Hi,
As Rush Limbaugh stated, the democrats have just destroyed the greatest medical care system on the planet. There is likely one fallout which does not seem to get any discussion.
As I approcach my 70th birthday I recall several times in my life commenting "Twenty years ago that medical advance was not available and he/she would liklely have died."
In a capitalist society companies and individuals have great incentives to research and improve things in order for them to personally profit. One quick example. In the last few years my wife has had both knees replaced with a "partial" knee replacement. The partial is much easier on the patient, less expensive, and has a much quicker recovery period. The doctor who performed the surgery happens to be one of the folks who worked on the original research to develop the technology.
As a result, he obviously earns a good income; particularly for a man who is in his early 40's, but also he has thousands of patients who have benefitted as well. They are better of because they are pain free, medical costs were lower than that of a full knee replacement, and the procedure was much less difficult on them. It was a win for those who developed the procedure and a win for society as well all the way around. I received a very disturbing email from him the day the health care bill passed the House of Representatives. Basically he is questioning whether he can continue to even practice medicine. I wish I could have offered him more encouragement but I could not.
Now I ask you all this question. When the government takes us from capitalism to socialism in medicine, what incentive do doctors, hospitals, medical device manufacturers and drug companies have to innovate? The only innovation that will take place is how to make their particular product, or perform their particular service cheaper and faster so they might hopefully make a profit under the government mandated reimbursement system. If the government mandates the pittance they are going to pay you as a greedy doctor or pharmaceutical company for example, then instead of improvement, you will innovate to cut your costs in order to make a profit at the price the government is willing to pay.
We have a perfect example in the automobile industry There was a terrific article by Csaba Czere in one of the auto magazines about five years ago about GM. His line that struck me was when is GM going to learn they cannot cost cut their way to prosperity. Instead of building an automobile the public actually wants, they went about building autos to sell at a certain price point and they continued to lose market share. Of course now that they are government motors it will be all better.
So what is my point? Think of the many hundreds, if not thousands, of medical breakthroughs that have happened in your lifetime. Do you think that you will continue to see that kind of innovation over the next generation? Not a chance! Thanks libs for nothing.... Twenty, thirty years from now we will be stuck in a time machine with turn of the century technology because the government decided to destroy capitalism in the name of social justice.
regards,
5412
