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by L.K. Samuels
| Mon, 30 Jul 2007 |
Socialized Medicine: Is the Price Too High?
Health care is in the spotlight again, with the premiere of Michael Moore’s movie Sicko and the state of Massachusetts switching over to a mandatory universal single-payer program. But also sharing center stage are the same controversies that have bedeviled government’s involvement in anything that demands excellence.
The basic question is whether we want a political system to manage doctors, hospitals, and patients. What is the history of government’s accomplishments? Are politicians and bureaucrats known to be pillars of efficiency, impartiality, and competence? Or will government’s escalating foray into medicine turn into a Laurel and Hardy comedy with the catchphrase: "Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten us into."
The problem that seems to plague political systems is an addiction to rigid, closed-ended structures that centralize and institutionalize outcomes based on a top-down bureaucracy. But life is not made to order; it evolves and readjusts. Perhaps that is why (before embarrassed authorities stopped the practice after it became publicized) sick dogs could get a CT scan in socialized medicine Canada within 24 hours, but it takes more than six months for humans. There is little flexibility or innovation in a system based on political maneuvering, special interests, and rationing.
Is socialized medicine just another kind of snake oil? Consider the recent tragedy of Edith Rodriguez, who lay on the floor of a Los Angeles government hospital emergency room floor for 45 minutes, unattended, screaming for help and throwing up blood. Caught on a security camera, the videotape shows that nobody came to her assistance. As she pleaded for help, a janitor was shown mopping around her writhing body. Rodriquez’s died on that floor. Her husband called 911 for help, but was told that since his wife was already at the Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, they could not send help.
Instead of punishment, the medical staff responsible got "letters of expectation" that explained how to treat patients in the future. The director of Islamic Project HOPE, Najee Ali, was incensed and regarded the hospital’s reply as a "slap in the face for the whole family, a slap in the face for the community and it shows the devaluing of Latinos and blacks…."
Known by the locals as "Killer King" for decades, the hospital has a long history of harming and killing patients that it was meant to serve. In 2000, a 9-year-old patient died after coming to the same hospital with two broken teeth. One investigation discovered that a man with a serious brain tumor was left untreated in the emergency room for four days before relatives transferred him to another hospital so that he could get a life-saving operation.
Dozens of other cases of incompetence, poor management, bureaucratic indifference, and lapses in care were found. So many violations were revealed that the U.S. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently filed a report that not only condemned the hospital for "substandard care" but declared that "patients at King-Harbor in Willowbrook were in immediate jeopardy of harm or death."
But surely, this county-operated hospital must be underfunded! Not according to the Los Angeles Times’ five-part investigative series that included the headline, "Underfunding Is a Myth, but the Squandering Is Real." The report said that King-Harbor hospital "spent more per patient than 75 percent of the public and teaching hospitals in California, according to a 2002 state audit that looked at fiscal year 2000." In other words, King-Harbor county hospital could be considered overfunded compared to most other hospitals.
According to the World Health Organization, the United States’ "overall performance" in health care is supposedly 37th in the world. But in the "patient satisfaction category," America ranks No. 1, and it’s No. 2 for the shortest waiting time for nonemergency surgery. This is an amazing statistic, since more than 50 percent of every U.S. medical dollar spent is controlled by local, state or federal agencies.
Everyone wants better and more affordable services. But the issue of health care or any service boils down to choice. To the more libertarian-minded among us, the greatest way to bring down prices and raise quality is to let people make their own decisions. Without choice, a system can easily morph into a stagnant monopoly where politics determine who gets which doctor, what medical procedures are appropriate, and how much quality is affordable. Any other way but choice makes a mockery of free institutions.
In the case of Edith Rodriguez’s experience with government medicine, the outcome was a tragedy of unimaginable incompetence. This might be our fate if government completely invades the medical field. The health care may be "free," but it will surely cost us a lot.
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