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It never seems to bother the American establishment when a group of federal employees gathers in secret to plot the overthrow of a foreign government or to arrange a clandestine arms sale.
But when the topic is reforming the nation's health-care system, then the American Medical Association complains about government secrecy and becomes a vocal proponent of open government.
This represents a change in philosophy, since AMA members are often the same people who oppose releasing details of doctor discipline by state medical boards and who often arrange for sealed settlements in malpractice cases.
Better late than never. Meanwhile, here's a suggestion for Hillary Rodham Clinton's clandestine task force: Go to a total open market in medicine. The only remaining regulations would be the usual commercial prohibitions against fraud, false advertising, breach of contract and the like.
Although we just endured 12 years of presidents who often proclaimed the virtues of the free market, they continued to support the current medical-care system, a variant of guild socialism. The state licenses physicians and thereby gives them a monopoly on certain powers denied to normal citizens -- dispensing drugs, life and death, ripping off Medicare.
This offers all the evils of any other monopoly:
contempt for captive customers, high prices, shoddy
service, etc. And yet there's nothing natural
about
this monopoly. It is totally a product of government
regulation.
So the task force should take doctors at their word (for generations the AMA has complained loudly about government involvement) and proclaim that henceforth, we will enjoy the freedom of the marketplace in medicine.
Then if you feel under the weather some morning, you will be free to consult a physician with a diploma from Johns Hopkins -- or from Grenada. Or a nurse, a Christian Science practitioner, an acupuncturist, a chiropractor, an herbalist, a midwife, a phrenologist -- whatever suits your fancy and your pocketbook. If you felt confident in your diagnostic abilities, you could even write your own prescription.
This would force physicians to compete in the open market like the rest of us, and our economic theory says that prices would drop while service improved.
Further, an unregulated medical system would improve our political life because so many current public-policy questions are really medical questions.
For instance, our legislature just spent many tedious hours discussing a law that would have thrown parents in jail if they didn't take their children to a state-approved healer. Colorado has rivers killed by cyanide, a meager state treasury, an ailing higher-education system -- and look where the legislature spends its time.
On the national level, emotional and divisive issues like abortion and drugs are really medical matters, not political concerns. The only way to get them out of politics is to get politics out of medicine, and we do that by letting the market, rather than legislatures or bureaucracies, regulate medicine.
After all, we deem ourselves competent to choose garages for car repair, decide on computer software, select food at the supermarket -- why can't we trust ourselves, and our fellow citizens, to select their own medical care and treatments?
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