(2008-01-30) Kling Senior Health Care Regulation Evil

Arnold Kling says Over the past eight weeks, I have been spending a lot of time with my (Senior) father, who has developed some acute medical problems. For the most part, my focus is day-to-day (or hour-to-hour) on the issues and stresses that arise. But I have also come around to some different points of view about our HealthCare system. I no longer think of Medicare and health care regulation as inefficient. I now think of them as pure Evil... The real key to preventing my father from falling and breaking his hip would have been to identify and treat his deficits. But it takes a hands-on doctor to do that... However, best practices, whether at that Institute or elsewhere, are not going to spread to the medical profession as a whole. That is because our main policy objective in health care is to insulate people from having to pay for it... Internists and specialists who do not like to touch old people should be driven out of business. They should be driven out by hands-on doctors and by gerontologists who take a more holistic view of patients... Medicare is wonderful for relieving the elderly from the burden of worrying about health care expenses. By the same token, it is wonderful for relieving doctors of the burden of worrying about the elderly as customers. You get paid for understanding the billing system, not for understanding your patients.