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Do you want bureaucrats like this running your health care?

By: Congressman Tom Price (Diary)  |  March 26th, 2009 at 01:27 PM  | 

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Yesterday, Congress heard a report that yet another government bureaucracy that failed in its duties to the American people. Now, imagine what would happen if those same people were in charge of your health care.

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  • dwarfmama

    Access to health care is an issue of Supply and Demand, like any other. Medical professionals are leaving their practices at too high a rate, and being replaced at too low a rate. “Free” health care will increase demand without relieving the systemic supply shortage.

    The free market solution requires (at least) a two-pronged approach:

    1. Tort Reform

    Due to the number of outrageous and sometimes completely unjustified medical malpractice awards, physicians are leaving their practices at accelerating rates. Others are ordering unnecessary tests and procedures to protect them from liability. Limits need to be imposed to protect them from frivolous suits and/or excessive awards.

    Any Nationalized Health Care Plan will sharply curtail malpractice awards. Canada has the Canadian Medical Protective Association, which aggressively defends against malpractice claims. The cases are heard by a judge, never a jury. According to some sources, it is difficult to find an attorney willing to represent a plaintiff in such a case. Many of the same sources also claim that malpractice is rampant, with no recourse for the victims. I am not in a position to evaluate whether the claim is true.

    2. Larger Enrollments in Medical Schools

    The American Medical Association controls medical certification in the USA, and strictly limits the number of students who may enroll in medical schools. As a result, many well-qualified applicants are turned away. See 100 Years of Medical Robbery (I hope I did the link right).

    • JHancock

      means less qualified people, especially if reimbursement isn’t kept high.

  • Alberta
  • wesley

    Health care is the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in this country. Over one third of the folks that declare bankruptcy had health insurance.

    As someone who works in the health care field, I can tell you that the current system is broken. Any voter who has spent a lot of time on the phone with insurance companies, probably would prefer a bureaucrat to an insurance company that makes extra money based on denial of care.

    There are conservative solutions to the health care crises. But if legislators like you don’t start making them and keep defending the status quo, we’re gonna have nationalized healthcare.

  • mbecker908

    IQ of the population of a fair sized state by probably five or six points.

  • aesthete

    They call BS on “nationalized healthcare”. One of the problems, according to them, is that, if there aren’t enough doctors now, how are there going to be enough when the whole nation has “complete coverage”. The only solution I can see is some form of rationing–probably one that pushes the elderly, handicapped, and people who don’t follow health guidelines (eat fruit every day, don’t smoke, etc) to the back of the line, as they do in western Europe (I lived in Germany for a while).

    I prefer giving tax incentives to citizens, and removing the tax incentives for businesses that provide healthcare. That way, businesses won’t just buy mass-produced healthcare that sucks to get money back on taxes, and citizens can pick their own health care provider.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    He’s gone.

  • JHancock

    Is that you are both right. The current system is broken because
    1) With employer based health care people are isolated from the cost of their medical care and put at a “moral hazard” (look it up), of consuming health care at unreasonable rates for marginal benefits.
    2) With cost shifting, we are pretty much socialized already; we just haven?t instituted rationing yet to contain costs. 14/17 patients in my hospital’s ER aren?t insured…even by Medicare or Medicaid.

    Finally 3) Socialism will only make things worse because
    a) Not enough physicians
    b) Cost of MD education had more than quadrupled since 1980, while incomes are about half 1980 levels inmost specialties
    c) Rationing will limit patient autonomy
    d) The answer given will be “do the most good for the most people” which will result in cook book rather than individualized medicine, for efficiencies sake, this will screw people with unusual presentations or diseases.

    In the end, neither the current employer based system, or the proposed socialist system makes any sense, and neither is a capitalist answer.

    The capitalist answer–personal responsibility with individuals negotiating their own plans with the coverage and exclusions they want, then enforce their contract (America has a history of upholding contracts). This will work just like fire, or life, or car insurance. Rates will be locked in for the entire term of the contract, just like life insurance, so as long as people keep up their payments, their insurance won’t get more expensive due to conditions they are diagnosed with after locking in their rate, but just like life insurance, if they switch at 60 it might be rough. End result is longer term customers, and healthier customers in the private sector, a breaking of union bargaining chip control, and making insurance an individual decision and not a burden on industry.

  • olsmithie

    Letting you die over budget constraints, in my humble opinion, is much worse than the present system, where everyone gets treated, at the ER if no where else and the taxpayers pick up the bill.

    Under Hillarycare, for example, (I have the published plan on my bookshelf right now), if the bureaucrats denied your care, the Dr. can not accept payment out of pocket without becoming a criminal. The current Daschle style plan is similar.

    Having a bureaucrat say Aunt Sallie isn’t worth saving (years left/cost of treatment) and has to die is not what I consider improving healthcare…

    You may want to investigate what the Obamatrons are proposing. I suspect you are not aware of the horrors of “their” system.

    Let’s fix healthcare, but not their way. No way, no how.

    Regards

  • olsmithie

    Not sure how I keep “unattaching” myself to the reply??

    Anyway, I see Moe rectified the problem and raised the average RS IQ back up several points…Thanks Moe!

    Regards

  • david farrar

    …can’t we set up a separate patient advocacy program, dedicated to addressing any and all short comings of the general government health-care system?

    In terms of addressing the shortage of doctors under a socialised health-care system system, couldn’t we train first responders who aren’t doctors, whose job would be to triage patients initially and assign the correct medical facility to each?

    I know this sound heretical, but we can no longer allow the growing number of uninsured Americans to go without health-care and hope to someday rein in medical costs and expenses.

    Lastly, I would hope we could set up two separate health-care systems, one private and one public so that both could compete against each other thereby empowering the consumer.

  • aesthete

    There are a few who buy the socialist agitprop, but with much handwringing over how one would solve those problems that you mention, among others, but considering that my family and I come from a Puerto Rican background, that’s a surprisingly conservative position for them to take.

  • Brian Hibbert

    be staffed by Democrats and suck yet more taxpayer money without actually doing anything to fix a system that won’t work. Patient advocay programs would give people a FALSE hope that someone would listen to their problems and fix them.

    If you would like to see a public private system in action that fits exactly your model, look at the UK. I don’t want such a system here.

  • JHancock

    does not seem to work well because the government will shift resources to drive out the private sector like it did in England. There is technically a private system in England, but it isn’t visable and is only for the Ferrari crowd, because to have good healthcare without European style rationing for anything close to reasonable prices you need a large number of healthy people paying in for every sick person. Thus private insurance can only be affordable if it sobs up young professionals etc. These people are unlikely to need specialized care, and as producers in society won’t be affected by rationing for many years-they will tend to take the free social system, which is only a mild inconvieniance to them. The people who will want to pay extra to get the care they want without rationing will then get increasingly older as the price gets more expensive, until only the ultra rich are paying private physicians out of pocket–you see capitalism and socalism are natural enimies and don’t play nice togather–socalism usually wins as people will take what they perceive to be free, if of lower quality, instead of paying more. Thus the capitalistic system becomes ultraspecialised and rarified and expensive, and most everyone is forced to socalism.

  • JHancock

    But the Capitalist one didn’t survive. People would rather get mediocre and rationed care than pay for their own care. If we go two payer systems we’ll be a one payer system within 20 years. After all what relatively healthy person without major health concerns is going to pay for insurance if they don?t have to? Especially once all the big hospitals are feeding from the government trough and many won?t be able to do super specialized individual care as their infrastructure will no longer be setup like this?

  • david farrar

    …the situation we are facing here with the growing numbers of uninsured health-care recipients in this country. It is no longer a question of creating just another bureaucracy. It is a question of how to insure and cover the health-care costs of a growing number of Americans who can no longer afford to pay for their health care, period. We, as Republicans, can continue to stick our heads in the sand over this issue, as is our right, but that will not stop the number of uninsured health-care recipients from growing, nor lower the costs.

    ex animo
    davidfarrar