Posted on 06/29/2009 9:08:07 PM PDT by jazusamo
Most political and media discussions of medical care have an air of unreality reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. There is an abundance of catch-phrases but remarkably few coherent arguments.
Let's start at square one. Why is there alarm about American medical care? The most usual reason given is because its cost is high and rising.
That is certainly true. We were not spending nearly as much on high-tech medical procedures in the past because there were not nearly as many of them, and we were not spending anything at all on some of the new pharmaceutical drugs because they didn't exist.
This general pattern is not peculiar to medical care. Cars didn't cost nearly as much in the past, when they didn't have air-conditioning, power steering and high-tech safety features. Homes were cheaper when they were smaller, had fewer bathrooms and lacked such conveniences as built-in microwave ovens.
We would like to have all these things without the rising costs that come with them. But only with medical care is such wishful thinking taken seriously, with government regarded as a sort of fairy godmother who will give us the benefits without the costs.
A cynic is said to be someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. If so, then it is political cynicism to point to other countries that spend less on medical care, including some countries where there is "universal health care" provided "free" by their governments.
Just as medical care, houses and cars were all cheaper when they lacked things that they have today, so medical care in other countries is cheaper when they lack many things that are more readily available in the United States.
There are more than four times as many Magnetic Resonance Imaging units (MRIs) per capita in the United States as in Britain or Canada, where there are government-run medical systems. There are more than twice as many CT scanners per capita in the United States as in Canada and more than four times as many per capita as in Britain.
Is it surprising that such things cost money?
The cost of developing a new pharmaceutical drug is now about a billion dollars. Neither political rhetoric nor government bureaucracies will make those costs go away.
We can, of course, refuse to pay these and other medical costs, just as we can refuse to buy air-conditioned homes with built-in microwave ovens. But that just means we pay attention only to prices and not to the value of what we get for those prices.
We can even refuse to pay for so many doctors. But that just means that we will have to wait longer to see a doctor-- as people do in countries with government-run medical systems.
In Canada, 27 percent of the people who have surgery wait four months or more. In Britain, 38 percent wait that long. But only 5 percent of Americans wait that long for surgery.
Surgery may well cost less in countries with government-run medical systems-- if you count only the money cost, and not the time the patients have to endure the ailments that require surgery, or the fact that some conditions become worse, or even fatal, while waiting.
A recent report from the Fraser Institute in Canada shows that patients there wait an average of ten weeks to get an MRI, just to find out what is wrong with them. A lot of bad things can happen in 10 weeks, ranging from suffering to death.
Politicians may talk about "bringing down the cost of medical care," but they seldom even attempt to bring down the costs. What they bring down is the price-- which is to say, they refuse to pay the costs.
Anybody can refuse to pay any cost. But don't be surprised if you get less when you pay less. None of this is rocket science. But it does require us to stop and think before jumping on a bandwagon.
The great haste with which the latest government expansion into medical care is being rushed through Congress suggests that the politicians don't want us to stop and think. That makes sense, from their point of view, but not from ours.
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Sowell hammers it here. If costs are contained in the manner libs intend, you can expect the government to suggest you take the assisted suicide option vice the expensive treatment as that level of care would not be cost effective. Life will definitely become less valuable. You will worth no more than a fetus. You will be expendable.
Exactly! If they succeed in getting obamacare through our healthcare system will be no better than that of the Canadians or the Brits.
Thanks for the ping jaz. Appreciate it.
Canada, 27 percent of the people who have surgery wait four months or more. In Britain, 38 percent wait that long. But only 5 percent of Americans wait that long for surgery.
The Canadians and Brits have had some years to “perfect” their health care systems. You can expect ours to become much worse.
As P.J. O’Rourke said:
“If you think medical care is costly now, just wait until it is free!”
bookmark
I’m just bookmarking too, then I see nutmeg is back in the game. Glad you’re doing better.
That sentence right there (emphasis mine) says volumes about the problem. And the view expressed extends to many, many things besides health care.
Well, there’s a believable reason why the political class refuses to acknowledge this: if they did, most sensible people would instantly recognize that by refusing to pay costs, the politicians are institutionalizing theft and making the populace accessory to the sin.
Given what is going on, I decided to re-read Dante. That’s another source no governmentaphilic is going to ever cite.
Of course, the one thing they could do to eliminate some cost in the system they refuse to consider. Tort reform.
I would argue that many Americans who do wait longer than 4 months for a procedure have actually postponed it for their own convenience.
OTOH, I think you have to ask: if you can wait 4 months (no matter what country you are in) for a procedure, how badly did you need it in the first place?
This gets my vote for Post of the Day.
But don’t be surprised if you get less when you pay less.
For those who missed it, another story of Canada outsourcing health care to the US, because they don’t have the facilities for it and premature babies require immediate care:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2281414/posts
Politicians may talk about "bringing down the cost of medical care," but they seldom even attempt to bring down the costs. What they bring down is the price-- which is to say, they refuse to pay the costs.
Indeed, much of what the Democrats do not only does not cut the cost of medical care - billion dollar FDA approval requirements and crap-shoot litigation increase it.Any sane person wants authority, but no sane person wants responsibility. But if I have the authority to make something happen, someone else must have the responsibility to me to actually do it. So the supply of authority cannot be any greater than the supply of responsibility.
Said differently, the authority is normally called "demand," and - if you count all the coin involved in a transaction - supply and demand are always equal. The government may promote the illusion of reducing costs by reducing prices, but the cost of a thing you is limited to the price only when you are in the store and the thing you desire is on the shelf, available for your use precisely at your convenience. It is cold comfort, after all, to see the price of gasoline is low but the pumps are not activated - or to be out of gas on a desolate road and know that gasoline is cheap "only" ten miles away. In which case what you pay for the gas is the list price plus the time and aggravation (let's hope your cell phone is working!) of getting delivery of gas where you actually need it.But the fundamental tenet of management is that you should never allow any separation of responsibility from authority - if you didn't have the authority to do something, I can't properly blame you for the fact that it was not done. Political leftism is nothing other than the separation of responsibility from authority, in which people - journalists in the first instance, fellow-travelling politicians in the second - exploit propaganda power to create that fatal separation. Journalists naturally promote themselves and suggest that their talk about food supply is more important than the farmer's provision of food supply.
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