Have you heard this one before? It is the cry of liberals. I agree that it would be "great' to have free health care for all, but we can't afford it! That is what this blog is about.
The problem with liberals is that they think in a vacuum. They never think beyond their wants. Does that sound like the way children think? They want things and cry for them when they are either not available or they don't exist.
It is estimated that before Obamacare, we were spending over 15% of our GNP on health care and after Obamacare, it has gotten worse. It is estimated that it is now approaching 20%. No country in the world can afford to spend that much of their GNP on health care. In prior blogs, I pointed out that all decisions are between alternatives and the list of alternatives have to be real possibilities. They can't be some magical thing. They have to be real and spending over 20% of our GNP on health care is not "real", so what are the alternatives?
First, we need to understand exactly who controls health care and that is not the federal government, it is the individual states. Who licenses doctors? It is not Washington DC, it is the states. If that is the case, why don't we hear more about the state's responsibility in all this? I wonder too. To produce a doctor here in the USA costs more than any other country in the world, plus it takes more years. That means we have more invested in our doctors and have fewer years to pay back that investment. Given these facts, what should we do? What are the alternatives? We could keep doing what we are doing, or we could strive for even better doctors by investing more and reducing the payback years. That sounds to me like the recipe for disaster.
Let's, next take a look at how well our government does when it comes to them managing health care. We only have to look at the VA to see our example. I think that we can all agree that it provides less and lower quality of service at greater cost than our existing medical system which is the most costly in the world. Given that this is the case, why would anyone want to place more control of our health care into the hands of the federal government? Only a fool would think that a good idea.
On my list, free health care is "not" an alternative. The best that I can do is to try to make health care cost less. The one big thing that I have removed from my list is that, "we only want the best health care". It is not possible to have the "best" and at the same time lower the cost so that more people can utilize it. We have to take "best" out of our vocabulary. I think that we all understand that we all want to drive a new Cadillacs or eat steak every night, but we also know that we can't afford it. Liberals still want this type of thing and never think about whether we can afford it or not.
Since states control the medical licenses, let's start there. All the student loans guaranteed by the government should be limited to (1) Medical and (2) Technical. Students should go directly from high school to medical school. This is how most of the world now does it. Medical students should be allowed to "specialize" from the beginning, not after they have their medical degree as it is now. This would greatly reduce the cost of producing a doctor while also increasing the number of years to pay back the investment. The main reason doctor visits cost so much now is that it costs so much to produce a doctor and they have so few years to pay back that investment.
We also need to figure out some way to get the lawyers off the back of medical care. These vultures add significantly to all medical service costs. Doctors, today. practise "defensive medicine", which means they often add tests that are marginally required. Look at how your veterinarian operates to get a feel for the lack of red tape. Part of this is because most pets are not insured and the bill is paid directly by the pet owner. Think of how things would be so much different if the government was paying the vet?
I am going to stop here, but expect more.
Next item, "skin in the game". The problem with most government programs is that people do not have any "skin in the game". We need to figure out how to make sure that participants have some skin in the game and it does not have to be money. That way, there is no excuse! My position is that the degree of coverage should be a function of how much or how little people have "skin in the game". Here is a list of items that should be considered:
(1) Did not graduate from high school
(2) Have a kid out of wedlock
(3) Over weight
(4) Do illegal drugs
(5) Smoke
(6) Ticket for drunk driving
(7) Convicted of a felony
(8) Not a citizen of the USA
(9) On welfare for non-medical reason
(10) Never paid a minimum amount of taxes
The list could be longer, but this is a good start. I work hard and don't want my tax money going to people who have not held up their end. Further, there is no reason why every person deserves Cadillac quality health care if they did not pay a reasonable amount of tax into the pot.
How about drugs? We are so worried about a bad drug getting onto the market that we keep good drugs off or make it too expensive to prove that a drug is good. All this drives up the cost of drugs and does not save lives in the end. I pointed out that China spends about 1% of what individuals spend here on drugs and their life expectancy is only a couple of months less than ours. We need a way to expose this difference so people are better prepared to debate this whole drug cost issue.
The last thing is how much we spend on the last few weeks or months of life. What is the logic of spending more on a person the last two months of their life than they earned in their whole life? It makes no sense and we need to call an end to it. I know that the alarmist have called this thing the "death squad", but we need to keep cool heads if we want to have money to serve people for the other 99% of their lives. Remember the story about the old Eskimo who went out on the ice flow to die rather than eat up all the food from their young family? There was a similar story in Mitchner's book "Caravans". You could have a similar story of events in a life boat.
How about a debate among people who are armed with "facts"? It would be a nice change.
The problem with liberals is that they think in a vacuum. They never think beyond their wants. Does that sound like the way children think? They want things and cry for them when they are either not available or they don't exist.
It is estimated that before Obamacare, we were spending over 15% of our GNP on health care and after Obamacare, it has gotten worse. It is estimated that it is now approaching 20%. No country in the world can afford to spend that much of their GNP on health care. In prior blogs, I pointed out that all decisions are between alternatives and the list of alternatives have to be real possibilities. They can't be some magical thing. They have to be real and spending over 20% of our GNP on health care is not "real", so what are the alternatives?
First, we need to understand exactly who controls health care and that is not the federal government, it is the individual states. Who licenses doctors? It is not Washington DC, it is the states. If that is the case, why don't we hear more about the state's responsibility in all this? I wonder too. To produce a doctor here in the USA costs more than any other country in the world, plus it takes more years. That means we have more invested in our doctors and have fewer years to pay back that investment. Given these facts, what should we do? What are the alternatives? We could keep doing what we are doing, or we could strive for even better doctors by investing more and reducing the payback years. That sounds to me like the recipe for disaster.
Let's, next take a look at how well our government does when it comes to them managing health care. We only have to look at the VA to see our example. I think that we can all agree that it provides less and lower quality of service at greater cost than our existing medical system which is the most costly in the world. Given that this is the case, why would anyone want to place more control of our health care into the hands of the federal government? Only a fool would think that a good idea.
On my list, free health care is "not" an alternative. The best that I can do is to try to make health care cost less. The one big thing that I have removed from my list is that, "we only want the best health care". It is not possible to have the "best" and at the same time lower the cost so that more people can utilize it. We have to take "best" out of our vocabulary. I think that we all understand that we all want to drive a new Cadillacs or eat steak every night, but we also know that we can't afford it. Liberals still want this type of thing and never think about whether we can afford it or not.
Since states control the medical licenses, let's start there. All the student loans guaranteed by the government should be limited to (1) Medical and (2) Technical. Students should go directly from high school to medical school. This is how most of the world now does it. Medical students should be allowed to "specialize" from the beginning, not after they have their medical degree as it is now. This would greatly reduce the cost of producing a doctor while also increasing the number of years to pay back the investment. The main reason doctor visits cost so much now is that it costs so much to produce a doctor and they have so few years to pay back that investment.
We also need to figure out some way to get the lawyers off the back of medical care. These vultures add significantly to all medical service costs. Doctors, today. practise "defensive medicine", which means they often add tests that are marginally required. Look at how your veterinarian operates to get a feel for the lack of red tape. Part of this is because most pets are not insured and the bill is paid directly by the pet owner. Think of how things would be so much different if the government was paying the vet?
I am going to stop here, but expect more.
Next item, "skin in the game". The problem with most government programs is that people do not have any "skin in the game". We need to figure out how to make sure that participants have some skin in the game and it does not have to be money. That way, there is no excuse! My position is that the degree of coverage should be a function of how much or how little people have "skin in the game". Here is a list of items that should be considered:
(1) Did not graduate from high school
(2) Have a kid out of wedlock
(3) Over weight
(4) Do illegal drugs
(5) Smoke
(6) Ticket for drunk driving
(7) Convicted of a felony
(8) Not a citizen of the USA
(9) On welfare for non-medical reason
(10) Never paid a minimum amount of taxes
The list could be longer, but this is a good start. I work hard and don't want my tax money going to people who have not held up their end. Further, there is no reason why every person deserves Cadillac quality health care if they did not pay a reasonable amount of tax into the pot.
How about drugs? We are so worried about a bad drug getting onto the market that we keep good drugs off or make it too expensive to prove that a drug is good. All this drives up the cost of drugs and does not save lives in the end. I pointed out that China spends about 1% of what individuals spend here on drugs and their life expectancy is only a couple of months less than ours. We need a way to expose this difference so people are better prepared to debate this whole drug cost issue.
The last thing is how much we spend on the last few weeks or months of life. What is the logic of spending more on a person the last two months of their life than they earned in their whole life? It makes no sense and we need to call an end to it. I know that the alarmist have called this thing the "death squad", but we need to keep cool heads if we want to have money to serve people for the other 99% of their lives. Remember the story about the old Eskimo who went out on the ice flow to die rather than eat up all the food from their young family? There was a similar story in Mitchner's book "Caravans". You could have a similar story of events in a life boat.
How about a debate among people who are armed with "facts"? It would be a nice change.
