Health Regulations Big Cost to Casper Hospital

Suppose Congress mandated that supermarkets like Wal-Mart must give away groceries to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. Anyone who wanted to could walk in, demand milk, bread, baked beans and ice cream and then walk out without paying. It would be up to the supermarket to send us a bill and hope we pay it.

Needless to say, such a law would go against every basic value that our country is built on, from property rights to the virtues of self determination.

Yet some private businesses are actually forced to give away their products. The Casper Star Tribune reports:

Twelve cents of every dollar paid to the Wyoming Medical Center goes toward charity care or unpaid medical bills at the hospital. The number is twice the national average, comprising 12 percent of costs at the facility … Uncompensated care … topped $56 million in fiscal year 2014.

Superficially, the theory behind the law that forces hospitals to give away health care seems compassionate: you should never have to worry about your health, regardless of your financial situation. But just as people may need health care when they have no money, they most certainly need food. Yet Congress does not force Albertson's or Wal-Mart to open their stores to those who allegedly have no money. The poor can join SNAP (food stamps) so that private businesses can sell them food instead of forcibly giving it away.

Medicaid was created for a similar purpose. In fact, if everyone who qualifies for Medicaid actually enrolls, the problem with forced-charity health care would be much smaller than today. Better still: if hospitals, just like supermarkets, could deny sales to people who did not even bother to bring taxpayers' money to the ER, the problem with forced give-away health care would probably become negligible.

Or, to be correct, it could have become negligible. According to the Casper Star Tribune, Obamacare has become so expensive to insurance providers use $5,000-deductible plans to be able to provide something to their customers. Despite such deductibles, premiums can exceed $1,500 per month, adding to the unaffordability problem.

The result: more people default on their medical bills.

This unsustainable situation is the result of layers of political intervention into the health care sector, with the forced give-away law as the regulatory crown jewel. While the insurance mandate in Obamacare was partly sold as a solution to the forced give-away problem, in reality it has only exacerbated the situation.

Instead of trying to solve problems caused by old regulations by adding new regulations, Congress should take a big step back, give the health care industry back its economic freedom and trust providers and patients with making rational choices.

It is time to stop thinking of government as the solution to every problem, especially those caused by government. It is time to put an end to the era of the welfare state and big, intrusive government.

It is time to return to what made America exceptional: economic freedom.