Tag Archives: Rationing

News

One in six patients misdiagnosed by NHS

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Story from the Telegraph. (H/T Secondhand Smoke via ECM)

Excerpt:

As many as one in six patients treated in NHS hospitals and GPs’ surgeries is being misdiagnosed, experts have warned. Doctors were making mistakes in up to 15 per cent of cases because they were too quick to judge patients’ symptoms, they said, while others were reluctant to ask more senior colleagues for help. While in most cases the misdiagnosis did not result in the patient suffering serious harm, a sizeable number of the millions of NHS patients were likely to suffer significant health problems as a result, according to figures. It was said that the number of misdiagnoses was “just the tip of the iceberg”, with many people still reluctant to report mistakes by their doctors.

When the people providing the service are not being paid by the customer based on the quality of service provided, what incentive is there for the service provider to provide good service?

Take the money out of the hands of bureaucrats and medical insurance companies, put it back in the hands of the patient and provide the patient with information about prices and past patient outcomes. Then de-regulate the industry to increase new entrants and increase competition. Choice and competition. That is how you reduce costs and retain individual liberty.

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Videos

Paul Krugman says that public option would lead to single-payer health care

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Video from Verum Serum.

Morgen writes:

And so here, once again, is our gregarious friend from the NY Times, Paul Krugman, speaking about healthcare reform. This is a segment from an interview which aired on Democracy Now! in October 2007.

[…]Paul Krugman is a well-known economist who writes regularly for the NY Times. The fact that almost 2 years ago Krugman so willingly conceded information that conservatives have had to dig to uncover is a damning indictment of the bias and/or incompetence of the media. (And Krugman made this same point in a February 2007 NY Times column.)

The public option has now been the central controversy of healthcare reform for what…at least 3 months? And yet up until very recently, did anyone in the MSM think of looking into or reporting on how the idea came about? And whether conservative assertions that it is a trojan horse for single payer had any merit? Does it really take bloggers doing research in their spare time to discover and document information of such national importance?

Verum Serum rocks!

Commentary

Flush with victory on death panels, Sarah Palin moves on to tort reform

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She's writing things that make me very happy!
She's writing things that make me very happy!

From her Facebook page. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

So what can we do? First, we cannot have health care reform without tort reform. The two are intertwined. For example, one supposed justification for socialized medicine is the high cost of health care. As Dr. Scott Gottlieb recently noted, “If Mr. Obama is serious about lowering costs, he’ll need to reform the economic structures in medicine—especially programs like Medicare.” [1] Two examples of these “economic structures” are high malpractice insurance premiums foisted on physicians (and ultimately passed on to consumers as “high health care costs”) and the billions wasted on defensive medicine.

And look – she has experiences to appeal to:

Many states, including my own state of Alaska, have enacted caps on lawsuit awards against health care providers. Texas enacted caps and found that one county’s medical malpractice claims dropped 41 percent, and another study found a “55 percent decline” after reform measures were passed. [4] That’s one step in health care reform. Limiting lawyer contingency fees, as is done under the Federal Tort Claims Act, is another step. The State of Alaska pioneered the “loser pays” rule in the United States, which deters frivolous civil law suits by making the loser partially pay the winner’s legal bills. Preventing quack doctors from giving “expert” testimony in court against real doctors is another reform.

SHE WANTS TO REGULATE TRIAL LAWYERS. YAHOO!

This is the third editorial she has written that has gotten me excited. She is citing scholars! She has footnotes! What more could a conservative man want? And I like her tone a lot more than Ann Coulter. She is trying to persuade her opponents, not to back them into stubborn opposition regardless of the facts.

Previous posts:

You know what? I think she is going in the right direction. Like a female Fred Thompson, she is getting used to vocalizing conservative policies and principles – which is exactly what we need to do to capitalize on Obama’s failures. I love it when women write passionately about what they think, especially when women take positions that support men, marriage and family by arguing for limited government and free market capitalism.