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Speechless

I usually hate infographics and here is another one just littered with reasons to go crazy. But focus only on the very bottom:

The changes Brill suggests would allow the US to provide better care at lower costs without substituting the kind of government-provider system typical in comparison countries.

Holy smokes. This is the previous post in spades. So we set up the straw man that nationally delivered health care is bad, so this guy is just saving us from those horrors. I’d quite frankly prefer that (Sophie’s) choice. Here are the brilliant ways we are going to avoid “government health care”:

  • price controls in the prescription drug market (and as justification he compares prices here with those elsewhere, and since it’s an infographic there is no chance to explain that this price discrimination is what allows the drugs to be lower priced elsewhere aside from the other obvious problems here
  • take profits (“recapture” is the word, as if those were stolen from the government in the first place – how flipping perverted have we become?) from hospitals by taxing them AND imposing price controls on them
  • make doctors order fewer tests, because nothing says good medicine like a bureaucrat telling a doctor how to do his or her job (not that I disagree with the premise here)
  • impose price controls AND impose taxes on outpatient clinics (owned by doctors) to reduce spending there too, because, well, if we are substituting there in the first place to save money, or elude some other nutty regulation or tax, well, that’s gotta stop, and of course pay no attention to what happens next
  • use “transparency, price controls and whatever else it takes” to bring gross-profit margins down on medical device manufacturers
  • have government make decisions on drug prescriptions

I don’t know what to say. I really don’t.

4 Responses to “Speechless”

  1. Brian says:

    It has always fascinated me that the government restricts competition in health insurance and then is surprised that the resulting coverage is expensive and inefficient.

  2. Brian says:

    And after getting that outcome, the modern liberal solution is for the government to become the sole provider, and then we will all be “surprised” when the absolute lack of co,petition leads to even more expensive, less efficient health care?

  3. Speedmaster says:

    Leftists/collectivists hate monopolies, unless it’s the government. In which case they adore them.

  4. Harry says:

    When I was in twelfth grade, my US history teacher (a graduate from Annapolis and a conservative) assigned reading Time, so we would keep up. He tested us on current events, and we used Time and the New York Times (on microfilm in the Lehigh library for research papers.

    I think the last time I read Time was perhaps ten years ago in my opthamologist’s office. The issue was a few months outdated, and was filled with editorial opinions presented as news that were, shall we say, predictions that never materialized. Henry Luce is dead, and so is Francisco Franco. Jay Carney, formerly a Time writer, is now BHO’s press secretary, but enough of ad hominem argumentation.

    They really think everybody is an idiot, which I still believe is not true. Everybody I know is not, but some have yet to clarify that they are being fed b******* by outfits like Time.

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