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Government Raises Health Costs

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Media Link - Baltimore Sun
Written by Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D.   
Tuesday, 01 June 1993 00:00
So, Hillary Rodham Clinton has condemned "price gouging, cost shifting and unconscionable profiteering" by medical professionals. Her criticism rests on the premise that doctors are basically thieves. Even though we owe our very lives to doctors, their skills are somehow the property of others. Imagine if this principle were applied across the board. Novelists would have to surrender their manuscripts to government officials, who would determine the royalties each author receives. Artists would be managed in a competitive marketplace run by bureaucrats. The inventions of geniuses -- such as electricity, aerodynamics, and computer microchips -- would immediately become "public" property (translated: the property of the latest tyrant in power.) "But they can keep some of their profits," it would be argued. "Just not all of them. It's not fair for one individual to make more money than another." What kind of novels, paintings and inventions could such a society be expected to produce? By destroying the ability of physicians to compete freely -- without price controls or any government interference -- Hillary Rodham Clinton and the other advocates of health care "reform" will destroy the very heart of Western medicine. The most advanced medical technology in human history, now being looted by Mrs. Clinton and her comrades, was made possible by freedom. We have been led to believe that it serves our interest to enslave doctors and end freedom in medicine. Yet when freedom dies, as communist countries discovered, the incentive toward excellence dies with it. All that will remain are mediocre doctors who are content to work under the scrutiny of a meddling government bureaucracy. What is the solution to the health care "crisis?" More freedom -- not less. More freedom for doctors to compete and charge what the market will bear. More freedom for patients to choose in such a marketplace. And, above all, less government intervention. Government subsidies have driven up the cost of health care, just as government subsidies always do. Medicare and Medicaid -- offering a free lunch for doctor and patient -- have sent demand and prices through the roof, precisely as their opponents predicted three decades ago. Such programs must be phased out. The Clinton administration, however much it tries to "reinvent" medical care, brings us closer than ever to dictatorship. Do not be fooled by the fact that instead of openly seizing power, as traditional dictators did, the Clintons merely wailed and whined their way into the White House by scaring voters. Statistics actually prove that there is no health care "crisis" -- only inflation created by government subsidies. Yet if health care "reform" passes, the United States will be dramatically closer to the socialist nightmare the rest of the world is now trying to escape.
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