Posted on 11/02/2009 6:50:00 PM PST by jazusamo
We are incessantly being told that the cost of medical care is "too high" — either absolutely or as a growing percentage of our incomes. But nothing that is being proposed by the government is likely to lower those costs, and much that is being proposed is almost certain to increase the costs.
There is a fundamental difference between reducing costs and simply shifting costs around, like a pea in a shell game at a carnival. Costs are not reduced simply because you pay less at a doctor's office and more in taxes — or more in insurance premiums, or more in higher prices for other goods and services that you buy, because the government has put the costs on businesses that pass those costs on to you.
Costs are not reduced simply because you don't pay them. It would undoubtedly be cheaper for me to do without the medications that keep me alive and more vigorous in my old age than people of a similar age were in generations past.
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Letting old people die would undoubtedly be cheaper than keeping them alive — but that does not mean that the costs have gone down. It just means that we refuse to pay the costs. Instead, we pay the consequences. There is no free lunch.
Providing free lunches to people who go to hospital emergency rooms is one of the reasons for the current high costs of medical care for others. Politicians mandating what insurance companies must cover is another free lunch that leads to higher premiums for medical insurance...
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
I find it hard to put a price on the advances in medicine that are available to us now. Amazing things are being done.
Another well written piece by Sowell. Thanks for the ping.
Exactly, many conditions that were fatal or disabling even 50 years ago can be cured or arrested now and new innovations are happening rapidly, it’s difficult to put a price on those extra quality years.
Thanks for that...another amazing piece by Sowell.
“....... it is so much easier just to start a political stampede with fiery rhetoric and glittering promises?”
I hate glitter. Glitter is like Democrats. All showy and bright to look at, but gets into everything, and is so difficult to clean up after.
BTW Thanks for the ping jaz. ;)
Always my pleasure, RQSR. :)
Sowell is approaching 80. Would he still be alive under Obama care? Maybe. Maybe not.
BUMP!
When you don’t pay the costs, you pay the consequences!
BUMP!
dr. sowell omitted one of the significant costs of medicine - that of the education. grants and government loans artificially inflated the price of medical school education. students are encouraged to attend schools they can’t afford because ‘the government’ will pay for it. that means that the schools can raise prices to any level the grant and loan programs will fund, and the student is told that he can pay for it later.
the typical doctor finishes school with enough debt to finance a small casino, and must earn acordingly. costs go up. normally, costs decrease when a thing becomes widely available and technology enters the system to make a process easier, but not in this case. medical school tuition rises faster than everything else; it does not decline.
Socialists are like journalists - they complain about whatever didn't meet their standards of perfection, without ever themselves undertaking to meet those same standards.Rush calls Obama a "manchild," saying that he is constantly whining about what his predecessors - from George W Bush yea, unto George Washington - did with the situation they inherited which somehow failed to prevent all conceivable future problems leading up the the current situation. Socialists are like that - criticism, condemnation, and complaint are their stock in trade.
The medical profession is simply the latest of a series of targets of these charlatans, but it won't be the last. The only professions which are immune from socialist attack are the complaining professions of journalist, unionist, plaintiff lawyer. Because they are all in cahoots against the person who takes responsibility and works to a bottom line.
Dead on the money, Diana!
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