How to Take Back Our Healthcare Freedom

Originally published on Substack. 

​President Donald Trump recently said what millions of Americans already know: healthcare costs too much, and the system is rigged against the people it’s supposed to serve.

He’s right about the problem. Families are being crushed by premiums, paperwork, and politics.
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But the latest “solutions” coming out of Washington—like Trump’s new deal with Pfizer—aren’t a cure. They’re another dose of the poison that got us here.

​Let’s be honest: this isn’t a healthcare system anymore. It’s a bureaucratic maze that exists to serve everything expect the patient.

The average family with employer coverage pays nearly$27,000 annually in premiums before setting foot in a doctor’s office. That money disappears into layers of regulation, compliance, and insurance games—feeding an empire of administrators while patients wait in line and doctors burn out.

America spends $5 trillion a year on healthcare. Roughly half of that—$2.5 trillion—is overhead, not healing. My research with Dr. Deane Waldman calls it BURRDEN: Bureaucratic, Unaccountable, Rigid, Regulated, Distorted, Expensive, and Needless. Seventy percent of it could vanish tomorrow if politicians had the courage to get out of the way.

That’s where Trump’s instincts are right but his methods go wrong.

The Pfizer Deal Isn’t Freedom—It’s Favors

Trump’s direct-to-consumer deal with Pfizer is being sold as a breakthrough for patients. But look closer—it’s Washington business as usual. Pfizer gets publicity, political protection, and a pass on the administration’s new 100 percent tariff on imported branded drugs. Smaller innovators get squeezed, and patients get stuck with fewer options and higher prices. That’s not competition. It’s cronyism.

America doesn’t need another “deal.” We need to dismantle the system that makes such deals possible in the first place.

Price Controls Are Just Another Form of Control

Whether it’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) drug pricing, Medicare “negotiation,” or new Section 232 tariffs, these are all versions of the same failed idea: that government can dictate prices and somehow make things cheaper. It never works.

Cutting prices by force doesn’t save money—it kills innovation. The National Bureau of Economic Research found that forcing a 40–50 percent cut in drug prices would wipe out up to 60 percent of early-stage R&D. That’s roughly 100 new therapies—cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, and rare diseases—that would simply never exist.

You can’t regulate your way to medical miracles. Incentives matter. When you punish success, you get less of it.

The Human Cost: Financial Toxicity

All this waste and control adds up to financial toxicity. It’s not an abstract phrase—it’s a daily crisis. Parents deciding between an asthma inhaler and the power bill. Retirees cutting pills in half. Medicaid patients waiting months to see a specialist because red tape throttles access.

Every mandate, every cap, every layer of bureaucracy bleeds families dry. And it’s completely unnecessary. The market could fix this tomorrow—if Washington would just let it.

Three Reforms to Heal Healthcare

1. End the employer-based tax exclusion.
   Let workers keep the $300 billion in hidden subsidies now flowing to insurance companies. Those dollars belong to the people who earned them. If workers could use them directly, they’d shop for better care, cheaper coverage, or new cash-pay models that actually fit their needs.
2. Create No-Limit Health Savings Accounts.
   Why should politicians tell Americans how much they can save for medical care? No-Limit HSAs would let families take control, pay directly, and reward providers who offer transparent, competitive prices—like the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, where costs are 60 percent lower than the national average.
3. Free doctors and patients to contract directly.
   Direct Primary Care and private direct-to-market models prove that healthcare works best through voluntary exchange. When you cut out middlemen, you get more time with your doctor, lower costs, and real relationships—not forms and frustration.
   
   

Compete to Win

While America ties itself in red tape, other countries are racing ahead. China’s state-driven biotech push aims to dominate the next generation of cures. But the real danger isn’t China’s ambition—it’s America’s surrender. If we keep copying socialist systems and smothering innovation at home, we’ll lose the edge that made us the world’s leader in medicine.

The answer isn’t to control prices lower—it’s to unleash competition so we can out-innovate everyone else. Let patients buy across borders. Let entrepreneurs build clinics and drug companies without begging bureaucrats for permission. The freer we are, the healthier we’ll be.

The Cure: Freedom, Not Force

Trump is right to call out the problem. But real reform means more freedom, not more control. End the employer-based tax distortion. Give workers direct ownership of their healthcare dollars. Open up competition through No-Limit HSAs and voluntary direct-care models.

Do that, and prices will fall, innovation will soar, and patients will finally get the care they deserve—without waiting lines or bureaucratic permission slips.

Healthcare isn’t broken because markets failed. It’s broken because markets were never allowed to work. It’s time to let markets heal.

Thanks for reading, friends.

For more details, see my new co-authored book with Dr. Deane Waldman, Empower Patients: A Cure for America’s Healthcare System, and deeper-dive research ant ATR’s Empower Patients Initiative.
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Visit VanceGinn.com for more of my commentaries, podcast episodes, and resources—and as always, let’s keep working together to let people prosper.