“The link between the ‘consumer’ of healthcare and the provider has been broken for decades. There is no ‘free market’ in healthcare–there isn’t any market at all. We live in a Kafka-esque nightmare system in which ‘some are more equal than others’ and hundreds of thousands of dollars are lavished on worthless tests, procedures and medications for two reasons:

1. Because there’s ‘free money’ to pay the bills

2. So-called ‘defensive medicine’ in which worthless tests are administered to stave off random (sometimes valid, sometimes nuisance) malpractice lawsuits.

“Here are the costs of childbirth as of 1952 at one of the finest hospitals on the West Coast, The Santa Monica Hospital: Having a baby cost $30, which is today’s dollars is $244. A private deluxe room cost $23 or $187 in today’s dollars. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s inflation calculator, $1 in 1952 is $8.14 in 2009 dollars.”

Read more: Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash.

Tags: socialized medicine

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 11:33 am and is filed under Economy, Freedom, Fascism, & Socialism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.