The trouble with making government the solution for our medical system’s failures is that government is without a doubt the chief cause of those failures.
But I guess “government” isn’t a good enough name for the cause. Some government, after all, is good for us. So, how to name the problem?
Several months ago Greg Blankenship, founder and president of the Illinois Policy Institute, gave us a good name for one governmental cause of health care failure. In a fascinating column, Blankenship looked at the regulations that beset planning for medical care in his state, Illinois, and gave it a name: Protectionism.
What’s happening in Illinois isn’t hard to understand. It’s the same old protectionist racket. A hospital in Joliet hasn’t been allowed to add beds to its mental health and OB-GYN clinics for years now. Nearby hospitals in Aurora, Joliet, Bolingbrook and Morris oppose the project.
So people in Joliet suffer. Not enough options. Not enough health care.
And so many no doubt blame insufficiencies on doctors, or nurses’ unions, or markets in general.
Yet the real blame rests solely on the state of Illinois and its Health Facilities Planning Board. A sad case, yes; a sick system.
The Simplicity of the Idiocy
As Blankenship makes clear, protectionism isn’t just for busybody politicians in nation-states. State governments get in on the act, too.
And, like nationwide protectionism, special-interest influences come to play as a matter of course, with one or two businesses reaping most of the rewards. Blankenship likened the practice to a (fictional) fast food restaurant regulatory board getting captured by McDonald’s. Suddenly, Burger King outlets can’t get permission to expand.
Economists have been writing on this for 50 years or more. Regulatory capture, it’s called . . . but here applied to the business of medicine.
And medicine is a business. Calling it a “service” and pretending it’s like government doesn’t make it any less a business. It only helps run the business into the ground.
Further, medicine may be a “basic service,” yes — but remember: food is a basic product. And the farming, distribution, and marketing of our food supply works best with minimal government involvement. (Indeed, our biggest food-related problems are largely caused by government involvement.) And there’s little inherent in the services of medicine to require “sharing the burden” through government.
This critique is not an instance of being “anti-government.” I am no more “anti-government” than I am “anti-drugs.” I just believe that, if you have a headache, you only take two aspirin, not the whole bottle. If you have a social problem, you call upon government to do only what it can competently do.
Any more and you get poison.
Hormesis (look it up)
That’s it in a nutshell: A little government goes a long way. Adding more government is just increasing the dose. Then all you get are addicts and increasingly bad side effects.
As they say in pharmacology: The poison is in the dose (yes, that’s the principle of hormesis). Water is healthy, right? Drinking it is good for you. Well, last year several people died from drinking too much water. Their cells ruptured from overdose of H2O.
Same with government. It may be effective (sorta) in fighting back criminals and rogue foreign powers. But having it run a health care system is . . . socialism.
Yes, that’s another name for the problem affecting health care. Socialism. The S-word.
And here’s something we know for sure: socialism just doesn’t work. Why? Socialism is government at, or near, the highest dose.
If you don’t believe me, just read the British papers. I regularly come across news stories that show how bad socialism can be. In Britain. Today.
Take dentistry. Please. What a job, sticking fingers into opened mouths. Probing. Drilling. Filling. Ugh.
And, for those who take it upon themselves to do the job, it can’t be easy managing patients, or clients, or whatever they call the people who pay their bills.
It’s bad enough here in America; It is obviously much harder in Britain, where dentists were just told to . . . . go on vacation. By the government. Why? They had filled their work quotas. Even while millions — yes, millions — of English people can’t get in to see any dentist!
Dentistry is socialized in Britain. The government hires the dentists. Tax money — not patients directly — pay for the dental work.
So no wonder there aren’t enough dentists in Britain, and why British teeth, in general, are getting worse, even though the service is “free of charge.”
Just try to provide a free service using tax funds — you still can’t void the laws of scarcity and value by edict. If you want something, you still have to pay for it. You still have to invest. Scarce resources must go from some use and be put to another. Continued... |