Senator Bernie Sanders D-Vermont recently said that we need to stop talking about phony issues like pulling the plug on grandma and focus on real issues such as the cost of medical care. I am paraphrasing his words and they may not be accurate because I cannot find a source for the direct quote, but I think I am representing his meaning clear enough. And I agree with Senator Sanders in one regard; we should be focusing on reducing the cost of medical care where in the past Senator Sanders has pointed out that medical care in America is twice as much as in other industrialized nations. So my question for Senator Sanders, President Obama, and other supporters of this health care plan is how does it really reduce costs? And is it really possible for the government to reduce the cost of anything?

Lets look at the methods that a government has to control the costs of goods or services. First the government could enforce a mandatory cost for the goods or service. Second the government could subsidize the goods or service by making someone else pay for part of it. It is important to understand that in the second case, the cost is not actually reduced; instead part of the cost is merely passed on to someone else. When this happens, there is a trickle down affect where goods and services that were once bought by the people who are forced to subsidize costs for others will no longer be purchased. In essence the government is robbing Peter to pay Paul. And we all know from the recent credit crisis that this type of juggling can only work for so long before it collapses.

When the government tries the first method by mandating an artificially low price that does not reflect the actual cost to produce the goods or service then you wind up with other problems. You only need to take a look at recent history in Venezuela to see how socialistic price controls affect the economy. One of Hugo Chavez's edicts was to fix the price of certain types of food. End results, many Venezuelan food producers stopped producing the affected items because they could no longer afford to produce them. This led to food shortages and black markets where people could sell the produce at inflated prices. In fact since Mr. Chavez started his programs inflation in Venezuela has skyrocketed.

So how does that apply to the current health care plan? First President Obama says that he is going to pay for his program by robbing the rich to pay for the poor. So he is not actually reducing prices, he is just picking on a minority group to pay for his plan. But wait there are some provisions in the plan to reduce costs. As Senator Sanders and other Democrats have pointed out, the health care bill plans to reduce costs by reducing the amount of money the Medicaid/Medicare pay for certain services. And how does this reduce the cost of medical care? Correct, it really doesn't. Instead it is forcing doctors and hospitals to absorb the cost of these programs through reduce profits and reduced wages. So in essence it is putting the burden on the health care industry to find a way to operate under their restrictions.

The problem with this approach is that it is not fixing underlying issue that drive up the cost of health care; it is a band aid. And what happens if doctors and hospitals cannot absorb all of the costs that are forced on them? Yep, they will go out of business and that means longer wait times for patients because there will be fewer doctors and hospitals for them to go to. And that is not scare tactics or telling lies. It has been proven over and over again how futile and disruptive such attempts at price controls really are.

So what do we do? The real debate should be on how to fix the underlying issues that force the price of health care up. What I think we are getting is a band aid that just pushes the problem off for another time. So do you believe that this health care plan is actually going to fix health care? Do you believe that this health care plan is actually go to reduce the cost of health care?

- Thomas Paine 2

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