OK, I just couldn't escape the local references to Cheyenne, Wyoming in this piece, but ParcBench ran it anyway (it ran first in the local Wyoming Tribune Eagle).

What the Hell - I think most people would agree the same thing's happening in your town's hospital as well, and besides, it was the PERFECT opportunity to smuggle in the Dr. Hendricks quote. <big toothy smile>

Brad Harrington
brad@bradandbarbie.com


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January 5, 2015

Scalpels Vs. Statutes

By Bradley Harrington

“I have often wondered at the smugness at which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind - yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands?” - Dr. Hendricks, from “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand, 1957 -

If you think that what has been happening with government intrusion into medicine over the last 50 years is bad enough, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle’s front page recently gave us a small glimmer of the doctor shortages we’ve got coming for the future:

“Cheyenne Regional Medical Center plans to recruit more internal medicine doctors to the Capital City... ‘There is a definite community need for internal medicine physicians,’ Margo Karsten, chief executive officer at CRMC, said, adding that the issue is a national concern.” (“Internal medicine doctors in short supply,” Dec. 28.)

But why?

After all, in a free market, powerful economic forces are at work to maintain a proper equilibrium of supply versus demand.

Should a given profession experience a shortage of its work force, for instance, the price for that labor consequently rises, thereby attracting new talent to the field.

Conversely, in the case of an over-saturated sector of the labor pool, the low demand creates a wage drop, thereby prompting an exodus of workers away from that field.

In both cases, the additions or departures continue until the labor supply once again meets the actual demand. Free markets, in other words, don’t need political czars or regulatory regimes to balance things out; the feedback of the profit motive functions quite well all by itself in that respect.

Ah, yes, but... We don’t have a free market in health care any longer, and haven’t for quite a few decades.

Historically, the first major dislocations in market equilibrium in the medical arena began with the establishment of the socialized-medicine programs of Medicare and Medicaid back in 1965.

And, as happens with all economic interventions by their very nature, those dislocations bred further government interventions, which bred further dislocations, until - over the succeeding decades - the distortions became the structure.

And then, finally - both as a result of this process and as an accelerated response to it - the entire medical field was taken over by “Obamacare,” whereby any small remaining area of health care that remained relatively free was superseded by thousands of pages of unreadable gobbledygook.

And the consequences? Prices, labor pools, procedures and treatments no longer reflect market demand or the actual needs of patients, but are driven by political pressure instead.

And the doctors whom we expect to continue to produce, to save our very lives, in the middle of all this socialized insanity? What do they have to look forward to in their careers?

A partial list of the incredible burdens doctors now face would include:

► Malpractice insurances often covering more than half of their income;

► A line of bumbling bureaucrats standing between them and their patients, all armed with an array of rules, regulations, orders, decrees, directives and declarations regarding the manner in which the bureaucrats - not the doctors themselves - determine diagnosis, tests and treatments;

► Social pronouncements that their roles and incomes cannot even involve their own self-interest any longer. It’s now considered “greedy” for them to make profits at what they’ve trained for years to do; they are now to simply “serve” instead;

► And, on top of all that, in the very area that was originally touted as the savior of quality medical care for our poor and senior citizens, the New York Times now admits that Medicaid is about to die on the operating table when it comes to financial remuneration:

“Just as millions of people are gaining insurance through Medicaid, the program is poised to make deep cuts in payments to many doctors, prompting some physicians and consumer advocates to warn that the reductions could make it more difficult for Medicaid patients to obtain care.” (“As Medicaid rolls swell, cuts in payments to doctors threaten access to care,” Dec. 27.)

And we seriously wonder why practitioners are fleeing the field? No self-respecting doctor would tolerate such totalitarian regimentation, or the failure to be properly rewarded for their services. Who wouldn’t try to escape that slave pen, except a fawning bootlicker? And of what use would such a “doctor” be to anybody, with his or her very mind stifled right at the root?

Which brings us to the ultimate problem: Of what use will our pretty little government-sponsored health care policies be to us, when actual doctor-provided medical services have dried up and disappeared?

Which person do you think you’ll be needing most above you on an operating table? A quality surgeon holding a scalpel - or a blundering bureaucrat holding some stupid statute?