Tag: medical care

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free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

Doctoring Malady

medicine, healthcare, medical care, hospital, doctors

There is a doctor shortage. Economists who study such issues project that the shortfall will continue to grow.

That is, the pool of available professionals for advanced and general practice medicine is shrinking relative to demand.

A report last year at Definitive Healthcare provides a list of reasons:

  1. Shifts in physician and patient populations
  2. Most healthcare workers prefer not to work in rural hospitals 
  3. Medical school and residency programs are limited 
  4. Healthcare workers are burnt out 

What wasn’t mentioned? The COVID response debacle. When an elephant makes a deposit on the waiting room floor, don’t ignore it.

But, instead, the list of causes and cures was predictable: “too many administrative tasks” (need more assistants, or at least AI?); “poor work-​life balance” (but that’s always been the case); “insufficient salary” (you could see that one coming a mile away, right?).

A study published in March, “The Complexities of Physician Supply and Demand: Projections From 2021 to 2036,” prepared for the Association of American Medical Colleges, dips its timid toes in that topic, but says little of significance. 

And as I scrolled through a report on the study, I thought: this is none of my business. Just as it’s none of my business to fret much about the supply and demand for toilet tissue or garbage trucks. This is all supposed to be taken care of by “the market.” 

Trouble is, we do not have a free market in medical care. We have an over-​regulated, vastly subsidized healthcare system.

The key to the future supply of doctors is getting the government out of doctors’ business. Hesitating to turn that key, or saying that government “must do more,” merely makes the malady worse.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies tax policy too much government

A Plague Upon Small Business

Those who like Big Government tend to dislike Big Business. So it must be just an unintended effect that shiny, new government programs invariably harm small businesses, aiding big ones. 

There are many examples of this. Today’s comes from the biggest new kid on the block, the new health care reform.

Who wins with it? Sure isn’t small business.

The increased paperwork and added regulations especially burden smaller operations. Big corporations can more easily eat the additional costs. Small businesses, on the other hand, have to expend a greater percentage of their gross incomes to meet new requirements, and this drain on their resources means that they can’t compete as well against the big guys, toe-​to-​toe in the marketplace.

Worse yet, even the special tax credits tossed in small businesses’ direction serve up a thorny mess of complexity and arcane paperwork. And while the credits are scheduled to evaporate, there appears no end to soaring costs.

Finally, the new IRS 1099 reporting requirements on business-​to-​business transactions of $600 or more will hit small businesses hard. These new required forms are in effect a tax themselves, because the extra paperwork will cost real money.

Is this any way to improve health care? No. It’s got nothing to do with health care. It’s just a way to increase the tax take and another way Big Government helps Big Business at the expense of the little guys.

And that’s sick.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

The Big “Single-​Payer” Lie

Scan the history of government programs. The scope and costs usually grow much larger than originally projected.

Moreover, ham-​fisted government intervention distorts markets, causing shortages or excesses of supply, leading to high prices for goods that should be cheap, and so on.

When the problems pile up one can either repeal the controls or heap on more controls. 

Guess which “solution” politicians tend to prefer. 

Regarding medical care, the politicians’ answer to decades of government bungling is more bungling: regulation, subsidies, rationing, mandates and a new “public option” in health insurance to squeeze out private plans.

President Obama and other public option advocates promise, on stacks of Bibles, that this is not “somehow a Trojan horse for a single-​payer system.”

But they’re lying. Go to YouTube. Watch the videos of Obama and congressmen explicitly admitting their goal of a single-​payer system. Just two years ago, Obama was saying, “But I don’t think we’re gonna be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s gonna be potentially some transition process.…”

That’s how we lose our freedoms. Not all at once, but a slice at a time. 

Oh, and about employer-​provided medical insurance. That’s a clumsy institution that exists because of World War II wage controls. We do have to transition out of that system. But we should “transition” towards more freedom, not less.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

The Freedom to Opt Out

A new administration is poised to take over, with medical care a high priority. There’s been lots of talk, lots of trust put on big government. Unfortunately, the doctors, hospitals, insurers and others that opposed HillaryCare, way back when, now jockey to get whatever benefits they can out of whatever new system that develops … which, jumping the gun, they consider a “done deal.”

And yet the simplest, most sensible bit of legislation about health care garners almost no attention.

Introduced by Representative Sam Johnson several months ago, the Medicare Beneficiary Freedom to Choose Act would allow seniors who go on Social Security to opt out of Medicare.

At present, when you retire with Social Security benefits, you are required — forced — to accept Medicare part A benefits. Doctors whom you hire for cash can be penalized.

Quite a system.

You might think anyone who’s for freedom of choice would support the bill.

You might think it uncontroversial, since it simply allows people who have saved money for their own medical care to continue to use that money.

It doesn’t affect anybody negatively. It doesn’t reduce Medicare taxes that anyone is forced to pay. It simply lets people who want to opt out of a bureaucratic system do just that.

And it would save the government money.

Oh, maybe now I get it. The name of the game is money, spending, and … regulation of our lives.

“Congress knows best.”

That is the very antithesis of Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.