The Wonders of Government Medicine

When Pres Obama needed someone to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, he chose Donald Berwick, who once stated;

I am romantic about the NHS; I love it. All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country.

The NHS to which Berwick referred is the British National Health Service; a completely government-controlled healthcare system that not only gives British subjects "free" health care, but makes it illegal for them to pay for their own health care.

Here's a short excerpt of  Berwick's speech.



So, how does that system that supposedly "guarantees healthcare as a human right" and is "politically accountable" work out in real life (as opposed to Berwick's wet dreams)?

More than half of elderly and disabled people in care homes are being denied basic health services while staff are failing to to do enough to preserve their dignity, according to an official review. Some older people routinely have to wait up to three months for formal checks for painful conditions such as bed sores, according to figures from the health care watchdog.Campaigners blamed NHS bureaucrats showing a “lack of interest” and failing to provide expert assessments for conditions as basic as incontinence.

Wait a minute: how can a system that "guarantees health care as a human right" deny anyone health care?  How can staff who are "politically accountable" fail to do enough to preserve the dignity of the elderly and disabled?  How can government bureaucrats whose job is to "anticipate needs and plan for them" fail to do so?

Anyone who's ever visited the DMV knows the answer.

It's not that complicated.  When government arbitrarily sets prices (in this case, "free"), they create shortages.  Politicians and government bureaucrats - no matter how capable (and many of them are incompetent) - are incapable of anticipating everyone's needs.  It's impossible.  There's no point in asking them to try.

Again, it's not that complicated.  No one understands your needs better than you do, least of all some nameless, faceless government bureaucrat in some cubicle somewhere.  That's why free markets serve people better than government bureaucrats.  Free markets allow people to choose the provider who best meets their individual needs.

By the way, we don't have a free market healthcare system in the US.  We have a bastardized system in which government provides the majority of our healthcare and causes the majority of our problems.

There is no such thing as "universal healthcare".  The "free" healthcare governments offer causes long waits which result in people living for months, years or even dying unnecessarily from their illnesses.  Our system, bastardized and flawed as it is, actually provides more care, to more people, on time than purely government-run systems.

We need more economic liberty in health care, not less.

Guess which route the Obama Administration took?