Alice in Medical Care (Thomas Sowell)

Townhall.com ^ | June 30, 2009 | Thomas Sowell

[jazusamo]

*PING*
Thomas Sowell

Recent columns
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[nuconvert]

read

[downtownconservative]

“Anybody can refuse to pay any cost. But don't be surprised if you get less when you pay less.”

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.

[jazusamo]

Exactly! If they succeed in getting obamacare through our healthcare system will be no better than that of the Canadians or the Brits.

[rockinqsranch]

Thanks for the ping jaz. Appreciate it.

[george76]

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.

[downtownconservative]

The Canadians and Brits have had some years to “perfect” their health care systems. You can expect ours to become much worse.

[AlanGreenSpam]

As P.J. O’Rourke said:

“If you think medical care is costly now, just wait until it is free!”

[nutmeg]

bookmark

[smokingfrog]

I’m just bookmarking too, then I see nutmeg is back in the game. Glad you’re doing better.

[upchuck]

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.

That sentence right there (emphasis mine) says volumes about the problem. And the view expressed extends to many, many things besides health care.

[fnord]

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.

brilliant and obvious to all but our political class

[BelegStrongbow]

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.

[IamConservative]

Of course, the one thing they could do to eliminate some cost in the system they refuse to consider. Tort reform.

[MaggieCarta]

But only 5 percent of Americans wait that long (4 months or more) for surgery.

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?

[MaggieCarta]

The Canadians and Brits have had some years to “perfect” their health care systems. You can expect ours to become much worse.

This gets my vote for Post of the Day.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

But don’t be surprised if you get less when you pay less.

---

Don’t be surprised if you get less when you pay less *out of pocket*. Your total expenditure will be more, so it should read “Don’t be surprised if you get less when you pay more”.

[DuncanWaring]

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

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

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.