Ed Crane - Obamacare: Medical Malpractice

I just read the Cato Policy Report for May/June 2009 and Ed Crane's Message from the President entitled Obamacare: Medical Malpractice makes some good points. First, he points out that "America is a land of free individuals. Socialized medicine is not what we are about -- and with good reason, both philosophical and practical."

As I have said repeatedly, socialized medicine turns the members of the medical professions into slaves. It raises bureaucrats into the Gods of our medical needs and the services to be allowed. It treats each and every one of us individuals as simply a statistic. The idea becomes one of degrading the judgment of the health care professionals and of the patient. Only the needs of the politicians and bureaucrats matter in a socialized medicine scheme. Of course their needs will allow them to sell their decision-making power to the highest special interest bidder of the moment, but the special interest bidder will himself be in a very precarious position.

But back to Ed Crane: He notes tha:

• Eight out of ten of the most recent major medical innovations, ranging from MRIs to hip replacement, have come from the United States.
• Americans have access, on a per capita basis, to three times as many CT scans as Canadians and four times as many as Britons.
• The average wait for treatment by a specialist in Canada is 18 weeks. Patients are more likely to die waiting and often suffer greatly with pain while waiting.
• British women have nearly double the risk of dying from breast cancer compared to American women.
• British men are six times more likely to die from prostate cancer compared to American men.
• There is a severe shortage of doctors even in America. Does this have anything to do with the likelihood that the American medical profession is being very seriously threatened with a takeover by government?
• He notes that Obama's plan to create a heavily subsidized federal insurance will kill off private insurance plans and result in the government plan being the only insurance left standing. This is a backdoor approach to the nationalization of the health insurance and health care professions.

As with education, health care is too important to be entrusted to the government. It is also, like education, much too critical to the maintenance of a society of free individuals.