Topic: Health Care
US Health Care Is An Oxymoron

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The unintended consequences of government manipulation are explored through my recent personal health crisis and recovery.

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by Jahfre Fire Eater
(libertarian)
Thursday, February 28, 2008

I'm healthy! I had an appointment with my personal physician today. I've only seen the guy a couple times in the past 8 years but he always acts like we're old fishing buddies or something. It's nice. A few weeks ago I had a bout of Pancreatitis. After a week in the torture and sleep depravation wing of the local disease incubator and invasive service station I've been pretty much back to normal; just a tad run down.

The entire 4 days in the hospital plus the first afternoon in the emergency came to a total over $23,000...on paper. They never found a cause but they did put me on blood pressure meds and recommend a surgical procedure after I had recovered.

Today for a $15 co-pay I met with my personal physician. He told me to throw away the blood pressure medication the hospital staff put me on; my BP is fine. He told me to cancel the procedure the gastrenterologist wanted to perform. He agreed with me that it was just a convenient way for specialists to peddle their services but in my case it isn't warranted.

Finally, I told him about the left side of my neck being extremely sore for the past 5 days and feeling run down for the past few weeks. Suddenly he got a twinkle in his eye and he stood up and started to leave the room. Then he stopped and told me he knows what caused my pancreatitis. He came back with a book of codes for lab tests. He wanted to see if there were tests for two separate kinds of mumps antibodies. He thinks that a mumps virus attacked my pancreas first then finally settled in the left side of my neck. There isn't any way to prove his hunch but if the antibodies are there at least he has a theory that holds up. That's better than all the specialists came up with after all their very expensive scans and procedures. I'm not faulting them, I was in extreme, off the charts agony and I appreciated all they did to try and figure out why. At the hospital they all looked for structural defects and disease related causes. None of the specialists considered a viral cause or even what kind of viral it might be. I think my doctor is right. I can't wait for the lab tests.

Meanwhile, I canceled the endoscopy (erps) procedure that the specialist kept pushing me to have done before I talked to my personal Doctor. Now I know why. I threw out the blood pressure meds too. This is just another example of how a mindless bureaucracy reduces educated professionals into cogs in an inefficient machine. The doctors and nurses all had certain procedures they had to follow based on specific data. My blood pressure was high so they had to put me on meds to bring it down even though the stress of pancreatitis would make anyone's BP skyrocket. They should have told me to consult my physician about my BP after I was back to normal, but they can't. They have to cover their asses.

The whole thing reminds me of the 4 blind folks each describing what they felt when touching an elephant. One thought he was holding a python. One thought he was holding a fan. One thought he was touching a tree trunk and the guy at the tail thought he had a broom in his hands. Fortunately my physician was able to see the whole elephant. What made the whole thing special was that when the gastroenterologist asked if I had a family doctor he said, "you know, someone you'd see for a sore throat or a sprained ankle." Now I can tell him I also see my family doctor for big picture diagnosis that doesn't depend on peddling expensive, invasive procedures for no good reason or firing up a multi-million dollar piece of scanning equipment.

My brief recent experience with the health care industry has given me a first-hand reinforcement of my suspicion that we really have a disease care industry, not a health care industry. I see that our system is structured with incentives to bill insurance providers as much and as often as possible. I'm not saying it is done maliciously even though there is probably some of that too. I think these incentives arise from the cover-your-ass nature of mindless bureaucracy. It's no wonder health care insurance is too expensive for some people to have and health care without insurance is too expensive for most people to have.

If I had not let my natural cynicism override their rush to schedule this procedure I'd have had it done by now. I know there are people out there who wouldn't take the initiative to seek out other answers but who would just take the advice of the specialist. Americans are trained that the experts know better and that none of us are experts. We are indoctrinated into a mindset designed to enable us to be easily led. I make it a point to face this every day. This is so engrained in our society that it requires constant, deliberate decisions to not be led. Marketing uses this trait for financial gain. I don't watch TV so I avoid most of that. I refuse to wear clothing that advertises a brand or a product. My motto is to speak intelligently and wear a loud shirt. Some of my shirts are so loud that strangers shout back at them. Such as, "Bush is a Democrat", my favorite.

The USA still has the availability of the best health care in the world. This advantage is crumbling before our eyes due to socialist government manipulation of its components and delivery structure. Other places in the world are letting the free market drive innovations and research and they are fast eclipsing our strangling system. The rich can just go jetting around the world for the best health care while the rest of us are stuck here hoping for the best from a system that is doomed to failure unless the government gets totally out of the picture. Of course that can never happen because the USA is following the path of an empire in decline with enhanced acceleration provided by a large population of socialists who don't care how bad things get so long as they are equally bad for everyone.

If you're going to get sick now is the time. Health care in America will only get worse as time goes by. Even now, every time I travel to California there are stories in the newspapers about flesh eating bacteria, resistant TB and killer Staph infections...all originating in hospitals and nursing homes. I never hear about those things unless I'm in CA...but then I'm there more often than anywhere besides home. Some experts believe these things have been fostered by the same blind-men-and-the-elephant approach. No one is allowed to look at the big picture, to take in the bureaucracy as a whole from a larger perspective. Those outside observers who take that responsibility upon themselves are denounced and marginalized politically. It isn't a good career move for a politician to criticize this machine too harshly. The little people will give all they have for their health and borrow some more. This is a cash cow but it is not infinite.

As soon as the socialists manage to have the government foot the bill for health care, those little people are economagically transformed from a cash cow into a sea of leeches. They turn from being the group who provides the fuel that drives the system to improve over time into the ever increasing liability that ensures the system gets worse and worse forever. Health care consumers become a mistrusted enemy of the state. Health care workers all become agents of the state who are rewarded for lowering costs even at the expense of quality and quantity of service. In two generations, the best and brightest doctors will all have been lured to foreign systems by higher pay and a better class of patient. Not to mention the satisfaction of personal liberty that under a socialized disease care system must be oppressed in order for the bureaucracy to function.

The unintended consequences of government intrusion into free markets are what has killed every major empire in history, several dozen of them. All have followed the same path we're on. They didn't get overrun from the outside in their prime, they tore themselves apart from the inside. It always happens the same way. At some point, against the best advice history can offer and against the best intentions of the law, the people and even most elected officials, some elected officials begin to see government as a tool for personal gain rather than a tool for protecting individual liberty. They convince their supporters they can use the power of government to force wealth created by others to be at their disposal by various methods and for various purposes. The drive to force one's will on others is the cancer of empires. Ours is terminal.

Hey, it's all related. This same story could have been written about our public schools and how the knowledge service peddlers have supplanted the educators. Or about the agriculture industry and how government subsidies have led to enormous multi-national mono-culture scenarios, contaminated meat on grand scales, genetically altered seeds, depleted land and contaminated water supplies. This story is a pattern of decay that is splattered all throughout our culture here in the US and everywhere our influence is manifested; which is to say, nearly everywhere. Government manipulations alter the balance of risk and reward, of supply and demand and of wants versus needs. We live in a false economy where these feedback systems are altered by entitlements, subsidies, grants, initiatives and tariffs. These mechanisms are each wrapped in their own mindless bureaucracy that enables the ability to manipulate each of these entities individually. These manipulations always result in unintended consequences. Often those unintended consequences are worse than the root condition the misguided action was advertised as being able to alleviate by the elected officials who sponsored it.

It is time to set some priorities. Food will never be cheaper here than it was yesterday. Health care will never be better here than it was yesterday. It will be cheaper though when the bureaucracy is reduced to Dr., patient and receptionist or nurse. Water will never be cleaner or cheaper anywhere. Roads will never be better....if we stay on our present course. I think we can change our course.

I believe we can use the awesome power of the human mind to do something that has never happened before. I believe we can change our path from one of an empire in decline to one of leading by example. It starts by working to enforce trickle-up-integrity upon candidates for political office. Ask candidates about their views on the role of government. Tell them when their positions follow the path of decline. Make them earn your vote by changing their thinking. It takes being out there every week, taking every opportunity to stand up in public and promote your values. Asking candidates questions is a great way to ensure that an audience is exposed to your principles. You don't have to evangelize or convince any individual person of anything. Just be consistent, be frequently heard. Be right and your ideas will gain support. Be wrong and you'll hear about that too. Be silent, or absent and you'll have no influence at all. No one will hear your ideas; you will never grow from having them challenged.

We all get what's coming whether we deserve it or not. I'll get what's coming too, everyone does, whether we deserve it or not. My approach, in the face of what I see coming, is to do everything I can do to ensure that I don't deserve what's coming even though I'll get it just like the rest. It just feels right.

Jahfre Fire Eater

©2008 Jahfre Fire Eater, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Thursday, February 28, 2008
Last modified: Thursday, February 28, 2008

The views expressed in this article are those of Jahfre Fire Eater only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Jahfre Fire Eater is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

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