It is particularly ironic to hear this coming from government officials and politicians, since the current health care cost crisis is caused by government manipulation of the health care system. On the demand side, government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, and a federal tax policy that gives tax benefits to employer-sponsored health insurance plans, have increased the demand for health services. This increase in demand happened for the simplest of economic reasons. The less a useful service costs, the more it will be used. Here we have a basic truth of economics frequently ignored.
Most people have little understanding of how closely hospitals are regulated.
In Connecticut, a board of five people controls the number of beds, doctors, and nurses hospitals may have. They control when and if new hospital facilities may be built, and where they will be built. Their whim controls the profitability of hospitals, and can turn a profitable year into a loss with a single decision, as they recently did with St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, mandating the closure of 60 existing beds. This decision reduced St. Francis' gross revenue by 7.9 million and expenses by 3.2 million, leading to an obvious 4.7 million dollar loss. In short, the government forces everyone to pay additional health care costs by increasing the demand for health care, and then taking money from some to allow others to have health care.