"The practice of medicine is now a government-managed care system, and very few
Americans are happy with it. Not only is there little effort to extricate the federal
government from the medical-care business, but the process of expanding the government's
role continues unabated. At the turn of the 19th Century, it was not even considered
a possibility that medical care was the responsibility of the federal government.
Since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs of the 1960s, the role of the federal
government in delivering medical care has grown exponentially. Today the federal
government pays more than 60% of all the medical bills and regulates all of it.
The demands continue for more free care at the same time complaints about the shortcomings
of managed care multiply. Yet it's natural to assume that government planning and
financing will sacrifice quality care. It is now accepted that people who need care
are entitled to it as a right. This is a serious error in judgment."
"There's no indication that the trend toward government medicine will be reversed.
Our problems are related to the direct takeover of medical care in programs like
Medicare and Medicaid. But it's also been the interference in the free market through
ERISA mandates related to HMOs and other managed-care organizations, as well as
our tax code, that have undermined the private insurance aspect of paying for medical
care. True medical insurance is not available. The government dictates all the terms."
"In the early stages patients, doctors, and hospitals welcomed these programs. Generous
care was available with more than adequate reimbursement. It led to what one would
expect: abuse, overcharges, and overuse. When costs rose, it was necessary through
government rulemaking and bureaucratic management to cut reimbursement and limit
the procedures available and personal choice of physicians. We don't have socialized
medicine, but we do have bureaucratic medicine, mismanaged by the government and
select corporations who usurped the decision-making power from the physician. The
way medical care is delivered today in the United States is a perfect example of
the evils of corporatism, an artificial system that only politicians responding
to the special interests could create."
"There's no reason to believe the market cannot deliver medical care in as efficient
a manner as it does computers, automobiles, and televisions. But the confidence
is gone and everyone assumes, just as it is in education, that only a federal bureaucracy
is capable of solving the problems of maximizing the number of people, including
the poor, who receive the best medical care available. In an effort to help the
poor, the quality of care has gone down for everyone else and the costs have skyrocketed."
"Making generous medical savings accounts available is about the only program talked
about today that offers an alternative to government mismanaged care. If something
of this sort is not soon implemented, we can expect more pervasive government involvement
in the practice of medicine. With a continual deterioration of its quality, the
private practice of medicine will soon be gone."