Michael Cannon on the power of the government in health care today:
Government already finances about half of Americans’ medical care, so you might say our system is already half-socialized. Yet we are much farther along the road to socialized medicine than even that would suggest.Consider two distinguishing features of socialist economies. The first is that the government decides what individuals may produce, what they consume, and the terms of exchange.
That is largely true of America’s health care system. Government controls production and consumption by determining the number of physicians; what services medical professionals can offer and under what terms; where they can practice; who can open a hospital or purchase a new MRI; who can market a drug or medical device; and what kind of health insurance consumers may purchase.
(via Instapundit)
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{ 4 comments }
Um . . . last I checked it was not the government that limited the number of med school seats was it?
And was it the government who prevent doctors from ever actually competing with each other in any sense of the word?
All of the market-limiting effects described have not been done by the big bad government against the wishes of the medical profession.
Most of these constraints have arsien – vis-a-vis government power – for, with, and often at the bequest of the “medical profession” often for thinly veiled protectionistic reasons.
And even with product safety, who actually sits in these governmental positions that control and advise on these decisions? Its not your factory worker or schoolteacher or erstwhile bureaucrat.
Who tried to collude and run HMOs under before they even started?
While the government certainly places limits on market choice in various areas, they are actually quite late to the game. Doctors themselves have been perverting the freedom of choice in healthcare, since the inception of the “medical profession.”
But that’s okay right?
Anything that interfere’s with YOUR ability to monopolistically control the “market,” is socialism and therefore bad.
Uh-huh.
Well Said.
I suppose that helps explain my great frustration as a marginalized family physician. Big brother didn’t do this to me, my fellow brothers did.
http://poemd.blogspot.com/2007/03/guild.html
Ah what a combination, to be misinformed and to have an agenda.
The government froze the number of residency spots in 1997. You can turn out all of the med students you want and they will be called doctor, but they can’t practice medicine without a residency so you are misinformed the government does limit the number of physicians.
Doctors aren’t allowed to compete against each other in pricing. They made that illegal the government does not allow physician to know what other physicians charge.
Look at the number of Foreign Medical Grads if Doctors in this country were truly protectionist there would be none.
You don’t see the number of foreign graduates taking up as much of the workforce in any other occupation in the country than they do in medicine.
Tell us more I can’t wait for someone with no apparent medical knowledge explain to us what is wrong with medicine.
“Doctors aren’t allowed to compete against each other in pricing. They made that illegal the government does not allow physician to know what other physicians charge.”
This is absolutely false.
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