February 29, 2008 – 8:45 pm
I’m writing this in a waiting room in a large hospital. My wife and I have been here several days with her mother who broke her leg a few days ago. With a lot of time on my hands in the midst of all this healthcare I found myself thinking about Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s plans to solve the healthcare "crisis."
Their primary concern seems to be the cost of needed healthcare, not its actual availability. There are many reasons that healthcare costs have increased at a higher rate than most life essentials. Among these are two of the biggest reasons: the availability of expensive high-tech diagnostic equipment and medical malpractice litigation. This post is about the latter reason.
I believe that if we can get rid of malpractice suits, and the need for doctors to carry very expensive insurance to protect themselves from such suits, healthcare will become much less expensive. Some will complain though that people must be able to sue to protect themselves from incompetent healthcare providers. I say a better approach is to do your homework in choosing your healthcare providers and then just take your lumps if things go wrong. But I have a plan that will accommodate both approaches.
Congress should pass a law that allows individuals to choose their approach. If they choose to carefully select their providers and then take their chances without the right to be compensated for damages, they should expect to pay much less for their healthcare. If they choose to retain the right to to be compensated for damages, they should expect to pay much more for their healthcare. The law should allow healthcare providers to operate exclusively under one approach or the other or under either approach on a case by case basis. The law should provide a form or document containing a standardized statement that guarantees that a healthcare provider cannot be sued for malpractice if his patient signs the document before receiving treatment.
I believe only a few years will have passed before everyone will be opting for the less expensive approach and that this law will then make more affordable healthcare available to more people than either of the candidates’ plans. And maybe we could avoid having the same caliber of government-provided healthcare as our government-provided education.
October 19, 2007 – 10:36 am
Why do liberals want to give a free pass to everyone who has had bad things happen to them? The families of 9/11 victims can do no wrong. New Orleans residents affected by Hurricane Katrina are not held accountable for their actions post-Katrina. If you’re poor your bad behavior can be excused. Ann Coulter calls this the "doctrine of infallibility." This means that if you’ve been screwed by life we can’t complain if you screw up our lives.
_______________
A middle school in the Northeast wants to pass out birth-control pills to eleven year-old girls. Another middle school had some boys arrested and jailed for slapping girls on their butts. If they’re not even going to allow a little flirtation why do they think the girls need birth-control?
_______________
Some pediatricians are now interrogating their patients about the ownership and handling of guns by their parents. The pediatricians’ professional organizations encourage it. Some even report what they find to local law enforcement agencies. To me this is an egregious invasion of privacy. And it is clearly politically motivated.
I never hear about pediatricians being concerned about the ownership and handling of five-gallon plastic buckets. About the same number of children are killed each year by drowning in the buckets as are killed by guns. Should someone start a bucket-control advocacy?
_______________
From a CBS News report that some democrats are hoping that Al Gore being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize will cause him to decide to enter the race for president:
"A lot of people are sacrificing a lot," said Draft Gore founder Friedlander. "People are donating to this cause who can’t afford to donate. But we believe very strongly he is very, very desperately needed. This is not a campaign of people who think he’s a great guy. This is not about him. It’s about the country."
That doesn’t say much for Hillary, Barack and the rest of the lineup of Democrat candidates. But if I were a Democrat I’d probably be desperate too — just not for Gore.
November 28, 2006 – 9:01 pm
In a column on FoxNews.com, Martin Frost says: “It is unacceptable that the richest and greatest nation in the world does not have an adequate health care system for its people.” That is former Democrat US Representative Martin “Let me count the ways I can get government involved in your lives” Frost.
I wonder if Frost even realizes why we are “the richest and greatest nation in the world.” It’s because we favor a free market over socialism. It’s because we have mostly avoided the temptation to look to the government to supply our basic needs (education, sadly, is one exception). How many more failed experiments will it take for Frost and his ilk to understand that the government doesn’t do anything as well as the private sector? (Providing for the national defense used to be a notable exception, but I’m not sure that it is any more.)
When calling our health care system inadequate, Frost is apparently referring to the fact that everyone can’t afford the best health care available. Surely he knows that the health care available here is among the best in the world. Can everyone afford the best of anything? Of course not. Not everyone can afford the best food available, or the best housing, or the best transportation. In fact, not everyone gets the best possible education, despite the availability of the government-run public education system. But Frost wants a government bureaucracy running health care like the government bureaucracy running the public schools. Do you suppose he expects a better result?
Health insurance and health care are available to everyone. But not everyone chooses to buy health insurance instead of the latest SUV or HD TV. To purchase or not purchase health insurance is just another one of the important decisions we make. Many will decide that food and shelter are more important than health insurance. Who am I or you to disagree with that choice? But that is exactly what we do when we impose a universal government-run health care system on people making that choice. We tell them that they cannot choose to spend their money on food and shelter instead of health care. One way or another, directly or indirectly, the government will take the money to pay for the universal health care system.
A rant against government-run health care is not complete without pointing out that the systems run by the United Kingdom and Canada are not meeting expectations. Health care is available to everyone but not everyone is happy with the level of care they are getting. Long waits are common for certain procedures — even some that are somewhat critical. Those that can afford it often resort to traveling abroad to get better care. Some say that the goal of national health care systems is to provide the same mediocre health care to everyone. The UK and Canadian systems have achieved that — for the less than wealthy.
