Regardless of how they spin it, we are already a nation with socialized medicine and, just like you shouldn't put out a fire with gasoline, you don't want to fix bad governing with more of it. While we all are debating whether or not we should have more socialism, we never get near to calling for reforms that allow the market to heal itself. Markets bring down costs due to competition and innovation. A free market is the force of voluntary cooperation which is head and shoulders above the force of government's obligatory laws. With the government, the special interests win while the consumer loses. With the market, the special interests are forced to meet the consumer's needs much closer to their conditions. Mises said it well:
The consumers are merciless. They never buy in order to benefit a less efficient producer and to protect him against the consequences of his failure to manage better. They want to be served as well as possible. And the working of the capitalist system forces the entrepreneur to obey the orders issued by the consumers.
Finding no mercy, how many companies wouldn't jump at the chance to make easy money through government fiat? The medical industry is no different than any other in this regard; nor is the insurance industry. So these industries have done their utmost to mimic the military's 400 dollar screwdrivers except, in the medical/insurance industries, you get other items/services that become overpriced and over prescribed.
Ah, but once captured, a caged animal is full of regrets.
Doctor Lawrence Wilson has an article up over at the C4L website which explains our country's predicament well:
America really has three health-care sectors. The socialized part or government sector comprises about 65-70 percent and includes Medicare, Medicaid, and the Indian Health Service. It also include the Department of Veteran Affairs, the Public Health Service, programs such as KidCare, and the bulk of medical research. The latter includes the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, National Heart Institute, and about 30 other government institutes. The "donors" for research in these institutes have little say over what or how wisely their health-research dollars are spent.
All the above are funded from taxes confiscated from the people at the point of a gun, making this a less-than-compassionate system. All are insulated from the health-care marketplace and thus from rational decision-making. All are run as huge bureaucracies, with their inherent problems of fraud and high administrative overhead. Medicare rules alone are 133,000 pages in length. This makes the 10,000-page income-tax code look like a model of simplicity.[...] The so-called private sector of American health care is better termed the regulated sector. It includes insurance companies, HMOs, and licensed pharmacists and physicians. To receive any government reimbursement they must "play by the rules" imposed by the socialized sector. As a result, this sector is mainly an extension of the socialized sector. Insurance companies are burdened with a thousand state and federal mandates regarding what services they must supply. HMOs are also heavily regulated and are in fact creations of the U.S. Congress by virtue of the HMO Act of 1973. Medical schools also receive government subsidies and grants. This means that what is taught is influenced if not dictated by these funding sources. Physicians are regulated by state licensing boards and, of course, must abide by Medicare and HMO regulations if they choose to work in those settings. To call any of these aspects of the health-care system "private" is a joke.
[...] Another factor driving up costs and contributing to poor quality care is the medical cartel. A cartel exists when one group works together to set prices and control all steps in the production and distribution of a commodity or service. Through licensing and other laws enacted in the early part of the 20th century, one group, the American Medical Association, controls how many medical schools exist, how many students enroll, what is taught in the schools, the availability of hospital residencies, and, indirectly through licensing laws, who will get jobs in medicine. It would be difficult to find an industry in America that is more tightly controlled by one group or union.
It was lucrative for a while, but being in bed with government has a way of bringing an industry to its ultimate demise. Just look at the big three car companies. Many people within that industry were made rich through their state-granted monopoly but now they are in Washington begging for help and being met with condescension from the high and mighty politicians. Seldom is the Faustian bargain worth entering into long term. Now that the American people are being crushed under the weight of a medical system made incredibly expensive through law, the government wishes to alleviate the problem it has caused by wielding total control - a method by which a crushed people can be fully pulverized, including those within the medical industry. (now there's some egalitarianism for you)
As he winds his insightful article to a close, Dr. Wilson gives some good ideas for curing the ills currently plaguing the medical establishment:
The health-care cost crisis offers an opportunity to view health care like any other industry. There is no market failure. How can there be market failure when there is almost no health-care market in the sense of free agents who willingly buy and sell on the basis of free access to information?
Deregulating health care would have to be part of dismantling the welfare state, as the two are closely related. Medical licenses are not only the basis for the cartel's control. They are meal tickets for any doctor who wants to participate in the welfare state.
Replacing licensing with private certification would break the power of the cartel and help restore a free market. No physician would be prosecuted and jailed for doing his best. Many people, brainwashed by 100 years of life under the cartel, would object, as they have objected to all the other deregulation efforts. But the American people would be much better off.
Instead of the FDA, several competing consumer rating groups would do far more to protect the American people than the current system. Lest this seem impossible, it was the system used successfully in America for more than 120 years. Several organizations tested new medicines and medical devices and decided which merited their seal of approval.
Though we may not wish to admit it, American health care is only slightly less socialized than the single-payer systems of Europe and Canada. No wonder costs are out of control. Deregulating health care would benefit all Americans and restore a crippled system to sanity. Health care does not have to be costly or dangerous.
Deregulation (true deregulation, rather than the republicrats' canard of new law replacing old for their personal enrichment) would position the medical industry to once again bow to the merciless consumer. How I long for that day.
