Preference on healthcare reform issue

[Rileyoriley]

Tuesday, March 17, 2009
More Problems In Massachusetts
By Paul Hsieh, MD @ 12:05 AM PermaLink

The March 16, 2009 New York Times article "Massachusetts Faces Costs of Big Health Care Plan" discusses the new controls that Massachusetts state government will impose on doctors, hospitals, and insurers in order to salvage their failing "universal health care system".

Costs are continuing to skyrocket out of control despite a round of new taxes. Hence, the article notes:

The very stakeholders who were coaxed into the tent -- doctors, hospitals, insurers and consumer groups -- would probably have been driven into opposition by efforts to reduce their revenues and constrain their medical practices, they said.

"Constraining" how doctors practice basically means the government overriding a doctor's judgment as to how to treat his patients. It interposes the bureaucrat into the doctor-patient relationship in order to save costs.

The end of this road will be government rationing, just as in the UK where the government explicitly says that it won't pay for treatments if it costs too much.

Advocates of universal health care often criticize free market medicine on the grounds that we "can't put a price on human life". But it is the government-controlled medical systems that actually do put a price on life. In such systems, patients can only hope that their government doesn't consider their own lives too expensive to save.

The answer to skyrocketing costs is not a government takeover of health care, but rather the free market. As we've seen with cellphones and computers, the free market drives down costs and improves quality.

Similarly, the sectors of medicine such as LASIK eye surgery which are the most free (i.e., least controlled by the government) show the same pattern of falling costs and rising quality over time. This can and should be the norm in all of medicine.

(For more on the problems with Massachusetts' system of universal health care, see the DC Examiner piece "Universal coverage? First, look at the disaster in Massachusetts" and my Objective Standard piece, "Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America".)

Labels: MA, States

[sham]

Riley-you might have killed this thread. It is difficult to argue into those kinds of revelations about the reality of government controlled healthcare.

[Rileyoriley]

Originally Posted by sham

Riley-you might have killed this thread. It is difficult to argue into those kinds of revelations about the reality of government controlled healthcare.

Have you met Riot?

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Rileyoriley

Have you met Riot?

At least Riot prefers op ed not written for trying to ignite fears about imaginary things not actually included in the House or Senate versions of healthcare reform

Seriously - please, read what is actually IN these bills. It's clear alot of the fear-mongers haven't.

[SCUDSBROTHER]

Riot, for this to work, they're gunna have to pass something to punish people that hire illegal immigrants etc. We've put up with that crap for a long time. We can't afford them anymore. I know they say Illegals aren't covered in the bill, but their gunna drop kids here (instant citizenship.) Cali is getting killed by it. We aren't better off with them.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by SCUDSBROTHER

Riot, for this to work, they're gunna have to pass something to punish people that hire illegal immigrants etc. We've put up with that crap for a long time. We can't afford them anymore. I know they say Illegals aren't covered in the bill, but their gunna drop kids here (instant citizenship.) Cali is getting killed by it. We aren't better off with them.

The costs of illegal immigrants and their kids are a piss in the vast ocean of healthcare in this country.

And yes - people born here are called "American Citizens". Just like you.

I agree Cali is a mess. Disaster. I've had friends run from it in the past 15 years.

Illegals are a part of it, certainly (schools, everything) but illegal immigrants are far from the main reason. One can't behave as fiscally irresponsibly as Bush-era Republicans, just saying spend, spend, spend on the charge card, with zero planning on somehow getting the income to eventually pay it off.

But that has been the California voter. They voted in expensive program after expensive program, with zero way to pay for it.

[Riot]

Anyone who doesn't think we need healthcare reform laws needs to read this. Its gonna get really ugly in the next few years with health care costs:

Insurers Set To Raise Prices, Walk Away From Consumers: Goldman Report


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_487684.html

[SOREHOOF]

Originally Posted by Riot

The costs of illegal immigrants and their kids are a piss in the vast ocean of healthcare in this country.

And yes - people born here are called "American Citizens". Just like you.

I agree Cali is a mess. Disaster. I've had friends run from it in the past 15 years.

Illegals are a part of it, certainly (schools, everything) but illegal immigrants are far from the main reason. One can't behave as fiscally irresponsibly as Bush-era Republicans, just saying spend, spend, spend on the charge card, with zero planning on somehow getting the income to eventually pay it off.

But that has been the California voter. They voted in expensive program after expensive program, with zero way to pay for it.

They do have a way to pay for it. Drill for oil off-shore. That would help not only their situation, but that of America. Or they can suck it out of the rest of us in Federal bailouts, without any regard to the fact that they have no one to blame except their own failed Progressive policies that are also this administrations vision for America.

[SOREHOOF]

Originally Posted by Riot

But that has been the California voter. They voted in expensive program after expensive program, with zero way to pay for it.

This is a time when it almost sounds like you are starting to get it!
Sounds a lot like what is going on with the Federal Govt. doesn't it? Doing the same crazy sh!t over and over while expecting a different result is, well, the definition of crazy. This Utopian vision of the world lives in the minds of most Progressives.

[hoovesupsideyourhead]

Originally Posted by Riot

At least Riot prefers op ed not written for trying to ignite fears about imaginary things not actually included in the House or Senate versions of healthcare reform

Seriously - please, read what is actually IN these bills. It's clear alot of the fear-mongers haven't.

a fear monger means anyone who thinks its a bad idea..and by the way obama has not read it.on page two he got up and looked at himself in the mirror.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by sham

Riley-you might have killed this thread. It is difficult to argue into those kinds of revelations about the reality of government controlled healthcare.

Well, except the overwhelming majority of what is being discussed not in either the House or Senate Health care reform bills.

Sorry, Riley