During the recent ABC News Obama Health Care infomercial, Obama promised that his systems would work as the Mayo Clinic does, “where experts had figured out the most effective treatments and eliminated waste and unnecessary procedures.”

The key to Mayo, and many such private not-for-profits, is not its experts. Mayo clinic operates efficiently because it is a private clinic, where a mission and market forces are at play; and where entrepreneurs are still strongly motivated to make greater profits and avoid losses, so as to plow them back into an organization in which they are invested.

What’s the government’s mission? To get Americans into the missionary position?

Moreover, the institute of private property ensures that we have prices. Prices are like a compass: pegged to supply and demand they ensure the correct allocation of resources. Conversely, in a nationalized system there are no prices because there is no private property. Absent such knowledge, misallocation of capital is inevitable.

In freeing up medicine it is important, among other steps, to prohibit the American Medical Association from acting like a medieval guild, or a cartel, in curtailing freer entry into the medical profession, and thus reducing supply and pushing up prices.

The sick-making reality is that sixty-two percent of Americans support a so-called government insurance plan. Contrast that with the country that rejected Hilary Clinton’s Health Security Act (HAS) in 1993, lock-stock-and-barrel.

More on medicine in the missionary position in tonight’s WND column.

Update I: Roger, there are ample good products on the market for catastrophic insurance. We once had one. For the rest, we paid for our own very occasional routine visits, and because we paid cash, as you point out, it was always cheaper than the insurance price the doctors set. It’s sheer nonsense to say government must supply anything at all. I am always appalled by the lack of appreciation Americans show the marvelous markets. Not a day goes by when I don’t hear ads on the boob tube for affordable insurance. The last one I listened to was a $6 per-day offer for pretty comprehensive coverage. The problem is that the average immoral idiocrat believes that I should be taxed to pay for his care; the doctor ought to be enslaved in his service; and he ought to be able to spend the $6 on a six pack.

Keep your powder dry. There’s more to come tonight.

Update II (June 26): I appreciate the response in the Comments Section from the American Medical Association. However, in cahoots with the state, professional organizations, acting like trade unions, very often do act to protect their members by inadvertently limiting entry into the profession. Strong support for state licensure is one example.
The AMA draws up lists of approved schools and hospitals vis-a-vis internships, not so? It is instructive to note that lists of AMA and state-approved medical schools coincide. The AMA lays down the standards of practice and admission; the state enforces them, to mutual advantage.
It is this symbiotic, rent-seeking relationship that the AMA would have to relinquished for the sake of a proliferation of providers and products.
(Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, in Block et al.)