Health Care Over Regulated

Health care is over regulated based on the fact that, a discussion of health care reform inevitably includes money wasted on health care regulation. An average of 53.5 million Americans are unable to access health insurance and consequently, majority of the people are unable to seek appropriate health care due to cost and the ones who opt to seek health care services are usually overburdened by the cost. The suffering encountered in the system of health care stems from attributing the current system to money rather that the people (Colquitt, Sommer & Godwin, 2005). 

According to the information from Cato Institute, the cost associated with health care regulation is in excess of $340 billion. Additionally, the benefits derived from regulation of health services are in excess of $170 billion thus resulting to a net burden of regulation of health services of approximately $170 billion. This has the implication of a waste of resources on regulation of health care that has no important purpose. The government has the duty of alleviating the problem through possibly creation of programs that allow the use of private coverage that is available in universities by the students instead of the ones that are supplemented by the state which will facilitate for a lower cost of health care and the state burden to the students (Butler & Ribstein, 2008). 

The requirement for implementation of evidence-based medicine calls for a corresponding implementation of evidence-based regulation by the federal government. Excessive cost associated with over-regulation should be eliminated or drastically reduced, the starting point of which is the adoption of a simplified as well as a stripped down set of regulations. The existing regulations that are marked with negative cost:benefit ratio along with the ones that lack an evidence-based rationale must be eliminated. The basis of this development should be the factual evidence in addition to improved health care quality.

References

Butler, H. N. & Ribstein, L. E., (2008).  “The Single-License Solution.”  Regulation 31.4: 36-42.

Colquitt, L. L., Sommer, D. W. & Godwin, N. H. (2005).  “An Empirical Analysis of Life Insurer State Licensing Choices.”  Journal of Insurance Regulation 24.2