The only logical way to maintain the integrity of a vast, complex program designed to control a trillion-dollar industry is to dispense with the “representative” part of our government model. Those who seriously believe the State must control health care, which is tied into the bulk of our economy and technological development, should stop fooling around with half-measures of tyranny. If health care is truly a “human right” that must be provided “at any cost,” then take a cold, hard look at the tortured gestation of the rough beast slouching from Harry Reid’s office to be born… and understand that liberty, democracy, and representation must be sacrificed, as part of that cost.

The good Doctor is evoking Yeats’s “The Second Coming” (a short poem, so I present it in entirety):

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The plight of the uninsured (whose number is far less than claimed) should be directly addressed without co-opting and destroying the entire U.S. medical infrastructure. Limited, targeted reforms can ban gouging and unfair practices and can streamline communications now wastefully encumbered by red tape. But insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry are not the sole cause of mounting healthcare costs, and constantly demonizing them is a demagogic evasion.

Via Salon.

I write to tell you how disappointed I am about your vote in favor of the recent House Bill on Health Care. If passed in its present form, it promises to make the fascism of the Nazi period in Germany seem as though it were a decent place to live, which, we know from history, it was not.

Not only does this bill extend the violations of individual rights that were enacted by Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960′s, those individual rights violations were only an overture to what promises to be a major symphony of political corruption, wealth destruction, and, ultimately, the decline of American Health Care.

What is it that you are counting on? Eventually, when physicians are sending patients to their deaths because of the mandates of the government caused by the clauses in this Bill, they will leave the profession because they will not be able to fulfil their oath of “do no harm”; they will commit murder if they follow such a law. When this happens, will you be able to live with the carnage that you have helped cause?

You, and your colleagues in the Congress need to reexamine your souls and ask yourselves whether you are fit to govern a free people. I, for one, believe you have violated your oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and I will do all I can to have you voted out of the Congress.

As a physician, I believe what you have done is below the dignity of human beings.

Yours Sincerely,

Mark A. Hurt, MD
Creve Coeur, MO

© 2009, Mark A. Hurt, MD, All Rights Reserved.

We have to decide whether healthcare is a commodity or a right. Not everyone can drive a Lexus. Does everyone deserve access to the very latest and most expensive medical technologies?

I think most people would say yes they should have that access.  Being able to use expensive diagnostics like MRI’s in the treatment of a uninsured child, for example, is one of the great things about being American.  Unfortunately we have to accept that this decision has consequences.

If healthcare is a commodity that consumers must pay for, we would be better served by healthcare solutions that catered to varying income demographics (Walmart vs. Saks Fifth Avenue, translated to the healthcare industry).  This would allow the free market to come up with innovations to keep the costs of healthcare down.  Unfortunately this would necessarily mean limiting access to the very best healthcare resources.

However if healthcare is a right, and everyone deserves to “shop at Saks Fifth Avenue”, there doesn’t seem any way around setting up a system for wealth redistribution, because we just don’t have that much money.  Right now, all things considered, it seems like we have come up with a decent compromise between cost and quality.  Our current healthcare system isn’t perfect, but it is working reasonably well, and better than any other in the world.  In spite of this, our government seems to believe that healthcare must be a fundamental right.

Based upon this we must understand that wealth redistribution will follow.  All I ask for from the government is honest debate.  Favoring wealth redistribution and healthcare for all is a point of view that, as Americans, anyone has a right to.  What bothers me is we are told “Great news!  Healthcare will not add one single penny to the deficit….pay no attention to the socialist behind the curtain”.  Americans have more intelligence than that, and most of us don’t suffer liars.

Potemkin medicine on the White House lawn

Look at this absurd pageantry from Obama’s meeting with doctors at the White House yesterday. Yes, that woman is passing out white lab coats.

It would have looked staged even if only 90% of the doctors wore lab coats, so it’s pretty funny that the White House thought that every single doctor should wear a lab coat, regardless of whether they would ever use one at work.

I guess we’re getting a preview of the uniformed civil servants that Obama wants to see run this country.

Take it from me. You should pass this shit.

But next time they should probably keep it simple and just get the cast from ER and Scrubs. They’ve already fallen in line for Obamacare.

From the New York Post: White House’s botched ‘Op’. Via Instapundit.

UPDATE: More from Gateway Pundit and Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.

Nobody is smart enough to centrally administer healthcare for millions of people, not even dead Austrian geniuses like me.

Sen. Thomas Carper (D.-Del.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, told CNSNews.com on Friday that,

I don’t expect to actually read the legislative language because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I’ve ever read in my life.

Carper echoes a similar statement by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) in July,

What good is reading the bill if it’s 1,000 pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?

I have already heard a lot of conservatives express outrage that the people whose job it is to legislate do not even pretend to understand legislation, and it’s certainly hard to disagree with that. However, what’s interesting to me about these remarks by legislators is how perfectly they illustrate why the gargantuan task of providing healthcare should be left to the spontaneous order of free markets.

If no single person can understand the contemplated healthcare legislation, then certainly nobody really understands what the consequences will be. 16% of the U.S. economy is a pretty big wager that they got this legislation right. And if we’re going to be putting our faith into something, I’d rather put that faith into the system that’s already delivering $1 double cheeseburgers, iPhones, $49 flights– and the best healthcare system in the world.

Friedrich Hayek described a free marketplace as “that which is the result of human action but not of human design.” He and other economists of the Austrian school describe how the price mechanism sends subtle signals that wordlessly induce the reallocation of resources in a way that deliberate centralized planning– estranged from consumer preferences and evidence of surpluses or shortages– cannot.

I can see how this all would be unsatisfying for somebody who a) believes in the perfectability of civilization through technocratic interventions; and b) wants to join the brain trust that will put it all into action.

But it works.

Perfectly? No, of course not. But better than anything smart people have come up with so far.