Another Viewpoint on the Obama takeover
Here’s another viewpoint on what the Obama healthcare fiasco will bring to America. I know it’s hard, but let’s see if any of the Liberals can actually discuss the facts.
Socialized Healthcare vs. The Laws of Economics - Thomas J. DiLorenzo - Mises Institute
The government's initial step in attempting to create a government-run healthcare monopoly has been to propose a law that would eventually drive the private health insurance industry out of existence. Additional taxes and mandated costs are to be imposed on health insurance companies, while a government-run "health insurance" bureaucracy will be created, ostensibly to "compete" with the private companies. The hoped-for end result is one big government monopoly which, like all government monopolies, will operate with all the efficiency of the post office and all the charm and compassion of the IRS.
Of course, it would be difficult to compete with a rival who has all of his capital and operating costs paid out of tax dollars. Whenever government "competes" with the private sector, it makes sure that the competition is grossly unfair, piling costly regulation after regulation, and tax after tax on the private companies while exempting itself from all of them. This is why the "government-sponsored enterprises" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were so profitable for so many years. It is also why so many abysmally performing "public" schools remain in existence for decades despite their utter failure at educating children.
America's Healthcare Future?
Some years ago, the Nobel-laureate economist Milton Friedman studied the history of healthcare supply in America. In a 1992 study published by the Hoover Institution, entitled "Input and Output in Health Care," Friedman noted that 56 percent of all hospitals in America were privately owned and for-profit in 1910. After 60 years of subsidies for government-run hospitals, the number had fallen to about 10 percent. It took decades, but by the early 1990s government had taken over almost the entire hospital industry. That small portion of the industry that remains for-profit is regulated in an extraordinarily heavy way by federal, state and local governments so that many (perhaps most) of the decisions made by hospital administrators have to do with regulatory compliance as opposed to patient/customer service in pursuit of profit. It is profit, of course, that is necessary for private-sector hospitals to have the wherewithal to pay for healthcare.
Friedman's key conclusion was that, as with all governmental bureaucratic systems, government-owned or -controlled healthcare created a situation whereby increased "inputs," such as expenditures on equipment, infrastructure, and the salaries of medical professionals, actually led to decreased "outputs" in terms of the quantity of medical care. For example, while medical expenditures rose by 224 percent from 1965–1989, the number of hospital beds per 1,000 population fell by 44 percent and the number of beds occupied declined by 15 percent. Also during this time of almost complete governmental domination of the hospital industry (1944–1989), costs per patient-day rose almost 24-fold after inflation is taken into account.
The more money that has been spent on government-run healthcare, the less healthcare we have gotten. This kind of result is generally true of all government bureaucracies because of the absence of any market feedback mechanism. Since there are no profits in an accounting sense, by definition, in government, there is no mechanism for rewarding good performance and penalizing bad performance. In fact, in all government enterprises, exactly the opposite is true: bad performance (failure to achieve ostensible goals, or satisfy "customers") is typically rewarded with larger budgets. Failure to educate children leads to more money for government schools. Failure to reduce poverty leads to larger budgets for welfare state bureaucracies. This is guaranteed to happen with healthcare socialism as well.
Costs always explode whenever the government gets involved, and governments always lie about it. In 1970 the government forecast that the hospital insurance (HI) portion of Medicare would be "only" $2.9 billion annually. Since the actual expenditures were $5.3 billion, this was a 79 percent underestimate of cost. In 1980 the government forecast $5.5 billion in HI expenditures; actual expenditures were more than four times that amount — $25.6 billion. This bureaucratic cost explosion led the government to enact 23 new taxes in the first 30 years of Medicare. (See Ron Hamoway, "The Genesis and Development of Medicare," in Roger Feldman, ed., American Health Care, Independent Institute, 2000, pp. 15-86). The Obama administration's claim that a government takeover of healthcare will somehow magically reduce costs is not to be taken seriously. Government never, ever, reduces the cost of doing anything.
All government-run healthcare monopolies, whether they are in Canada, the UK, or Cuba, experience an explosion of both cost and demand — since healthcare is "free." Socialized healthcare is not really free, of course; the true cost is merely hidden, since it is paid for by taxes.
Whenever anything has a zero explicit price associated with it, consumer demand will increase substantially, and healthcare is no exception. At the same time, bureaucratic bungling will guarantee gross inefficiencies that will get worse and worse each year. As costs get out of control and begin to embarrass those who have promised all Americans a free healthcare lunch, the politicians will do what all governments do and impose price controls, probably under some euphemism such as "global budget controls."
Price controls, or laws that force prices down below market-clearing levels (where supply and demand are coordinated), artificially stimulate the amount demanded by consumers while reducing supply by making it unprofitable to supply as much as previously. The result of increased demand and reduced supply is shortages. Non-price rationing becomes necessary. This means that government bureaucrats, not individuals and their doctors, inevitably determine who will get medical treatment and who will not, what kind of medical technology will be available, how many doctors there will be, and so forth.
All countries that have adopted socialized healthcare have suffered from the disease of price-control-induced shortages. If a Canadian, for instance, suffers third-degree burns in an automobile crash and is in need of reconstructive plastic surgery, the average waiting time for treatment is more than 19 weeks, or nearly five months. The waiting time for orthopaedic surgery is also almost five months; for neurosurgery it's three full months; and it is even more than a month for heart surgery (see The Fraser Institute publication, Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada ). Think about that one: if your doctor discovers that your arteries are clogged, you must wait in line for more than a month, with death by heart attack an imminent possibility. That's why so many Canadians travel to the United States for healthcare.
All the major American newspapers seem to have become nothing more than cheerleaders for the Obama administration, so it is difficult to find much in the way of current stories about the debacle of nationalized healthcare in Canada. But if one goes back a few years, the information is much more plentiful. A January 16, 2000, New York Times article entitled "Full Hospitals Make Canadians Wait and Look South," by James Brooke, provided some good examples of how Canadian price controls have created serious shortage problems.
A 58-year-old grandmother awaited open-heart surgery in a Montreal hospital hallway with 66 other patients as electric doors opened and closed all night long, bringing in drafts from sub-zero weather. She was on a five-year waiting list for her heart surgery.
In Toronto, 23 of the city's 25 hospitals turned away ambulances in a single day because of a shortage of doctors.
In Vancouver, ambulances have been "stacked up" for hours while heart attack victims wait in them before being properly taken care of.
At least 1,000 Canadian doctors and many thousands of Canadian nurses have migrated to the United States to avoid price controls on their salaries.
Wrote Mr. Brooke, "Few Canadians would recommend their system as a model for export."
Canadian price-control-induced shortages also manifest themselves in scarce access to medical technology. Per capita, the United States has eight times more MRI machines, seven times more radiation therapy units for cancer treatment, six times more lithotripsy units, and three times more open-heart surgery units. There are more MRI scanners in Washington state, population five million, than in all of Canada, with a population of more than 30 million (See John Goodman and Gerald Musgrave, Patient Power).
In the UK as well — thanks to nationalization, price controls, and government rationing of healthcare — thousands of people die needlessly every year because of shortages of kidney dialysis machines, pediatric intensive care units, pacemakers, and even x-ray machines. This is America's future, if "ObamaCare" becomes a reality
Socialized Healthcare vs. The Laws of Economics - Thomas J. DiLorenzo - Mises Institute
The government's initial step in attempting to create a government-run healthcare monopoly has been to propose a law that would eventually drive the private health insurance industry out of existence. Additional taxes and mandated costs are to be imposed on health insurance companies, while a government-run "health insurance" bureaucracy will be created, ostensibly to "compete" with the private companies. The hoped-for end result is one big government monopoly which, like all government monopolies, will operate with all the efficiency of the post office and all the charm and compassion of the IRS.
Of course, it would be difficult to compete with a rival who has all of his capital and operating costs paid out of tax dollars. Whenever government "competes" with the private sector, it makes sure that the competition is grossly unfair, piling costly regulation after regulation, and tax after tax on the private companies while exempting itself from all of them. This is why the "government-sponsored enterprises" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were so profitable for so many years. It is also why so many abysmally performing "public" schools remain in existence for decades despite their utter failure at educating children.
America's Healthcare Future?
Some years ago, the Nobel-laureate economist Milton Friedman studied the history of healthcare supply in America. In a 1992 study published by the Hoover Institution, entitled "Input and Output in Health Care," Friedman noted that 56 percent of all hospitals in America were privately owned and for-profit in 1910. After 60 years of subsidies for government-run hospitals, the number had fallen to about 10 percent. It took decades, but by the early 1990s government had taken over almost the entire hospital industry. That small portion of the industry that remains for-profit is regulated in an extraordinarily heavy way by federal, state and local governments so that many (perhaps most) of the decisions made by hospital administrators have to do with regulatory compliance as opposed to patient/customer service in pursuit of profit. It is profit, of course, that is necessary for private-sector hospitals to have the wherewithal to pay for healthcare.
Friedman's key conclusion was that, as with all governmental bureaucratic systems, government-owned or -controlled healthcare created a situation whereby increased "inputs," such as expenditures on equipment, infrastructure, and the salaries of medical professionals, actually led to decreased "outputs" in terms of the quantity of medical care. For example, while medical expenditures rose by 224 percent from 1965–1989, the number of hospital beds per 1,000 population fell by 44 percent and the number of beds occupied declined by 15 percent. Also during this time of almost complete governmental domination of the hospital industry (1944–1989), costs per patient-day rose almost 24-fold after inflation is taken into account.
The more money that has been spent on government-run healthcare, the less healthcare we have gotten. This kind of result is generally true of all government bureaucracies because of the absence of any market feedback mechanism. Since there are no profits in an accounting sense, by definition, in government, there is no mechanism for rewarding good performance and penalizing bad performance. In fact, in all government enterprises, exactly the opposite is true: bad performance (failure to achieve ostensible goals, or satisfy "customers") is typically rewarded with larger budgets. Failure to educate children leads to more money for government schools. Failure to reduce poverty leads to larger budgets for welfare state bureaucracies. This is guaranteed to happen with healthcare socialism as well.
Costs always explode whenever the government gets involved, and governments always lie about it. In 1970 the government forecast that the hospital insurance (HI) portion of Medicare would be "only" $2.9 billion annually. Since the actual expenditures were $5.3 billion, this was a 79 percent underestimate of cost. In 1980 the government forecast $5.5 billion in HI expenditures; actual expenditures were more than four times that amount — $25.6 billion. This bureaucratic cost explosion led the government to enact 23 new taxes in the first 30 years of Medicare. (See Ron Hamoway, "The Genesis and Development of Medicare," in Roger Feldman, ed., American Health Care, Independent Institute, 2000, pp. 15-86). The Obama administration's claim that a government takeover of healthcare will somehow magically reduce costs is not to be taken seriously. Government never, ever, reduces the cost of doing anything.
All government-run healthcare monopolies, whether they are in Canada, the UK, or Cuba, experience an explosion of both cost and demand — since healthcare is "free." Socialized healthcare is not really free, of course; the true cost is merely hidden, since it is paid for by taxes.
Whenever anything has a zero explicit price associated with it, consumer demand will increase substantially, and healthcare is no exception. At the same time, bureaucratic bungling will guarantee gross inefficiencies that will get worse and worse each year. As costs get out of control and begin to embarrass those who have promised all Americans a free healthcare lunch, the politicians will do what all governments do and impose price controls, probably under some euphemism such as "global budget controls."
Price controls, or laws that force prices down below market-clearing levels (where supply and demand are coordinated), artificially stimulate the amount demanded by consumers while reducing supply by making it unprofitable to supply as much as previously. The result of increased demand and reduced supply is shortages. Non-price rationing becomes necessary. This means that government bureaucrats, not individuals and their doctors, inevitably determine who will get medical treatment and who will not, what kind of medical technology will be available, how many doctors there will be, and so forth.
All countries that have adopted socialized healthcare have suffered from the disease of price-control-induced shortages. If a Canadian, for instance, suffers third-degree burns in an automobile crash and is in need of reconstructive plastic surgery, the average waiting time for treatment is more than 19 weeks, or nearly five months. The waiting time for orthopaedic surgery is also almost five months; for neurosurgery it's three full months; and it is even more than a month for heart surgery (see The Fraser Institute publication, Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada ). Think about that one: if your doctor discovers that your arteries are clogged, you must wait in line for more than a month, with death by heart attack an imminent possibility. That's why so many Canadians travel to the United States for healthcare.
All the major American newspapers seem to have become nothing more than cheerleaders for the Obama administration, so it is difficult to find much in the way of current stories about the debacle of nationalized healthcare in Canada. But if one goes back a few years, the information is much more plentiful. A January 16, 2000, New York Times article entitled "Full Hospitals Make Canadians Wait and Look South," by James Brooke, provided some good examples of how Canadian price controls have created serious shortage problems.
A 58-year-old grandmother awaited open-heart surgery in a Montreal hospital hallway with 66 other patients as electric doors opened and closed all night long, bringing in drafts from sub-zero weather. She was on a five-year waiting list for her heart surgery.
In Toronto, 23 of the city's 25 hospitals turned away ambulances in a single day because of a shortage of doctors.
In Vancouver, ambulances have been "stacked up" for hours while heart attack victims wait in them before being properly taken care of.
At least 1,000 Canadian doctors and many thousands of Canadian nurses have migrated to the United States to avoid price controls on their salaries.
Wrote Mr. Brooke, "Few Canadians would recommend their system as a model for export."
Canadian price-control-induced shortages also manifest themselves in scarce access to medical technology. Per capita, the United States has eight times more MRI machines, seven times more radiation therapy units for cancer treatment, six times more lithotripsy units, and three times more open-heart surgery units. There are more MRI scanners in Washington state, population five million, than in all of Canada, with a population of more than 30 million (See John Goodman and Gerald Musgrave, Patient Power).
In the UK as well — thanks to nationalization, price controls, and government rationing of healthcare — thousands of people die needlessly every year because of shortages of kidney dialysis machines, pediatric intensive care units, pacemakers, and even x-ray machines. This is America's future, if "ObamaCare" becomes a reality
Labels: healthcare reform, Obama
posted by Anonymous at 5:13 AM
12 Comments:
Ever since the founding of our great nation, there has been a battle between those who favor a strong central government (Liberals, Statists) and those who favor a smaller central government and stronger state governments (Conservatives.) Health care is the latest battle ground for this great debate. I have looked at the so-called health reforms. I see not Tort Reform anywhere. It seems that if the costs of healthcare are to be controlled, Tort reform must happen first. Let's limit malpractice suit rewards to the amount of life insurance that the plaintiffs carry on themselves.
Get over it all ready Doc. The only thing you are worried about is missing out on some money from the people you overcharge.
I suppose HB's office doesn't accept Medicare.
Interesting. H.B. invited a discussion of facts and Christopher D and bluegill resort to personal attack. I guess facts might be " an inconvenient truth" to use the phrase of another poorly informed liberal.
No, I am not resorting to personal attacks.
I am just tired of everytime there is a chance at a solution, conservatives get all riled up and shake their fingers collective fingers and scream "NO!"
Meanwhile MILLIONS of Americans are going with out decent healthcare because they can not afford it.
Millions more suffer financially because the premiums are so damn high on employer offered health insurance... Employers cut back on other benefits because their cost to provide health insurance to employees is sky high.
In my humble opinion, which amounts to nothing realy, I think any professional care giver who opposses any measures to increase the availability of comprehensive, affordable health care to EVERYONE, is thinking with their bank account, and not in the best interest of the people that they took an oath to heal.
Basing opposition mainly on political considerations makes it even worse.
Do I think the good doctor is a bad person, NO, a bad doctor, NO, a bad medical director, NO, I do not feel any of these things accurrately fit Dr. E, I just think that the constant political badgering is counter productive to finding the means to an end we NEED as a country.
If my comment seemed too personal and harsh, then I publicly appologize and withdraw the statement.
Perhaps I could have better phrased it, but until the good doctor has to choose between food or medicine, or the check oneself out of the hospital against doctors orders out of fear of the bills, I dont think there is a full comprehension of what is at stake right now.
Chris, did you read the post? There is no such thing as a low price, high quality health care readily available to everyone. Do you really want the government deciding who gets what kind of care? You do not want what they are proposing. We have had a semi-regulated market for 60+ years and the price of care has gone up faster than the rest of the economy. Medicare has risen faster than the private system. Medicare has 60-70 TRILLION dollars of unfunderd future obligations. It is BROKE!!!!
Medicare has risen faster than the private system.
That's not true. Per person Medicare costs have risen more slowly than private insurance and that gap has widened in recent years.
Yes it is borke, and hospitals regularly discharge medicare patients BEFORE they are well enough to go home.
It happened to my uncle this week end at floyd, diagnosed with stage three lung cancer, so weak he could not walk 20 feet, and sent home.
Look, if I had the answers I would surely give them, in a heart beat.
I know federally qualified community health center work by reducing the costs associated with chronic illnesses, and to my knowledge there are less then 2000 of "us" nationwide.
But if I have to lose a dollar or two each paycheck into FICA and Medicare taxes, then so be it, because honestly, the vast majority of Americans are only one paycheck away from one of "those" people.
IS Obamas plan perfect, not by a long shot, but it i ssure better than anythign offered up by the conservatives.
The problem here is NOT governments role in healthcare, the problem here is Republican and Democrat parties role in health care.
This is NOT a political debate, and it is not an item to play conservatives V liberals, while the more affluent members of both parties scramble to insult, discredit, and humiliate the other party, or try to get line items added to a healthcare bill that provides funding for a pet project of some senator that ahs nothing to do with health care, people are dying, children on medicaide are being denied cancer treatments, mothers to be are going with out pre-natal care.
The cycle has to stop, and the first step to stopping the cycle is getting the giant insurance companies lobbyists out of D.C., and getting the politicians out of the practitioners business, and get down to what we need to do, caring for our worst off people in need of medical care, period.
(and for the record, I am neither a liberal or conservative, democrat or republican, I am registered democrat, but fiercely independant)
Who's Afraid Of Public Insurance? Health Care Consumers Give Medicare Higher Marks Than Private Plans
by Mark Blumenthal
Monday, June 29, 2009, National Journal
Excerpts:
Indeed, the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll found 62 percent of Americans expressing support for "having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans." Other pollsters describing the public option as "government administered" and "similar to Medicare" gauged even more positive reactions: 67 percent in a Kaiser Family Foundation poll in April and 72 percent in the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll.
----------
Consider some results obtained by the same Kaiser tracking poll. When asked how much they trust various health care players "to put your interests above their own," respondents rank doctors (78 percent trust "a lot" or "some") and nurses (74 percent) at the top of the list.
Among those insured through Medicare, however, "the Medicare program" (68 percent) scores nearly as high. Among those with private insurance, "your health insurance company" earns much less trust (48 percent).
----------
More importantly, the higher scores for Medicare are based on perceptions of better access to care. More than two thirds (70 percent) of traditional Medicare enrollees say they "always" get access to needed care (appointments with specialists or other necessary tests and treatment), compared with 63 percent in Medicare managed care plans and only 51 percent of those with private insurance.
Here is a short article from one of the very few politicians that has any clue about monetary policy, government spending and is a doctor to boot. Doctor D, I think you will like this one.
Healthcare Is a Good, Not a Right
By Ron Paul
Published 07/21/09
Political philosopher Richard Weaver famously and correctly stated that ideas have consequences. Take for example ideas about rights versus goods. Natural law states that people have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A good is something you work for and earn. It might be a need, like food, but more "goods" seem to be becoming "rights" in our culture, and this has troubling consequences. It might seem harmless enough to decide that people have a right to things like education, employment, housing or healthcare. But if we look a little further into the consequences, we can see that the workings of the community and economy are thrown wildly off balance when people accept those ideas.
First of all, other people must pay for things like healthcare. Those people have bills to pay and families to support, just as you do. If there is a "right" to healthcare, you must force the providers of those goods, or others, to serve you.
Obviously, if healthcare providers were suddenly considered outright slaves to healthcare consumers, our medical schools would quickly empty. As the government continues to convince us that healthcare is a right instead of a good, it also very generously agrees to step in as middle man. Politicians can be very good at making it sound as if healthcare will be free for everybody. Nothing could be further from the truth. The administration doesn’t want you to think too much about how hospitals will be funded, or how you will somehow get something for nothing in the healthcare arena. We are asked to just trust the politicians. Somehow it will all work out.
Universal Healthcare never quite works out the way the people are led to believe before implementing it. Citizens in countries with nationalized healthcare never would have accepted this system had they known upfront about the rationing of care and the long lines.
As bureaucrats take over medicine, costs go up and quality goes down because doctors spend more and more of their time on paperwork and less time helping patients. As costs skyrocket, as they always do when inefficient bureaucrats take the reins, government will need to confiscate more and more money from an already foundering economy to somehow pay the bills. As we have seen many times, the more money and power that government has, the more power it will abuse. The frightening aspect of all this is that cutting costs, which they will inevitably do, could very well mean denying vital services. And since participation will be mandatory, no legal alternatives will be available. The government will be paying the bills, forcing doctors and hospitals to dance more and more to the government’s tune. Having to subject our health to this bureaucratic insanity and mismanagement is possibly the biggest danger we face. The great irony is that in turning the good of healthcare into a right, your life and liberty are put in jeopardy.
Instead of further removing healthcare from the market, we should return to a true free market in healthcare, one that empowers individuals, not bureaucrats, with control of healthcare dollars. My bill HR 1495 the Comprehensive Healthcare Reform Act provides tax credits and medical savings accounts designed to do just that
Just curious bluegill, how much should a doctor make a year? Don't dodge the question. Since in a few years all doctors will be salaried by the government or a gov. approved clinic, what should they make?
And remember, you work for the one who signs your check. If you think doctors will be working for the patient in the future I'd like to offer you some ocean front property in Arizona.
Bluegill,
Let's make this a little more personal. I believe that beer should be accessible to everyone and it should be free or cost no more than 25 cents a pint. And furthermore, I think you should bring it to my house when I call you up. It does not matter that I won't pay you at the time of service but, instead, in order to get my 25 cents, you will have to hire a biller and file reams of paperwork and wait up to 90 days before you get my quarter. And, I really don't care if your hops and barley suppliers raise their prices by 20%, you ain't getting more than a quarter. And it has also been declared that the only beer you can now serve has to be one of the "qualified" brands. It does not matter if you have a recipe in your head for a terrific microbrew...it ain't gonna happen. It does not matter that the stuff tastes terrible and none of your patrons want to drink it. In fact, Congress has now also decided that only people between ages 21 and 40 will be allowed to drink your beer because there is not enough to go around. The old people will have to settle for one of the government brews and go to counseling before they can have that. And your Sunday sales? Sorry, that would put your profit margin over what Congress thinks you should make. And last but not least, if any of your patrons develops cirrhosis up to 2 years (18 years if they were a minor) later because they drank too much of your brew, you WILL be held accountable. Oh heck, let's just draft a law that shuts you down completely and make everyone drink whatever the government dishes out. Don't let the screen door hit you in the behind on your way out.
Post a Comment
<< Home