I would be willing to bet that prices would fall if the AMA didn't limit the number of graduates from medical school and we all quit carrying insurance. I use to work for the DOI in a consumer service office. Every state has one. The state Commissioners and insurance executives were cozy and the deals were struck between them. Insurance companies will do well under Obamacare. I just think things are too far gone to change them.

I can't recall the source either.

Good points. I will remember to include those tools. I looked up your comment on toilets adding decades to human lifespan, but while everyone quoted the quote (as it were - though with some variation in the number of years), I could find no source for it. Do you know where that statement came from?

Jan

This isn't quite accurate. The first major changes to medicine in millenia would have to be:
(1) The introduction of the first anaesthetic, chloroform (about 1870), which made surgery (at first mostly amputations after injuries) much safer as well as more comfortable. Lots of other drugs followed, including many now considered harmful.
(2) The discovery of how to avoid infection by better sanitary practice (also late 19th century, mostly due to Semmelweis in Hungary). This was *not* the discovery of germs -- the ancient Greeks knew about them. (Related: The toilet added 30 years to man's lifespan. All of medicine combined hasn't achieved half that, yet.)
Antibiotics and X-rays did increase what the doctors could do -- but before about 1850 they couldn't do much of anything except make predictions.

You would have to use government to pass tort reform. Repeal of punitive damages would help also and limiting class action suits which are the lawyer retirement plan that consumers pay for.

So yes! The distributors we work with are 'somewhat inconvenienced' by this tax. Do you hear them screaming in the background?

Jan

Hello freedomforall,
Thank's for re-posting. It is an excellent article.
Too bad our politicians are generally so ill informed on economics and history.
Regards,
O.A.

Extra taxes on medical care products are as counter productive as guaranteed insurance. Just adds to the problem created in large part by fedgov meddling.

It is important that the patient have the best possible information to enable the possibility of a rational decision and responsibility for their own health. Driving out the vested interests and myths about who the quacks are (and are not) will be a challenge.

The brand-shiny-new tax on medical equipment will really bring those costs down, too!

True, but there is also plenty of fraud in "alternative medicine" and the "supplement" industry.

I would like to see a watchdog outfit to publish objective research about which kinds of treatment actually help and which are hooey. It would have to be private, though; both the AMA and medical regulators have broken their promise to do that job.

What we need most are three major reforms: a "loser-pays" tort system (to reduce costs), deregulation of medicine, especially drugs (also to reduce costs), and separation of medicine from both employment and the tax code (so people will pay more directly for their own care, and thus have to confront its actual costs).

Both very interesting articles, even the one from Waldman at CNN blaming the conservatives view. I'm on two inhalers these days thanks to Vietnam. One costs $74 and the other $294 for a 30 day supply. And thanks to Vietnam my copays are $8 each.

This government solution to healthcare seems very similar to the government intervention in education, and many other factors and businesses we deal with. We've got to make up minds soon which way we want this country to go or the government will just decide for us. It's that simple. I vote to start shutting down government departments that are not doing what they claim they were intended to do.

Maybe medical care is better today in spite of government. Its because of the experimentation and research. The doctors today can't afford to spend a lot of time with us patients anymore- cause of all the insurance and government requirements. I have joined MDVIP.com so I can get reasonable access to a family doctor. Otherwise with Obamacare one has to wait a long time to even be seen. Check it out. You might like it too. You also get more time with the doc, since they cut their practice down to about 300 patients instead of 3000.

The thing the article (and especially the graph) fails to take into account is the 'tools of the trade'. Before 1947, what a doctor was capable of doing had not changed much over the millennia. Antibiotics and X-rays changed all that - doctors became miracle men.

Other than that, I agree with the article notably in reference to the artificial structure of the pyramid of power by which doctors act as gatekeepers to medical care that can effectively be implemented at a lower level of expertise.

And I am totally in synch with the need for 'free market' medical coverage. Let's just make my medical insurance belong to 'me'...the way my car insurance does.

Jan

Without government intervention, would there have been the big money needed to attract the looter lawyers?

How in the world can you attribute blame for high health care costs without including judges and lawyers?

I too remember the 50's and 60's. I was once ill with pneumonia and stayed an extra day in the hospital because of my dad's work schedule and my mom also being ill. The extra day in the hospital was totally affordable. Not so today.
While I am not a fan of the AMA remember that a century ago the level of medical care was about 1% of what it is today. They were all GP.s. Specialists did not exist. Now it is the opposite. It is TOO specialized.
Nor am I a fan of insurance companies but remember that they must now insure people they previously declined - and that costs us all money.
Yes, goverment inteverntion is the problem, not the solution. As soon as it was said healthcare is a right, it has been imploding ever since. It is insane the amount of money doctors must spend to remain compliant.
It truely is a disaster.

I remember the Senatorial election in Nevada in 1992. That was the first time Harry Reid was up for election after I had moved to Nevada. His opponent was Republican Demar Dahl. Part of Demar's plank was to completely open up the healthcare industry to the free market. Demar lost against the machine Harry had well in place by then.

Here we are 23 years later and in the ever worsening mess that is the healthcare "system". And Harry finally announces he is retiring. Thanks Harry, ever so much for being a perpetual embarrassment to the State of Nevada.

The USA's medical costs make it a hilarious laughing stock around the world, a testament not only to the corruption of the profession, but also the unbelievable tolerance of American citizens in what is supposed to be a democracy.

India and China are chock-full of doctor-mill universities, churning them out in the tens of thousands. Their upper-band graduates actually have a great foundation to becoming really good practitioners. While the US is building more medical schools, there would be merit in opening the immigration floodgates to some of these fresh graduates and helping to rectify the artificially-depressed supply.

State licensing and the FDA have got to go. Any willing patient and any willing provider for a mutually agreed to treatment for a mutually agreed to price.

I always thought the AMA was a sham. Now I know it was. Cronyism at its best.

I can remember when I was a kid in the early 1960's. You had "major medical" which covered 80% of really catastrophic issues. Other than that, you did pay cash at the local doctor, and there was lots of competition among doctors. The one we went to worked out of a section of his house right in the neighborhood. No one complained about the cost of health care. I can fully believe that the government has messed things up and now threatens to take over more and more until its all socialized medicine. Obamacare was a gift to the insurance companies, who now charge far more for insurance than they did last year, with some of the increased costs being paid for by deficit spending. It was cronyism at its best. Now I need to join MDVIP.com and pay and additional $1500 a year to even get access to a good local doctor without waiting weeks for an appointment. Obama is an idiot for sure.

Excellent article. I wasn't around in September, so I'm glad you reposted. Couple all this with runaway inflation so that the middle class no longer has disposable income and is dependent on insurance and government for health care. A perfect recipe for control!

I can only liken our trip away from the health care of pre 1965 to today's mess as being on a nice paved highway only to be talked into a side road that becomes unpaved and muddy. Having lived through the era when tonsils were taken out in the doctor's office, to today when a cut finger requires a release form, I can attest that the article is true. I doubt if any health care reform, given the state it's in today can really do what's needed. Too many moochers, too far gone.