Posted by
Andrews on Tuesday, May 19, 2009 5:04:07 PM
The Obama administration, in hopes of covering the nearly $40 trillion in "unfunded" medicare/medicaid liabilities, thinks that "universal health care" is the solution. The left will tell you that by ending needless expenses brought by competition, the costs of multiple payers, incompatible forms, advertising and so on, they will introduce enough 'savings" to cover these liabilities.
And I am telling you that is all nonsense.
Name one field of human endeavor where competition has been less efficient than government mandate. Despite the "inefficiencies", such as advertising and variations between individual companies, competition has still been beneficial in every area in which it has been tried. By allowing the best to thrive and the worst to fail, rather than imposing a monolithic single solution from above, competition not only allows for improvement, but forces constant improvement. In short, competition is the only route to efficiency in the delivery of goods or services.
And the left knows that.
When they say they will introduce "efficiencies", and will cover the $40 trillion shortfall, what they mean is simple: rationing. What inefficiencies will they remove? Treatments they deem "not cost effective". So, you think you should try one more round of chemotherapy> Too bad, under the new plan it is not cost effective, you are just going to have to do without. Think you might want to have spinal fusion to relieve your pain? Sorry, the feds have decided physical therapy is good enough to treat your condition. Or maybe your condition is not worth treating at all. Learn to live with it.
And that, in all its ugliness, is the truth behind universal health care. For all the talk of bringing care to the poor, the truth is, the poor receive care now, we just don't have the money to pay for it. So, rather than finding ways to pay for the care we want to give the poor, the left has decided that it is far better to give inadequate care to everyone, rather than allow some to get better care than others, or than admit they promised the poor and the old more than they could deliver*.
The solution, which no one seems to want to hear on the right or left, is to admit that government intervention in medicine (along with excessively pro-plaintiff courts**) have driven up the costs of medicine. The solution to all our problems is to take government out fo medicine. Not just out of funding and regulation, but also out of matter such as tax preferences for employer provided medical insurance, or tax breaks for medical bills. We need to treat medical expenses and the medical industry as we treat all industries, as we treat barbers or accountant or pastry chefs. Once we treat medicine as just another industry, we will see it running like just another industry. And as we don't worry about a pastry crisis or a shortage of hair cuts, we won't worry about a lack of medicine.
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* There are two other reasons the left won't ever admit failure in medicare/medicaid. First, part would involve reining in the trail lawyers, and their money is too important to Democrats. Second, it would also involve admitting that government intervention had itself driven up costs, and that admission would undermine far too many of the items on their agenda.
** Tort reform alone would not suffice to fix medicine. Costly as our tort system is, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the costs of interventionist government. In addition, it is, in many ways, a symptom of interventionist government. But that is the topic for a later essay.