Modern medicine mess.

• Author: Vliet, Elizabeth Lee
• Position: Medicine & Health

Before the arrival of the Trump Administration, "the political elites ... 'disconnected' the natural regulatory mechanism of price signals and consumers making voluntary decisions about the use of their own money, so politicians [kept] compounding the problems they created by creating more and more regulations in an effort to fix them."

CONGRATULATIONS to Pres. Donald Trump for a commonsense and much needed approach to selecting the new Secretary of Health and Human Services: instead of a lawyer or another bureaucrat, he selected a knowledgeable physician and surgeon, Rep. Tom Price (R.-Ga.).

HHS is the third largest Federal agency, often described as a moribund, over-budget, bloated bureaucracy rife with waste and fraud that controls Medicare and Medicaid, on which millions of Americans depend. HHS itself desperately is in need of strong medicine.

Price, well known as being a proponent of sound medical practice, commonsense reforms, and market-based solutions to rising medical costs, has fought to reduce the escalating government interference in medical decision-making. He also has worked to improve access to medical care and specialists for patients in the government-run programs.

Price understands that patients need care tailored to their individual needs without government bureaucrats dictating what must be done. Former Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a lawyer by profession, imposed thousands of pages of new and onerous regulations during her tenure at HHS, strangling the practice of medicine and causing increased costs and confusion in medical practice across the U.S.

Democrats constantly claim that free markets do not work; we cannot go back to what was, even if ObamaCare has problems. However, "free markets'--in medical care and health insurance have not been allowed to operate in the U.S. since the 1940s, when employer-owned health insurance arose because of government wage and price controls.

"Free markets" in medical services were further destroyed with the 1965 passage of Medicare and Medicaid. Pres. Lyndon Johnson caused insurers to cancel the private insurance that millions of senior citizens liked and wanted to keep, wiping out competition. Costs exploded, followed by more and more government controls on doctors and hospitals in a futile effort to contain runaway spending. State governments piled on with insurance mandates, "certificate-of-need" legislation, and other restrictions on competition.

The political elites have...