Our Poor Health

GM,

I want to know your thoughts on health care. Obviously, I expect them to fall into the conservative camp, but an experience from yesterday has left me thinking that we could use just a little reform. My health insurance, which I'm completely paying for on my own, is terrible. It's beyond terrible. If I even call a doctor's office, I have a $400 co-pay, and they actually come cut off my arm if I need any non-generic drugs. So I have this cyst on the back of my neck that goes away for more than a year if I just take one sample pack of a common antibiotic. More than a year! I know the drug I want and the dosage, which wouldn't even be enough to harm a gerbil, much less distribute. I've been prescribed it twice--at times when I had decent insurance. Of course, under our system, I must go see a doctor, have him tell me what I already know, and prescribe me a drug for which there is no generic, which means my insurance won't pay for it...

OR...

I could visit one of the dozens of semi-reputable online pharmacies that operate out of India and have help centers set up in the Caribbean, resulting in an 83-percent discount. According to a few hours of research, the legal lines here are blurred. The drug I need is not a controlled substance, so it's completely legal for me to possess even without a prescription. Essentially, I may be aiding in the illegal process of shipping prescription drugs into the U.S., but consumers don't get prosecuted for that unless the amount indicates intention to distribute. This is how many senior citizens get their medicine. An extensive conversation with Victor, one of the online chat guys for the site I went to, gave me little faith that I could fully trust these people. To be honest, though, part of me wants to go this route just so the greedy doctors and drug manufacturers don't win! That sounds liberal, doesn't it?

-JW

JW,

Very. Like cynical and unilateral, "greedy" is one of those words that liberals throw at conservatives from time to time because they've been instructed by focus groups to do so. It's a meaningless slur, a wholly political attack whose power derives from class resentments and the electorate's incomplete grasp of the English language.

After all, what does "greedy" really mean in this case? Desiring profit? Unwilling to be socialized? You're a free market guy, right? Why is it wrong for doctors and drug companies to charge whatever the market will bear for their services? Unless you're ready to suggest that healthcare is somehow different from other economic products, you can't get mad at those who get rich providing it. And once you do make that suggestion . . . well, you've just let go of your last, best reason why healthcare shouldn't be socialized. Simply put, it's a human right or it's not.

All this is not to say that the current system works, of course, and your dilemma illustrates its flaws. As it stands, the medical industry charges what it likes, while the government (in the name of a ridiculous, counter-productive "war" on drugs) criminalizes the act of going outside the system. It's a legal monopoly--an artificial tariff--and its construction is due to that most basic of liberal assumptions: In the end, our lives are in their hands. The government doesn't have the stomach to watch us die from our own stupidity, so they must protect us from it.

Undergirding the healthcare debate is a truth that governs all life on this planet: The quality of _____ is directly proportional to its cost. Socialize medicine and doctors will make less. Pay doctors less and fewer people will submit to the time and expense of becoming one. Lower standards to increase enrollment and stupider people will become doctors. For every action a reaction.

Frankly, I'm tempted by the solution lingering at the extreme flank of Libertarianism. Unhinge medicine from government totally. Throw out the "D" in FDA; get rid of all licensing oversight. You say you're a doctor? Fine. Kill a few folks and prices will fall. Cure a few and they'll rise. It's unthinkable, I know, but it wasn't too long ago that the same could be said of much of today's "progress."

-GM