Data like this leads those who want heavier government involvement in healthcare to tremble with certainty. It inspired Leonhardt to argue for healthcare rationing. I have two different suggestions to reduce healthcare costs that I have not heard discussed very much: get more doctors and malpractice tort reform.
[Emphasis mine.]
Not that this shouldn't be constantly repeated and shouted from the rooftops, but it isn't that people haven't been suggesting it (even though Mr. Indiviglio hasn't "heard it discussed very much"). In fact, the conservative side of the media has been stressing it for decades. It is the mainstream media (once again) that doesn't let this bit of argument make it into the headlines.
But it's the same problem we see with just about every issue. When government is the problem that creates higher costs, we never hear it.
We didn't hear about it when "Enterprise Zones" proved to be a failure. Not a peep (and in fact lies and dereliction of duty) when Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were causing our entire housing market to become destabilized by socialized lending practices and old fashioned cronyism.
The truth is, there are dozens of ways that government itself makes our medical costs higher, without increasing the quality of medical care, including:
- FDA puts far too many roadblocks and delays in bringing new medicines and medical equipment to market.
- Tort (as Mr. Indiviglio mentions). Tort directly impacts every aspect of medical costs (the kind that makes shysters like John Edwards millionaires).
- The courts themselves for not properly throwing out predatory law suits.
- Little (or no) enforcement of fraud laws in medical insurance claims. Fraud, like tort, is theft with one degree of separation. We all pay for it. Similarly, the amount of fraud in the system forces insurance companies to police their policyholders themselves, limiting the monies that could be available to pay the claims of honest people. Tort risk has required that we all receive a battery of mostly unnecessary tests, just so doctors and hospitals can cover their asses, rather than deliver the tests they think a patient really needs.
- Medicare is too slow to pay (with negotiated rates far below a reasonable rate for delivery of services). Medicare itself is an example of how socialized medicine, regardless of label, will look in a few years. Rather than having a government-run heath insurance system for the nation's truly poor, the government should outsource these programs to insurance companies, and allow them to compete for government dollars. There isn't anything that the government does that the private sector can't do better and/or cheaper.
The government, just like it showed itself to be derelict in properly watching the henhouse at Fanny Mae/Freddie Mac, isn't our friend. In fact, it is often the fox that is guarding that henhouse.
Congress is now debating more ways to steal our money to deliver to us a greatly reduced standard of care, under the guise of getting it to us cheaper and more "equitably."
Government has never delivered on that promise, regardless of the isssue, and it would be insane of us to think otherwise... this time. The outcome is always the same. The only thing that works, the only thing that ever works, is getting the government out of it and unraveling and revising the laws that strangle all of us.
H/t Instpundit.
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