by Paul R. Hollrah: Contributor to LHI
If you are worried about the cost and availability of healthcare, and we all should be, it is important to understand how liberals view the problem because they will most certainly have a lot to say about how we solve it… if we can.
In their book, Critical Condition, published in 2004, authors Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele describe the American healthcare system as they see it. According to Barlett and Steele:
∑ We spend more money on healthcare and have less to show for it than any other country in the world.
∑ We don’t adequately cover half of our population.
∑ We encourage doctors and hospitals to perform costly and unnecessary medical procedures on patients who don’t need them, while denying such procedures to those who need them and can’t afford them.
∑ We charge the poor far more for medical services than we do the rich.
∑ We force senior citizens with modest incomes to buy in Canada the drugs they can’t afford in America.
∑ We clog our emergency rooms with patients because they can’t get in to see their doctors.
∑ We spend more money treating disease than we do in preventing it.
∑ We are victims of rampant fraud and over-billing.
∑ We stand a good chance of dying from a mistake if we are admitted to a hospital.
∑ We kill more people with prescription drugs than we do with street drugs.
∑ We are forced to hold bake sales and car washes to raise money for families who are struck by catastrophic illnesses.
Most of what Bartlett and Steele say is true, although it is doubtful that we charge the poor more for medical procedures than we do the rich, that we crowd emergency rooms because we can’t get to see our doctors, that our hospitals are unnecessarily dangerous to our health, or that more people die from prescription drugs than from street drugs. But, overall, their criticisms are on target.
What they do not mention is a) the excessively high cost of healthcare administration in hospitals, doctors’ offices, and insurance companies, or b) the costs related to excessive punitive awards in malpractice lawsuits, the costs related to simple “fear of lawyers.”
But not only are Barlett and Steele incorrect in many of their criticisms and uncritical in other important ways, their solution is one that would only exacerbate the problem. What they suggest as “the simplest and most cost-effective” remedy – a single-payer healthcare system administered by the federal government – is neither simple nor cost-effective.
Healthcare will never again be inexpensive but there is much we can do to reduce costs.
First, the American people must understand that there are never any 100% guarantees in the practice of medicine. Medical diagnosis and treatment is as much art as it is science and everyone needs to understand that. If Detroit has the know-how to manufacture an automobile that is operationally perfect, in theory, but can’t produce such an automobile, how can we expect medical professionals to be right 100% of the time?
Secondly, we must reduce to a bare minimum the amount of money that flows into the hands of lawyers, insurance companies, government employees, and clerical employees in doctors’ offices and hospitals. Liberal politicians and lawyers would have us believe that the share of the healthcare dollar that flows into the pockets of lawyers is all but insignificant. But if the average obstetrician, for example, pays malpractice insurance premiums of $800 to $1000 dollars a day to indemnify himself against lawsuits, they fail to tell us how many expectant mothers he must see each day, at $75 or $80 per 10-minute consultation, before he can begin to pay his nurses or earn a dollar for himself.
The Declaration of Independence tells us that we are “endowed by our Creator” with the “right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The right to pursue happiness is a purely subjective term, but the right to life and liberty are not; they tell us that we have the right to live free of tyranny and that we have the right to whatever medical treatment is necessary to save or prolong our lives. And if we believe those rights exist, then how can we deny that government has a responsibility to secure those rights? The question is, how do we secure the “right to life” and not break faith with our belief in such things as the free market, free choice, and limited government?
How can we secure that right with our own tax dollars, untouched by the hands of lawyers, insurance companies, and armies of bureaucrats and paper-shufflers, and without placing treatment decisions in the hands of bureaucrats and insurance companies? It’s time we found a way.
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