I listen to NPR on my long drive to and from work each day. I have heard Peter Orszag, Barack Obama’s budget director, repeatedly mention the Obama strategy for eliminating health care choices that “Don’t work”. As in treatments that don’t restore the recipient of the treatment to health.
Let’s take that to its logical conclusion, shall we?
Once again, we have people taking the shortage, rationing approach to its logical conclusion. In a non-shortage, free-market approach, people can choose for themselves whether to pursue cost-effective strategies based on their own resources, and the free market would incentivize the creation of enough resources to meet the demand. Only by restricting choice and setting prices will resources become scarce, which we have seen gradually for the last several decades in our own heavily-regulated health-care system, and seen dramatically in the various single-payer systems around the world.
What happens when the state controls all the resources? New resources do not develop, and the government winds up rationing care based on its own priorities, and not the priorities of the patients or caregivers. Professor Altman’s suggestion that the elderly get hospice treatment to save scarce care resources is exactly the kind of decisions the state will make for its citizens, and it won’t be limited to the elderly, either. Anyone whose value does not show a positive “cost-benefit” ratio to the state will also likely wind up without the kind of care necessary to stay alive and healthy.
Let me point out something that should be obvious, but apparently escapes the proponents of “free” health care.
Ultimately NO medical procedure whatsoever can defeat death.
So, in the end, isn’t all medical care futile?
This health care push is heading into territory a lot of voters did not think out fully.
The politics of envy have some ugly costs associated.
I hope we are better than this. No, I pray we are.
Rarely do I recommend my sources to my friends but in the Crabitat’s case I have now forwarded the link to your site to my inside group of friends who (occasionally) seek enlightenment. So your blog and more importantly your writings have climbed to #1 during my “must read” morning sifting. The collective wisdom and observations over any given week in re our times are right on! Great work and kudos.
Note that if you ever run out of ideas just turn to MSNBC’s K Obermann – all you would need is a few minutes … and the reason of why you make the effort that you do will in an instant become clear. Jim In New Mexico
If a bureaucrat’s decision means that some people will die unnecessarily, but oh so “cost effectively”, it can be expected that someone needlessly “condemned to death” may decide that a bureaucrat should be forced to “join them” on that journey.
After all, what does the person condemned to death have to lose?
NPR? Careful, government radio can be dangerous to your health.
Personally I’d rather listen to “The Best of Slim Whitman” while drinking gasoline during a killer bee attack than listen to NPR.
This strikes me as an invitation to Unintended Consequences. I can think of a few drugs right off the top that didn’t signifigantly help the diseases they were developed to treat, but were later found very effective in other surprizing ways. Just one example: Thalidomide was an absolute disaster for pregnant women, but is now an important part of some blood cancer treatments. Seems to me this policy would stop scientists from testing alternate uses for new medicines.