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WSJ Back in the U.S.S.R. How Socialized medicine is monopoly
online.wsj.com — With the passage of the Medicare drug bill, we have just vastly enlarged the health-care sector. This is the one-seventh of our GDP that is run Soviet-style: where the doctors who are uniquely qualified to create and manage health-service businesses are prohibited from owning most of them; where entrepreneurs often must pass a local government
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- davidmesaaz, on 05/02/2008, -0/+2From the article...
Duke University's Medical Center improved the health of victims of congestive heart failure and vastly reduced costly hospitalizations by integrating into one team the many different providers required for appropriate care for this disease -- who normally do not communicate with each other -- saving $8,600 per person. But Medicare pays Duke primarily for hospital-based care. There is no standard-payment code for integrated care. In Medicare's straightjacket, the more Duke's innovation improved health and lowered costs, the more money the center lost. - davidmesaaz, on 05/02/2008, -0/+2From the article...
Others ask where governments could find the money for sick people who would favor plans that give them freer access to care. Hello?! Medicare expends that money right now! Under the Medicare regime, however, the money is spent cruelly, because it restricts care; and wastefully, because it shackles the innovators who represent the best promise for controlling costs, improving quality, and increasing the access to our health-care system. The competitive features of the new bill are a step in the right direction. But, if it went further, ending Medicare's pricing and benefit stranglehold and recognizing physicians' right to own facilities, we could replicate in our health care system the productivity gains we enjoy elsewhere in our economy.
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