Homestead mailing list

["Melody O." <melody AT crecon.com>]

At 08:04 AM 10/29/05 -0400, you wrote:
>At 10/28/2005, you wrote:
>> >  Part of that is that we have the most health
>> >care system in the world.
>>
>>Expensive? Yes. Inefficient? Perhaps.
>
>The word that was not there is expensive.  We have the most expensive 
>health care system in the world.  It also covers fewer people.  We have an 
>odd ball system with insurance companies in the middle siphoning away 
>health care dollars and providing almost nothing in return.

I don't believe it is the health care companies that are the problem.
Remember years ago when you didn't have to give out your social security
number to have the doctor do a strep culture?  and when doctors could do
x-rays in their offices?  and when you didn't have to sign away your rights
to a trial in order to see the doctor, "choosing" instead mediation in case
of malpractice?  Remember the good old days when you could choose your own
doctor and it didn't matter whether your "primary physician" thought you
should go see a specialist or not, you just could if you saw fit?  What is
different?  Insurance companies?  No, there were insurance companies
before; the difference is the level of government intrusion involved in
medicine.  

Years ago insurance companies were accountable to their clients; now they
are accountable to the government.  The same goes for medical personnel and
hospitals.  Their main concern used to be making sure the patient was
satisfied with services, now it matters more that they dot their i's and
cross their t's and do all forms in triplicate.  They have boatloads of
paperwork.  In one office's case they have the LPNs do the home health
visits while the RNs sit in the office and do the paperwork for those
visits; make no mistake though, the LPNs had lots of paperwork too.

It is intrusive government that creates the expense and hoop jumping.  Ours
is the worse of both worlds: intrusive socialistic government without the
cost effectiveness.  Either we need to go back to *true* privatized
medicine or *true* socialistic medicine, but to keep one foot in private
medicine and one in government intrusive medicine will cause prices to be
so high that the very people the government is trying to help won't be able
to afford medical help at all.

Ludwig von Mises describes the economic problem of government intrusion in
private enterprise in this way:
(_Planning for Freedom_ pp 21-24; http://www.mises.org/midroad/mr3.asp,
http://www.mises.org/MIDROAD/mr4.asp) 

"3. How Interventionism Works

It is not the task of today's discussion to raise any questions about the
merits either of capitalism or of socialism. I am dealing today with
interventionism alone. And I do not intend to enter into an arbitrary
evaluation of interventionism from any preconceived point of view. My only
concern is to show how interventionism works and whether or not it can be
considered as a pattern of a permanent system for society's economic
organization.

The interventionists emphasize that they plan to retain private ownership
of the means of production, entrepreneurship and market exchange. But, they
go on to say, it is peremptory to prevent these capitalist institutions
from spreading havoc and unfairly exploiting the majority of people. It is
the duty of government to restrain, by orders and prohibitions, the greed
of the propertied classes lest their acquisitiveness harm the poorer
classes. Unhampered or laissez-faire capitalism is an evil. But in order to
eliminate its evils, there is no need to abolish capitalism entirely. It is
possible to improve the capitalist system by government interference with
the actions of the capitalists and entrepreneurs. Such government
regulation and regimentation of business is the only method to keep off
totalitarian socialism and to salvage those features of capitalism which
are worth preserving. On the ground of this philosophy, the
interventionists advocate a galaxy of various measures. Let us pick out one
of them, the very popular scheme of price control.

4. How Price Control Leads to Socialism
The government believes that the price of a definite commodity, e.g., milk,
is too high. It wants to make it possible for the poor to give their
children more milk. Thus it resorts to a price ceiling and fixes the price
of milk at a lower rate than that prevailing on the free market. The result
is that the marginal producers of milk, those producing at the highest
cost, now incur losses. As no individual farmer or businessman can go on
producing at a loss, these marginal producers stop producing and selling
milk on the market. They will use their cows and their skill for other more
profitable purposes. They will, for example, produce butter, cheese or
meat. There will be less milk available for the consumers, not more. This,
of course, is contrary to the intentions of the government. It wanted to
make it easier for some people to buy more milk. But, as an outcome of its
interference, the supply available drops. The measure proves abortive from
the very point of view of the government and the groups it was eager to
favor. It brings about a state of affairs, which—again from the point of
view of the government—is even less desirable than the previous state of
affairs which it was designed to improve.

Now, the government is faced with an alternative. It can abrogate its
decree and refrain from any further endeavors to control the price of milk.
But if it insists upon its intention to keep the price of milk below the
rate the unhampered market would have determined and wants nonetheless to
avoid a drop in the supply of milk, it must try to eliminate the causes
that render the marginal producers' business unremunerative. It must add to
the first decree concerning only the price of milk a second decree fixing
the prices of the factors of production necessary for the production of
milk at such a low rate that the marginal producers of milk will no longer
suffer losses and will therefore abstain from restricting output. But then
the same story repeats itself on a remoter plane. The supply of the factors
of production required for the production of milk drops, and again the
government is back where it started. If it does not want to admit defeat
and to abstain from any meddling with prices, it must push further and fix
the prices of those factors of production which are needed for the
production of the factors necessary for the production of milk. Thus the
government is forced to go further and further, fixing step by step the
prices of all consumers' goods and of all factors of production—both human,
i.e., labor, and material—and to order every entrepreneur and every worker
to continue work at these prices and wages. No branch of industry can be
omitted from this all-round fixing of prices and wages and from this
obligation to produce those quantities which the government wants to see
produced. If some branches were to be left free out of regard for the fact
that they produce only goods qualified as non-vital or even as luxuries,
capital and labor would tend to flow into them and the result would be a
drop in the supply of those goods, the prices of which government has fixed
precisely because it considers them as indispensable for the satisfaction
of the needs of the masses.

But when this state of all-round control of business is attained, there can
no longer be any question of a market economy. No longer do the citizens by
their buying and abstention from buying determine what should be produced
and how. The power to decide these matters has devolved upon the
government. This is no longer capitalism; it is all-round planning by the
government, it is socialism."

Though here Mises is talking about milk, I believe that the same principle
applies to healthcare.  There is much government control/intrusion
(socialism) without the benefits of the same.

Best wishes,
Melody