In addition to costing, at a minimum, approximately $1 trillion simply to launch President Obama’s ambitious plan towards socialized medicine, the current bill will also have a devastating impact on the quality of our nation’s health care.  In fact, I believe that passage of this bill will pave the way for a new Dark Ages in health care.

Thus far, the primary focus of this debate has centered on health care costs and providing coverage to the uninsured.  While American generosity and compassion are weighing in on the side of helping our fellow citizens without adequate health care insurance, it is worth pointing out that our “uninsured” are better cared for and protected than most European nations already practicing socialized medicine.  And while exercising restraint as far as health care costs are concerned, if this was a legitimate goal of reform then why not immediately correct the $60 billion of identified waste and abuse in Medicare, instead of using it as a method of paying for new reforms?  In reality, the notion of controlling or curbing rising heath care costs via this legislation is a red herring; these costs cannot be contained through government controls without sacrificing quality and instituting rationing of health care.  Period.

The United States remains the only major nation with any resemblance to market driven health care.  There is an impetus in US health care towards innovation that other countries simply do not enjoy; but they do reap the benefits from America;s innovation, research and development.  According to Glen Whitman, an associate professor of economics at California State University, Northridge and Raymond Raad, a resident in psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, the Cato Institute noted in a recent study that innovation should be the number one concern in the health care debate.  In the study, four categories of innovation are examined:  basic science; diagnostics; therapeutics; and business models.  They found that in the areas of basic science, diagnostics, and therapeutics the United States has made more positive contributions than any other country, and in some cases, more than all other countries combined.  In the category of business models, the researchers lacked the data needed to make a final determination.

However, what no one is able to refute, is that other countries with socialized health care have their own significant problems in the area of business models. In these countries, government bureaucracy has replaced business bureaucracy.  How is that better?  Government’s involvement in the “business” of health care is the primary reason for the inefficiencies in other country’s socialized heath care systems; arguably the same is already true of our own.

If this administration was serious about improving our system, it would explore ways of reducing the role of government and increasing the role of the free market in the business of health care.  According to the authors of the Cato report – and most clear thinking Americans – our health care system, though far from perfect with its rising costs and inefficiencies, has undeniably and without equal, provided the greatest innovations in health care for its patients.  This includes the quick adoption and broad use of new treatments and technologies, which in turn create an incentive to develop those techniques in the first place.

When the American people “subsidize” medical innovation through higher costs, the whole world benefits; that is a virtue of the American system that is not reflected in comparative life expectancy and mortality statistics, and one not so much as even acknowledged by our current administration and in this current debate.  In a sane world, other countries would rise up in urgency and anger to protest the health care proposals before the Congress, denouncing the administration’s intent to drastically and irrevocably damage the greatest health care system in the world, and to squash the innovation inherent in our system from which other countries benefit and should be grateful.

Medical treatments must be invented and perfected before costs can be reduced and their benefits extended to everyone.  Innovation is critical.  If the incentive for innovation is not there, everyone – most especially those who are touted as being the biggest beneficiaries of socialized medicine – will suffer.  Innovation has had virtually no role in the current health care debate showing the myopia of the supporters of socialized health care. They too will find themselves suffering from the lack of options and rationing that are common in socialized systems where the free market is shackled or excluded.

For more information I suggest Glen Whitman and Raymond Raad, “Bending the Productivity Curve: Why America Leads the World in Medical Innovation,” Cato Institute, November 18, 2009.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.