Posted on 10/21/2007 6:51:57 PM PDT by secretagent
It's true that the U.S. health care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing government controls.
It's time to get serious about health care reform. Tax credits, vouchers, and privatization will go a long way toward decentralizing the system and removmg unnecessary burdens from business. But four additional steps must also be taken:
1. Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health care personnel. Their supply would almost instantly increase, prices would fall, and a greater variety of health care services would appear on the market.
Competing voluntary accreditation agencies would take the place of compulsory government licensing--if health care providers believe that such accreditation would enhance their own reputation, and that their consumers care about reputation, and are willing to pay for it.
Because consumers would no longer be duped into believing that there is such a thing as a "national standard" of health care, they will increase their search costs and make more discriminating health care choices.
(Excerpt) Read more at mises.org ...
Costs and prices would fall, and a wider variety of better products would reach the market sooner. The market would force consumers to act in accordance with their own--rather than the government's--risk assessment. And competing drug and device manufacturers and sellers, to safeguard against product liability suits as much as to attract customers, would provide increasingly better product descriptions and guarantees.
Time for a repeat of your thread of 3 years ago:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1198021/posts
3. Deregulate the health insurance industry. Private enterprise can offer insurance against events over whose outcome the insured possesses no control. One cannot insure oneself against suicide or bankruptcy, for example, because it is in one’s own hands to bring these events about.
Because a person’s health, or lack of it, lies increasingly within his own control, many, if not most health risks, are actually uninsurable. “Insurance” against risks whose likelihood an individual can systematically influence falls within that person’s own responsibility.
All insurance, moreover, involves the pooling of individual risks. It implies that insurers pay more to some and less to others. But no one knows in advance, and with certainty, who the “winners” and “losers” will be. “Winners” and “losers” are distributed randomly, and the resulting income redistribution is unsystematic. If “winners” or “losers” could be systematically predicted, “losers” would not want to pool their risk with “winners,” but with other “losers,” because this would lower their insurance costs. I would not want to pool my personal accident risks with those of professional football players, for instance, but exclusively with those of people in circumstances similar to my own, at lower costs.
Because of legal restrictions on the health insurers’ right of refusal—to exclude any individual risk as uninsurable—the present health-insurance system is only partly concerned with insurance. The industry cannot discriminate freely among different groups’ risks.
As a result, health insurers cover a multitude of uninnsurable risks, alongside, and pooled with, genuine insurance risks. They do not discriminate among various groups of people which pose significantly different insurance risks. The industry thus runs a system of income redistribution—benefiting irresponsible actors and high-risk groups at the expense of responsible individuals and low risk groups. Accordingly the industry’s prices are high and ballooning.
To deregulate the industry means to restore it to unrestricted freedom of contract: to allow a health insurer to offer any contract whatsoever, to include or exclude any risk, and to discriminate among any groups of individuals. Uninsurable risks would lose coverage, the variety of insurance policies for the remaining coverage would increase, and price differentials would reflect genuine insurance risks. On average, prices would drastically fall. And the reform would restore individual responsibility in health care.
Um . . .No. No way would I go to a medical "professional" who hasn't even gotten a state license or passed his boards. Sorry, there are enough problems with the doctors who actually have done the work and passed the tests; having a bunch of idiots, incompetents, and lazy swindlers who just declare themselves to be physicians and hang out a shingle is way too great a gamble, even if one is saving a little money.
Besides, it's not really a lack of doctors or the prices they charge that drive up medical costs. Most doctors aren't making a big profit on your office visit, after the other overhead costs are figured in (rent, staffing, machinery, insurance, taxes, paying the billing company, more insurance, etc.) So removing licensing requirements is not going to solve that problem, it will just create a lot of charlatans who will butcher the innocent.
Only these four steps, although drastic, will restore a fully free market in medical provision. Until they are adopted, the industry will have serious problems, and so will we, its consumers."
Stone cold and dead-on.
Hoppe puts his case better than any I've seen. Rings true to me.
Don’t go to just any doctor. Pick one from the accrediting agency of your choice.
A free enterprise competing guild system would have structural incentives for better regulation than government licensing.
back later
It's not at all clear to me that the average person has the knowledge to determine which of a bunch of competing accreditation agencies is actually qualified to judge the merits of doctors. Seriously, I have a good bit of medical training myself and judging the merits of physicians is more complex a problem than you may realize.
And as mindless.
Hot Damn!!! This 18 year old can become that neurosurgeon-cardiovascular surgeon, radiologist simply by hanging out a shingle.
Whoever came up with the idea of eliminating licensing can be my first victim patient.
No, I think it’s worth a try. Really. Just not here, thank you very much.
Whoever wrote this article must be a ambulance chasing lawyer, becuse boy oh boy would he be busy. As a health care professional the problem is insurance one. They are there only to fix major problems not prevent them. Both Medical and Dental are like this. Secondly, most small business owners not to mention large ones like WAlMART don’t offer health insurance to their employees and if they do it’s horrible, so all us tax payers are subsidizing that part of the working class. I’ll give you an example I sliced my finger with a blade. Went to the clinic not the E.R. It cost me $1100 for 2 blood tests, a 5 minute visit and a $250 liquid bandaid. I tell you this is you don’t liscense these people it would cost society more to fix the mistakes of the incompetent in medical fees and court fees. I agree with the though of getting rid of board examinations and making the schools be accredidted and responsible for who they graduate because I feel this would lead to better proffesions not just ones that can pass a 2 day test.
Very true. If all of a sudden Medcaid was out of the picture 2 things would possibly happen. ONe our insurance would be less expensive, or two our doctors would all be pulling up to work in 100K vehicles. I really don’t believe that even if Medicaid is gone that insured people will pay less. I believe the few running the hospitals will make more.
The government has already done this for dental care. Pay the dentist 25 cents on the dollar for their services when the average overhead is 70-75cents on the dollar. And people wonder why no dentists take Medicare patients???? But hospitals get subsidies from the governement to see these people and really couldn’t function without them.
That is the Health care system of Mexico. And it only works because there are no law suits. LOL
It’s true. Overhead in dental offices is usually 70-75%. If a patient has a Medicare supplement that covers dentistry, it covers 60% of the UCR...which is significantly less than the dentist’s full fee.
I strongly believe that medical and dental personnel need to be licensed, but I think that there needs to be more reciprocity between the states. For example, I am a dental hygienist. I took the Northeast Regional Boards. If I decide to move to Florida, I would be required to retake my boards, even though I have over 20 years of experience. Dental boards also require us to bring in a REAL LIVE PATIENT to work on, in addition to the written tests. Needless to say, all of this costs thousands of dollars to get relicensed. If the government was concerned about “access to care”, they would waive any relicensing requirements for experienced medical/dental personnel who are US citizens.
1. Ignore human nature.
2. Discard all existing institutions.
3. Let everyone do whatever they want.
4. Resolve all disagreements in civil court.
What a plan!
Next time sew it up yourself.
But if that doctor or nurse were certified by the American Medical Association, and that entity were responsible, and could be held accountable, for making sure the people they certify are credible, wouldn’t that be better than ‘government’ licensing?
This is not a bad system as it stands. It keeps the borderline incompetent out. I know several otherwise intelligent foreign-trained doctors who cannot get licensed in the US because they'd have to do too much studying. Great! If you're not willing or intellectually able to learn enough to pass your boards, I don't want you cutting me up.
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