Candidate Review - Health Care - Mike Huckabee

Well Mike Huckabee strides the line very skillfully; he is, I have to say, quite a skillful politician. He says that Government doesn't need to mandate health, but that does need to encourage preventative medicine.

The health care system in this country is irrevocably broken, in part because it is only a "health care" system, not a "health" system. We don't need universal health care mandated by federal edict or funded through ever-higher taxes. We do need to get serious about preventive health care instead of chasing more and more dollars to treat chronic disease, which currently gobbles up 80% of our health care costs, and yet is often avoidable. The result is that we'll be able to deliver better care where and when it's needed.

I advocate policies that will encourage the private sector to seek innovative ways to bring down costs and improve the free market for health care services. We have to change a system that happily pays $30,000 for a diabetic to have his foot amputated, but won't pay for the shoes that would save his foot.

I'm not sure exactly how he's going to accomplish this; Insurance companies won't pay for anything not covered; they have an incentive to turn down services. I don't know how you change that through logic.

I also don't know how this helps people who don't currently have insurance. But then again, maybe it's not supposed to.