Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Milton Friedman on Socialized Medicine
I find the discussion on the growth of administrators to be particularly interesting. The similarity to the higher education bubble is quite striking.
And Friedman calls out the key problem of Britain's National Health Service - very long waiting lists for health care, to the point where people die. Odd how this is simply never brought up here in our Media.
Also interesting the effort in Sweden to crush out private medicine because its ability to offer superior care at better price made the government provided alternative look bad.
The devil is in the regulations.
ReplyDeleteClassifying a coronary bypass as a "postponable operation," for example, feeds the perception that faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats (with zero medical training, I might add) will get to decide who receives care and who doesn't, simply by listing procedures and conditions that require immediate care, and de-prioritizing everything else.
But "death panel" believers are paranoid wing-nuts who need to shut up.
Also loved his statement that socialism has taken root in every industry, and that the result - More input, less output - is always the same. Always.
Archer is dead on, pardon the pun... And no, the media will never bring up those 'other' issues...
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