Giuliani On Health Care

I’ve been impressed by the Giuliani campaign’s organization and discipline. Last week, they turned their attention to health care, with a series of press releases, speeches, and op-eds.
No, wait! Don’t start scrolling! Health care can be a mind-numbingly boring subject, but it’s critically important. Currently we are drifting toward socialized medicine, which the Democrats offer as a “solution” to the fact that budgets at all levels of government are being crushed by medical costs. Given that no one, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, is interested in the solution that I find most tempting–abolish all government programs that relate in any way to health care–it’s critically important to come up with practical, market-oriented approaches.
So: to learn more about Giuliani’s proposals, read his op-ed in the Boston Globe and this editorial in Investor’s Business Daily:

To those who have followed the health care issue over the years and have learned to speak the language of health care reformers, Rudy Giuliani was saying everything wrong when he unveiled his reform plan this week.
He said that “Government cannot take care of you. You’ve got to take care of yourself.”
He said the marketplace, not the government “nanny state,” needs to do the work of fixing the nation’s health care problems.
He said that “We’ve got to solve our health care problem with American principles, not the principles of socialism.” ***
[J]ust as important as details is Giuliani’s frank language: “Americans believe in free-market solutions to the challenges we face, and I believe we can reduce costs, expand access to, and improve the quality of health care by increasing competition. America’s health care system is being dragged down by decades of government-imposed mandates and wasteful, unaccountable bureaucracy.”
For too long, Democrats and their friends in the media have dominated the health care debate, casting it as simply a question of how wretched our health care system is, how much better people in other countries have it, and how the only solution is more government. And for too long, Republicans have played along, buying into the Democrats’ premise while offering dime-store alternatives.
They need to listen and learn from Giuliani: “I don’t care what Michael Moore says in his movie,” he said. “I’ve never had anybody ask me for help to get into a Cuban hospital or a Canadian hospital or an English hospital. They all want to come to America. So let’s take what’s right about our system and let’s improve it.”

Finally, go over to our Candidates’ Forum, where a vigorous debate over Giuliani’s health care proposals is already underway, here, and tell Giuliani and his campaign what you think.

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