Comments (5)

• david

  'course, another problem with state healthcare lies in the other direction: I read of a case a year or 2 ago of a Canadian patient who was admitted for his umpteenth heart bypass at the age of 90-something... at cost to all taxpayers, naturally. How is it possible to determine how much of the budget gets deployed where the most pressing need lies? Who defines the pressingness of the need?

  Its even worse in the less developed countries like mine: one patient, perhaps with political connections or a high media profile, gets huge resources thrown at him to eke out an already terminally-bedridden life, while others who are out of reach of the system (notionally and 'constitutionally' open to 'all' as a fundamental 'right') don't get access to any healthcare whatsoever. Without a market-based pricing structure to resolve the calculation problem, it is impossible to prioritise the multitude of claims on the state healthcare system in any meaningful way. Even if state healthcare could be justified in principle, one person's kidney transplant consumes resources that could fund permanent cures for hundreds of tuberculosis cases, and this is an impossible choice for any hospital official, so the choices made land up being arbitary or, worse, bribes and kickbacks. The whole edifice is fundamentally flawed.

  Needless to say, the South African Minister of Health uses private healthcare for her own medical problems, as reported in several newspapers here last year. Many commentators here would observe that it is mental healthcare that is indicated in her case, after her hamfisted attempts to impose complete price control in the pharmaceutical industry, and effectively forcing hundreds of private retail pharmacies into bankruptcy as a result.

  Published: January 11, 2006 8:24 AM

• Chris Meisenzahl

  What a great column!

  This quote is a classic. ;-)

  "Alas, it seems that ignorance continues to be a renewable resource"

  Published: January 11, 2006 9:35 AM

• Paul Marks

  Are not Mr Browne and the Wall Street Journal aware that the A.M.A. is a guild designed to push up costs - and that government regulations (without which the A.M.A. monopoly could not function) have the same function?

  Send a letter both to Mr Browne and to the newspaper.

  I know I always advise this - but this time there is a real chance of it doing some good.

  After all Milton Friedman made his name exposing health restrictions about 50 years agp - it is not just an Austrian school thing.

  The W.S.J. should print a letter citing Milton Friendman - if they do not it would be a clear sign that the "pro free enterprise" W.S.J. is really just another leftist newspaper (like the disgusting "Financial Times" in Britian).

  Published: January 13, 2006 7:58 AM

• Vince Daliessio

  The anecdote the author tells about his early visit to "healthy" Canada is a priceless example that just as inportant as objective observations is one's frame of reference. The problems of course in Chinese, Canadian, and US medical systems boil down to similar frame of reference problems that make the titanic miasma of waste, fraud, and abuse that is the modern medical industry seem like a reasonable price for the service to many people.

  Published: January 13, 2006 10:21 AM

• Darrell Johnson

  It's an interesting article, but the opening anecdote discredits the author to anyone with an accurate understanding of the real differences between Canada and the USA.

  One might note that Canadians have a higher life expectancy than Americans. There are lower rates of obesity. Visiting Canadian supermarkets, one finds less junk food and better availability of fresh fruits and vegetables than in American supermarkets of similar size. It's an old difference in culture and popular lifestyle, perhaps stimulated by the harsh climate.

  As for socialized medicine, the American medical system certainly offers better care to people with unlimited budgets, but is so tightly regulated that it can't be called a free market. The insurance companies, supported by government regulations and tax incentives, have an overwhelming artificial negotiating power to make backroom deals with all large healthcare providers to increase out-of-pocket prices for the uninsured to viciously punitive levels. There is also out-of-control malpractice litigation, a flaw in the legal system, such that fully competent doctors feel obligated to spend a lot of money on malpractice insurance (which cost they must pass along to consumers), because routine and ordinary imperfections in the performance of their jobs can result in severe penalties.

  Canadian healthcare doesn't reach the heights of the American medical system, but then, neither can most Americans. Low income and self-employed Americans are poorly served. (Is a healthy marketplace one with many 5 star restaurants and affordable employees-only cafeterias, but no McDonalds?) Both are diminished by extreme government influence, and it is hard to say overall which is better or worse.

  I think the article is generally well-written and interesting, but it opens on a terrible false note. I've noticed this kind of sloppiness on mises.org articles before (right in principle, wrong in specifics), which gives people starting from a conflicting viewpoint excuses to dismiss the whole site as a deceptive propaganda effort. In my opinion, more attention to detail would help make mises.org useful for other purposes than preaching to the choir.

  Published: February 26, 2007 9:48 AM