PragerU Video: Why Is Health Care So Expensive?

The cost of health care has been soaring every year thanks to Obamacare, an issue that is at the forefront of the political landscape with the Senate’s attempt to pass Trumpcare.

Obamacare has caused health care costs to increase because it further expanded government into the market, squeezing out competition and adding onerous taxes and regulations that insurers have had to pass onto consumers in the form of higher premiums and deductibles.

But as PragerU’s latest video explains, there is a solution: the free market. The video lists three ways to breathe capitalism back into the health care sector:

• Lower taxes on insurers.
• Reduce regulations.
• Create an environment that incentivizes medical advancements.

Obamacare imposed $60 billion in taxes onto insurers, so removing those taxes would lower costs and therefore lower premiums. Additionally, Obamacare’s regulations require “insurance plans to cover an incredibly big list of benefits.”

“If you want a bare-bones insurance plan that simply covers catastrophic events like a car accident or cancer, you currently can’t get one,” the video states. “By boosting the benefits of every plan, it restricts competition and drives up prices by forcing smaller health insurers out of the marketplace.”

Repealing such regulations will not only lower costs, it will encourage more insurers to enter the market, increasing competition, which will result in lower premiums and deductibles.

The video also notes that it costs over $2.5 billion to put a new drug into the market, which isn’t helped by Obamacare’s “additional $22 billion tax burden on innovator drug companies.”

“Punishing drug producers forces them to charge even higher prices to make up for the lost money in research, development, and taxes,” the video states. “If we encourage, not punish, drug makers, it will lead to more breakthroughs and lower costs — a win, win for all of us.”

The full video can be seen below:

Follow Aaron Bandler on Twitter.