printDuring 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.)
The missionary position would be entirely too conventional for what the administration has in mind for us.
I was guessing we’d all be the beneficiaries of a little State Proctology.
[You guessed the theme word in tonight’s column. LOL.]
I have a family member who is an MD. He also has a BS in economics and an MBA. He used to be medical director of an HMO.
He said much of the problems with the current system of health care – not insurance, but health care – is the third party payment system. Consumers have no idea as to the true cost of health care since the employer “pays” for so much of it. Plus there are so many mandates at all levels of government about what must be covered that the net result is too much testing and higher costs.
What consumers need is health insurance, i.e, something that will pay for catastrophic events with routine exams being paid for with health care savings plans. Currently we have an all inclusive system with small co-payments. Consumers are prone to over consume with such a system.
Nearly 40 years ago, my office was directly across the hall from that of the Chief of Medicine, V. Fred Burry, MD. His stock message to each new group of residents was direct. “Ninety percent of all human disease is self-limiting,” he would say, leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk, puffing on a cigar. “Most of your patients will get better despite your efforts—just don’t screw it up!” (Yes, Virginia, some doctors actually did smoke in hospitals back in those days.) An understanding of Fred’s central observation that most patients will recover without medical treatment is among the many important considerations completely missing from the ongoing debate over “universal health care.”
First let us call things by their right names. It should be understood that health care and insurance coverage are not the same thing. It is claimed that 40 million Americans are uninsured; the implication being that those 40 million Americans cannot obtain health care. That implication is false. American hospitals and physicians voluntarily provide millions of dollars worth of uncompensated charity care every year. In addition, almost every hospital in America is required by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) “ to provide care to anyone needing emergency treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay.” There are no reimbursement provisions. The law applies to all patients and they can be discharged only under their own informed consent or when their condition requires transfer to a hospital better equipped to administer their required treatment.
Contrary to what many appear to believe, extending health insurance coverage to all Americans will explode health care expenditures. Any funding mechanism, government or private, that separates the person making the decision to use “health care” services from the financial consequences of that decision destroys market discipline and increases service consumption. The demand for free service is virtually infinite. That basic rule of economics, coupled with government and third party cost shifting, excessive regulation, and a tort system that creates a legal need for otherwise unnecessary testing, are the primary drivers of health care cost increases. If you believe health care is expensive now, just wait until it is “free.”
As important as they are, these are not the most crucial reasons to oppose universal health care. Concealed within the fine print is the ultimate power grab, a dehumanizing, immoral, and technically incompetent rationing method that grants to faceless bureaucrats the power to decide, literally, who lives and who dies. Central planners will use “comparative effectiveness” to determine who may and may not use health care services. Comparative effectiveness compares the estimated cost of care against the imputed dollar value of a specific patient’s estimated remaining years of life and authorizes or withholds care based on that comparison. In other words, a statistical calculation will be imposed over the clinical judgment of a real physician treating an actual human patient. Comparative effectiveness will reduce the value of each human life to mere dollars and treat each patient as a statistic.
Mussolini wrote in Fascism: Doctrines and Institutions, “The fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State.” Comparative effectiveness operates on this principle, putting the abstract interest of the state above the value of human life, a value that cannot be expressed in mere dollars. Universal health care pretends that devaluing human life is in the best interest of the collective. This is a deliberate lie intended to mask the growth of total state power and it is the complete antithesis of traditional American thinking. Universal health care must be defeated or freedom itself will be lost.
Frank Brady has it diagnosed right: A Government plan for socialist-fascism.
As a Canadian, I’m now getting accustomed to read horror stories about how bad our ‘socialist’ medicine is. I don’t really care about labels, and I’ll be the first to say there is a LOT wrong with health care delivery in Canada. But will someone here please explain how does the US manage to spend almost twice as much for health care per capita as anyone else in the developed world, get crappy results, and still manage to have one sixth of it’s population uninsured ? I’m not saying things would be better with Obama’s plan, but not because it’s the ‘big bad government’, but rather because there’s something fundamentally, deeply wrong with the way health care dollars are spent in the US. You already have the most heavily privatized system in the world. Why should anyone automatically believe that more of it will be better ?
[See update.]
Frank Brady’s comment; “Comparative effectiveness compares the estimated cost of care against the imputed dollar value of a specific patient’s estimated remaining years of life and authorizes or withholds care based on that comparison.” could be paraphrased as– “What’s this slave’s value to the state?”
Our local paper had a letter to the editor from a doctor a few years ago. He stated that he was going to quit taking Medicare patients. He was paying out too much of his income to comply with all the bookkeeping and clerical staffing Medicare required that he felt he was overcharging his patients.
Last year,I went to a General Practice doctor 165 miles away for a consultation, he did not take Medicare. His prices for medical services were very low and he covered standard medical procedures and alternative practices as well, so a patient didn’t just receive a prescription on the way out the door. Actually, he gave much better service than a standard doctor. Also, we talked about my health for almost a half hour, before he made a recommendation to a specialist in my area. I don’t mind paying a fair price for good service. I remember doctors like that when I was a kid, before Washington decided to help us.
To be clear, the AMA does not limit the number of people who pursue careers in medicine and has no power to do so. The AMA continues to advocate for an increase in the physician workforce, especially in light of our quest for health-care reform that covers all Americans. We need to attract the best and brightest to careers in medicine and help practicing physicians continue to provide high quality patient care. To successfully increase the physician workforce to meet America’s long-term needs, the AMA is calling on Congress to lift the current cap on residency positions, create new incentives to get physicians to underserved areas, and enact permanent Medicare physician payment reform. With the growing U.S. population and aging baby boomers, the physician shortage is one our nation cannot ignore if we want adequate access to health care.
-American Medical Association
American expatriate Fred Reed (Mexico) on America’s regulated medicine:
[See: http://www.fredoneverything.net/Damocles.shtml%5D
“Bausch & Lomb makes ophthalmic salt water, useful in treating corneal edema… In the Yankee Capital, it costs $23 for 1.8 ounces…. The generic here…. $3.
…. I prefer to think of it as governmental regulation of prices. It is perfectly legal, because Big Pharma owns the government.
I believe that Econ textbooks say that price controls haven’t worked from Diocletian on. Wrong. They work splendidly. … If you could make over twenty-two bucks on a dime’s worth of salt water, wouldn’t you be in favor of governmental interference in the economy?
{Medicine is} .. an unholy scam. Here in Mexico my wife occasionally gets ear infections. At any pharmacy, we pick up Amoxicillin, 250mg three times a day for ten days. Six bucks.
Recently {in Maryland}.. she got an earache. Amoxicillin is by prescription only in the US, which means that doctors have a monopoly on earaches. … {we used the} … walk-in clinics, which wanted $150 for the appointment and prescribed $78 in medicines.
It’s a scam, pure and simple. …. the US is as corrupt as Mexico could ever be, and it’s mostly legal.”
Fred Reed here is missing a glaring opportunity to make bucket loads of money.