[ExI] "Controlling the cost of health care" an immoral idea?

[The Avantguardian]

 ----- Original Message -----
> From: Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 6:30 PM
> Subject: Re: [ExI] "Controlling the cost of health care" an immoral idea?
> 
> Also, not all costs of health care are actually about health care.  Quite a
> bit is guarding against opportunistic lawyers, waiting for doctors to make
> the slightest mistake.

True but doctors themselves share a fair degree of culpability for the health care disaster. Just because the American Medical Association is considered a right-wing organization and votes accordingly does not make it any less a trade union then UAW, AFT, or the teamsters. And like any union, the AMA raises the barriers of entry into the profession for aspiring doctors. It all starts with medical school.

Every year millions of bright hopeful college students in the U.S. pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to get their medical school applications denied because the AMA needs to keep the supply of doctors low enough to justify the price of medical treatment. The typical applicant that gets accepted applies to approximately thirty schools at about fifty dollars each. Then you have to take out a few hundred thousand dollars in student loans to pay the tution. Then you pay the state licensing fee to take your board exams. Should you pass your board exams, then you get to be a resident and work 60-80 hour work weeks in a hospital for crap pay.

What do you think this is all about? Do you think that it's because sleep-deprived interns have better medical judgement? Or that making life so difficult for beginning doctors builds character? Or is it simply because the vested union members i.e. the senior physicians are out playing golf and the intern simply does not have enough colleagues to pick up the slack?

Sure it's really easy to respect the hard-working physician, the hero in the lab coat who went through hell for the privilege of charging you an arm and a leg to save your life. But if you do not see how the unionized cartel that the physician belongs to has lowered your access to and ability to pay for the medicine you need, then you are not seeing clearly.

The AMA has already had its fill by the time the hyenas and the vultures show up. 

Stuart LaForge
 
"The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides.