Laissez Faire in Medicine

Reader comment on: Turner on RomneyCare

Submitted by Michael E. Marotta (United States), May 14, 2011 10:33

"First, doctors are highly skilled professionals whose training represents considerable government expense. We should want them to be busy, or almost fully utilized, rather than sitting around waiting for the phone to ring while practicing their golf swings in empty examining rooms."

That speaks to some core problems with health care and how it is perceived, created, and delivered. Medical doctors (MDs) are heavily regulated at the state level, so that must be considered. If food were regulated the same way, you would need 8 to 12 years of university education to be a chef - and only other regulated providers could be cooks, preps, dish washers, bussers, and servers. And you would be breaking the law if you invited people over to your house for dinner.

Computers are unregulated. No law says what a computer is or who is qualified to program one. If you read your actual licensing agreement - licensed; not owned - Microsoft, Adobe, etc., make no promises about merchantability or fitness of use: this stuff might not work at all. Yet, medicine depends on this. In fact, the very medical care we take for granted would not be possible without digital devices. Next time you are in the doctor's office, look around. Even the thermometer is digital -- and no regulation controlled its creation or distribution.

Alternately - and I mean that: alternately - there are many other modalities of health care, treatment, maintenance, and enhancement. Those are largely unregulated - available and affordable.

Full employment is always nice. Bricklayers and auto mechanics also use state regulation and union rules - the AMA is a union - to limit the productivity and control the pricing of their practitioners. If it works well for doctors, then why not control everyone to the same level - from computerists to shoe stores to wedding planners?

If capitalism is viable, then it works equally for all.

Anyone who posits some middle ground between too much freedom and too much control has a lot of hard work to do, to define standards of judgment, and then suggest modes of enforcement.

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Other reader comments on this item

Title	By	Date
⇒ Laissez Faire in Medicine [350 words]	Michael E. Marotta	May 14, 2011 10:33
Low supply of doctors is due to high standards [76 words]	Dr Ben	May 14, 2011 00:54
Romney Care does cause longer wait times [199 words]	Joey Donuts	May 13, 2011 17:40
The queing issue now ignores the walk in clinic business [w/response] [180 words]	Lyle	May 13, 2011 16:55
↔ Yes just like MIchael Jackson did [78 words]	Lyle	May 13, 2011 22:53

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