Medical Debate

Tyler Cowen has a successful number of Points on the microfacts of the health care system. Tyler and I are on opposite sides of the fence concerning health care, I being a single-payer advocate; still, Anyone not conversant with these facts should not be discussing health care. I will here supply an alternate list of Talking Points.

1) American health care outcomes admittedly are better than the Numbers would suggest, but that neither American or other national outcomes are terribly great. A great source of outcome gain at all levels would be some nutritional restrictions on Restaurants and Food-Providers, over and above Sanitary restrictions. These Restrictions could limit Calorie content per meal unit, restriction of overweight Customers to a Diet Menu, and Advertising concentration of factors other than high Meat content.

2) A single-payer system should utilize intelligent spread of Costs. The total Health Care Cost of this Country should be spread over the total number of Doctor, Clinic, and Hospital visitations, and each Occurrence should carry identical payment Charge. The Poor can thereafter be easily determined, and the total welfare benefit Cost designed for adequate payment. Health Insurance could not claim non-underwriting item declarations, and premium Costs easily determined.

3) Much of American medical innovation is Cosmetic, of a nature simple in design, for the express purpose of attaining Patent royalties. An independent Board of Medical Examiners should be established to approve all Patent applications, based solely on Evidence of genuine benefit; lack of relevant approval will be denial of Patent. Approved Patents should then go to a Board of Medical Economists to determine how much the Patent should be worth per Unit of application; Corporations forbidden to charge more as royalty, and other Companies allowed to itself produce such Products with payment of the stated royalty Fee.

4) Doctors, Clinics, and Hospitals should be limited in the number of Patients for which they may provide health services. Limited? Yes–greed itself should not generate a lack of qualified Time and Care provided. This has the added benefit of propelling sufficient medical facilities being capitalized to serve Patient levels.

5) Cosmetic surgery and medical procedures should be carefully separated from normal health care, and unpaid unless Patients get a specific Waiver from the joint Boards of Medical and Medical Economists established for determination of Medical Patents. This joint Committee must also underwrite all Research Trials conducted under subsidized condition.

The above Considerations would go far to improve American health care. I sketch out an overall Patient loss of 12 lb. apiece due to imposition of Nutritional limitations in reduction of Public meal size. This is all Kentucky Windage here, but this would likely translate into a 18% gain in overall health. The absolute spread of Medical Cost would accurately define true, or real Costs of medical provision, while removing most of the inequities from health care Insurance provision. Medical Patents will become cheaper and more realistic, and the Vain will have to subsidize their own medical treatments. lgl