It's Hard to Participate, I Know All to Well (Post 8 of a Series of Posts)

The following is my eighth post in a series of posts that shows my letter to those members of Congress who voted for ACA.  If you have not read the first post then I encourage you to do so by clicking here and then reading each successive post until you arrive at this one.

The following portion of the letter provides high level suggestions on how to improve our healthcare based on sound economic principles:

Economics 101 Can Provide a Guide For a New Solution

Since the primary goal is make healthcare affordable, we want to move the supply curve to the right and/or the demand curve left, which will lead to lower prices (P_new) and more coverage (Q_new), as shown to the right. 

The supply curve can move to the right by the following means:

1.  Remove regulations – regulations add cost because people (who do not work for free) are needed at both the organization and with a government agency to ensure that the regulations are followed;
2. Enable process innovation to lower the cost of goods or services some or all of which can be passed onto the consumer; and/or
3. Enable product innovation to create new products and services that would provide substitutes to current products (which would lead to process innovation for those products/services currently in the market place as stated above).

Secondly, we can move the demand curve to the left, but this is a little more daunting and will take much longer term; I suggest a possible idea on the following page.  The demand curve can move to the left by the following means:

1. Encourage healthy habits as the First Lady is doing. 

A German and European-based biomedical scientist, Dr. Thomas, advocates for some of these same concepts based on his research published in the 2005 edition of The Journal of Medical Marketing entitled “How Can We Explain the American Dominance in Biomedical Research and Development?” He argues that medical discoveries (aka product innovation) are due to the wealthier (an incentive to innovate) and competitive environment within the US market.