Alice in healthcare

This is one of the most lucid and right-thinking articles that I have seen to date regarding the underlying issue in the whole healthcare debate. It is so good that I wanted to post it on my blog to preserve its wisdom so I can share it with others.

It is full of pithy and succinct quotes like "Nothing would lower costs more than having each patient pay those costs. And nothing is less likely to happen."

"One of the biggest reasons for higher medical costs is that somebody else is paying those costs, whether an insurance company or the government." I have been making the same complaint for years.

I lived in Virginia during the period when the United Mine Workers Union built and operated its own hospitals that were free to union members and their families. I also lived to see the total bankruptcy of those hospitals by hordes of miners and their families camping out at the hospitals for any number of minor ailments that they simply lived with before. The hospitals were funded by a certain fixed contribution per ton of coal mined under the union contract, but no contribution was large enough to cover the runaway demand for services created by the Union members cashing in on the free healthcare. Within a few years, the hospitals  had to close their doors because the fund was bankrupt. The UMWA leaders realized (like businessmen not welfare recipients) that there was insufficient money to cover the burgeoning demands for service. Their source of money was tapped out. The UMWA finally closed the hospitals and sold them off - wisely, in my opinion - bowing to the reality that human nature had doomed their Socialist ideals to a early death. I wonder how the UMWA explained the hospital closings to their membership. (Probably blamed those eeeevvvil coal companies.)

How about giving everyone a food "credit card" paid by government? (Doesn't everybody have a natural RIGHT to eat?) Think a minute. If you had such a "credit card" paid for by government, do you think that you would tend to buy more and better quality food than if you had to pay the bill? Would you care what it cost? Not a chance. Would food sales go up? Would food prices go up? What would happen to those people who could not get a food credit card and had to pay for their own food? They suffer because of the exhorbitant prices of food.

The problem with healthcare today is the Medical "credit card" in the form of government programs like Medicare and Medicade and "go to the hospital emergency room and demand free services because you are an illegal." The only people paying for services are those who don't have any insurance, have preexising conditions, or those who make a lot of money and can afford to pay the high costs - high costs created by Government medical welfare programs.

The only way to get back to a free market system is to get back to a free market system. Eliminate all government free "credit cards" and reset back to people paying for their own medical care. After a time of serious adjustment, you will see the normal free market reassert itself as prices stabilize at much lower levels, and service demands shrink to levels that the market will provide and that people are willing to pay for. It should never have been otherwise except for the Socialist/Progressive's meddling in the medical economy.

It started when FDR wanted to introduce socialized medicine by giving companies a tax break if they provided free medical services to their employees as part of their employment package. That was not a market innovation - it was a socialist idea slipped in behind our backs by a radical socialist called the great FDR.

We need to unwind this system.