Health Care BS

There has been a lot of intelligent commentary during the past week on the pros and cons of single-payer health care, particularly from the Economist’s View, Tim Worstall, and Health Care Economist. One comment from the latter raises an important issue that doesn’t get enough play.

Is having government bureaucrats making medical allocation decisions worse than having private sector insurance company bureaucrats making medical allocation decisions? I would say probably so. Individuals with political connections will always receive top care when government bureaucrats make decisions …

And this applies to entire districts as well. Take a look at this article from The Guardian in which political calculations relating to hospital closures were very much in evidence in Great Britain’s recent elections. Here’s the crucial passage:

Advisers to Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, confirmed her department had drawn up a “heat map” showing areas where there is strong public unrest about proposals to downgrade A&E departments and close facilities. But they rejected suggestions from opposition parties that Labour is using the map to avoid NHS cuts in sensitive marginal seats.

In other words, if a hospital marked for closure was in a district where it could cost them a seat, the Labour government planned to leave the institution open. It didn’t matter whether the community had a need for the facility, only that it had a marginal seat. You can bet the hospitals scheduled for closure in safe seats were not on the “heat map.” If you believe this sort of thing could never happen in the United States, think again. Remember all the pork barrel spending from the last congress? Well, health care is not immune from that disease. If you give politicians that kind of control over the health care system, they WILL abuse it.