In my opinion, Thomas Sowell is the best "thinker" concerning economics and health care reform. I have added a link to his home page on my blog. Today's posting is a synopsis of one of his brilliant columns.
There is a difference between reducing costs and shifting costs around. Costs are not reduced simply because you pay less at the doctor's office and more in taxes_or more in insurance premiums, or more in higher prices for other goods and services that you buy, because the government has put the costs on businesses that pass those costs on to you.
Despite all the demonizing of insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies or doctors for what they charge, the fundamental costs of goods and services are the costs of producing them.
If doctors' incomes were cut in half, that would not lower the costs of producing doctors. What it would do is reduce the number of very able people who are willing to take on the very high costs of medical education when the return on that investment is greatly reduced.
Britain has had a government- run medical system for more than half a century and it has to import doctors from Third World countries where the medical training may not be the best. Reducing doctors' income is not reducing the cost of medical care, it is reducing the quality of care.
There are some ways in which the real costs of medical care can be reduced but the people who are leading the charge for a government takeover of medical care are not interested in actually reducing those costs, as distinguished from shifting those costs.
The high costs of "defensive medicine" _ expensive tests, medications and procedures required to protect doctors and hospitals from ruinous lawsuits could be reduced by eliminating frivolous lawsuits. But politicians who get huge campaign contributions from lawyers are not about to pass laws to put a limit on lawsuits.
Sir Free of Lance by Sneerless often calls me cynical . . . and that's when he's being nice. The health care industry and Congress are two entities that make me so. The House just passed an incredibly dumb bill secure in the knowledge that it will never pass the Senate. Thus, they get the best of both worlds: they don't have to suffer the consequences of a ruinous "reform" and can go back to their constituents and claim they tried to help them but were balked by the Senate. Meanwhile, both Congresspeople and Senators rake in the dough from the health care industry that buys a pass for those most in need of reform such as the drug industry and trial lawyers.
ReplyDeleteWhatever eventually gets passed out of Congress will inevitably be a pale representative of should have been.
Tsar Pat the Cynical by Skeptical
Dear Tsar,
ReplyDeleteCynical is bad but skeptical is good. Your split personality is showing, again. However, I do enjoy both sides of your id. Your analysis of the health care industry and Congress is right on. Excellent thinking on your part, even if it is cynical, which is deserved in this case.