DeMint on health care reform

This nicely sums things up:

Employer-sponsored health care is not the norm around the world, after all, and for most of our history, it hasn't been the norm in the U.S. either.

The only reason it is today is that Washington politicians make it hard for individuals to own their own health insurance policies. Government gives tax benefits to businesses to provide group health plans to employees, but offers no such tax benefit to individuals who try to buy their own plan for themselves or their family. Government prevents consumers from shopping for better plans across state lines, which limits competition and drives up prices. Government health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid pay doctors and hospitals less than the full value of their services, and the difference gets priced into the higher premiums paid by people who do have insurance.

In other words, politicians deliberately restrict consumer choice, drive up prices, underpay doctors and hinder both access and portability. Then they turn around, blame the free market for the health care crisis and say the only way to save the system is a government takeover of health insurance in the form of a so-called "public option."

If government is the cause of the health care crisis, then more government is not the solution. Before we give up on real freedom and lose another few trillion dollars on another government boondoggle, why don't we experiment with a different kind of health care reform--one based on fairness and freedom, that treats all individuals and families equally?

Before blaming the free market for health care's ills, how about we actually give it a chance to work?

Update: Scott Grannis says, it's the tax code, stupid.