Check out this article. Basically, the writer says that unnecessary cancer screening tests are a serious problem and quotes two or three people that agree. If all of this cancer screening for Medicare patients were cut out, think of all of the money we would save. Something like that. Oh. And that’s just chump change, according to one of those quoted, Dr. Welch. The serious expense comes after the screening with all of the unnecessary biopsies and surgeries. Back to all of this shortly.
Check out this website. This is the “independent” government group that determines whether medical care is necessary or appropriate for you. Seriously? If you think this is creepy stuff, you go to the head of the class. Can you say “death panel?” Can you say “it’s none of your #$%%^&& business what my doctor and I think is appropriate for my health?
But here’s the catch. If your neighbor has to pay for your mammogram, or cervical cancer screening, it is his or her business. Remember that once diseases are socialized, one man’s illness becomes everyone’s problem.
What’s the solution? If you take the lead of those quoted in the article, or if you carefully read the “government guidelines” you’ll see that a simple stroke of the pen, declares this or that test, at this or that age, simply “unnecessary.” There. Fixed. Budget closer to balanced!
“But wait,” you say! ”I am seventy two years old but have taken great care of myself and still walk 4 miles a day and have never felt better and I have this history of colon cancer in my family and want the peace of mind my regular screenings provide because that is not what I want as a cause of death!” If the government and those in this article have their way….TOO BAD. There is only one solution. You pay for it yourself. No one can better determine your individual needs than you and your trusted doctor. What sort of arrogance produced the guidelines in the above link? Academic arrogance. And who knows if money changed hands to make sure that this or that disease made their “list.” You need to wake up if you don’t think that this is how our government works.
Friedrich Hayek, author of “The Road to Serfdom,” also wrote, “The Fatal Conceit.” This latter book is an examination of the idea that tyrants and socialists have that they know what is best for everyone. Frederic Bastiat’s version of this was a little known article he wrote called “How is Paris Fed?” The idea is that this top down management by even the most insightful and brilliant individuals cannot possibly compete with the decisions by individuals at the local level. The result of individual market decisions at the most local level always results in the best utilization of resources and minimizes the opportunities for graft and fraud.
Bastiat’s definition of government is fitting: ”Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” This is the path we have taken. This is the recipe for bankruptcy we have followed.
Simply “cutting the benefits” of the elderly and soon, everyone on this new health plan, is not the solution we want, I think, to the high cost of health care. How about, “leave me alone and I’ll take care of my family myself!” Local communities and churches can pick up the slack for the poor and we can all celebrate these “experts” finding a new line of work.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
