial, spend more, less care. 

This is why the old aphorism applies. Would you ask the fox to watch the henhouse? That is the same as expecting Washington to reduce healthcare spending.

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Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science; former Director of Center for Healthcare Policy at Texas Public Policy Foundation; former Director of New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange; and author of 12 books, including multi-award winning, Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare: StatesCare and Market-Based Medicine.  Contact him at www.deanewaldman.com. 

Vance Ginn, Ph.D., is president of Ginn Economic Consulting, host of the Let People Prosper Show, and previously chief economist of the Trump White House's Office of Management and Budget. Follow him on X.com at@VanceGinn.