A group of speakers at a Thursday night health care roundtable criticized the health care reform plans currently in Congress and called for alternative reform that would decrease the government’s role in the health insurance market.

The roundtable was hosted by the ASU chapter of the Network of Enlightened Women, a conservative group founded in 2004.

Speakers included Byron Schlomach, an economist from conservative think tank the Goldwater Institute, William Boyes, a professor of economics at the W. P. Carey School of Business and Dr. Richard Dolinar, a physician based in the Valley.

Finance senior Blayne Bennett said she was looking to help other conservatives become informed of other options for health care reform.

“We’re looking at alternatives to Obama’s proposed plan,” Bennett said. “I believe the conservative viewpoint [of the issue] has been underrepresented at universities, especially at Arizona State.”

One recurring argument made by the speakers was that health care costs have increased substantially because expenses have increasingly been split by different parties — employers, individuals and various government programs. Schlomach said this resulted in consumers not making informed decisions.

“We’re not careful consumers,” Schlomach said. “We don’t look carefully at the bills, we don’t argue with the doctors or the hospitals over the bills the way we would with any other service.”

Boyes said the current highly-regulated model leads to higher prices than those in a free-market system.

“People don’t pay for health care,” he said. “Nobody owns it. That means it’s inefficient. That means resources aren’t allocated to the uses where they would have the most value.”

He pointed to cosmetic and LASIK eye surgery, which is not covered by government plans such as Medicaid. LASIK surgeries have gone down in costs while going up in quality, an example of a market where resources were allocated toward cutting costs and passing savings on to consumers.

“It’s only when the government gets involved that we get higher costs,” he said.

Schlomach and Boyes were both critical of health care reform plans from President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

Schlomach suggested several alternatives, including getting rid of tax breaks for employers and expanding health savings accounts, which would give recipients more flexibility in choosing plans and using the money.

“Once you’ve retired … you can leave them to your children, give them to your grandchildren — heck, you could give them away to someone else,” Schlomach said. “If that’s what you want to do, you should be able to do it.”

Sara El-Amine, field director of the Arizona branch of the Democratic advocacy group Organizing for America, said increased regulation of the health care industry is necessary to keep companies from denying and over-charging for coverage.

“The market is completely dominated by two or three insurance companies that are able to set price and premiums at an inflated rate, [and] they are making huge profits by denying claims,” she said.

Increased government regulation would only add to the inefficiencies and lower the quality of health care, Boyes said, adding that cutting costs can’t solve the health care problem without reducing the standard of care.

“The quality has to go down and it has to be rationed,” he said. “Every single problem we have in health care is because of government intervention.”