Sunset Sketches of a Little Country

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Funding of Healthcare ...government views all wealth as government property, to be doled out ...

When You're Worth More Dead Than Alive
By ERIC SINGER Posted Friday, August 14, 2009 4:20 PM PT
IBD Editorial

excerpt

"The fundamental problem here is that government views all wealth as government property, to be doled out against cost-benefit analysis. But the government doesn't create the wealth; it just seizes it by taxation.
Having relentlessly thwarted a truly free market in health care, the government treats each patient as a liability to be managed. Once the government has a number in mind for the value of your life, your days will be numbered — and not by God, but by the government. "

read the whole thing .... pls

SAME PUBLICATION DAY


Prevention As Cost Cure-All Is Just A Myth
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER Posted Friday, August 14, 2009


excerpt

"The fallacy here is confusing the individual with society. For the individual, catching something early generally reduces later spending for that condition. But, explains Elmendorf, we don't know in advance which patients are going to develop costly illnesses.
To avert one case, "it is usually necessary to provide preventive care to many patients, most of whom would not have suffered that illness anyway." This costs society money that would not have been spent otherwise."

... snip ...

Prevention is a wondrous good, but in the aggregate it costs society money. Nothing wrong with that. That's the whole premise of medicine. Treating a heart attack or setting a broken leg also costs society. But we do it because it alleviates human suffering. Preventing a heart attack with statins or breast cancer with mammograms is costly. But we do it because it reduces human suffering.

.... snip

READ it all, pls