Socialists vs. Your Health in Houston

Paul Hsieh has emailed me concerning an event to be held in Houston this Friday, July 18. Quoting the flier its organizers have been distributing:

• What: Examination of the Healthcare crisis in America and offering Universal Healthcare as the solution with Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and Congressman John Conyers, Jr.
• When: Friday, July 18, 2008 from 1:30 - 3:30pm
• Where: The John P. McGovern Theater, The Health Museum, 1515 Hermann Drive, Houston, TX
• Why: Approximately 47 million Americans lack health insurance coverage and it is believed that another 50 million are underinsured. Healthcare costs in the United States are increasing about 7 percent a year, twice the rate of inflation. In Texas alone it has been estimated that we waste $98 billion on administrative health costs. Administrative costs constitute 31 percent of health care expenditures. The deteriorating U.S. health care system is not only harming patients, but also businesses, and the economy with healthcare costs consuming over 15 percent of GDP
• Invited Guests: Healthcare stakeholders, including: hospital administration physicians, nurses, the uninsured and underinsured of Harris County

One "stakeholder", an employee of a nearby medical school, who was completely blindsided by this wrote:

As far as I can tell, there have been no fliers posted about it [here] and it was [also] absent from [the] last newsletter.... I suppose that if our future physicians are going to be slaves, why treat them as equals by bothering to get their input?

And apart from the obviously specious notion of a welfare-state politician actually "examining" the "Healthcare [sic] crisis", an honest and thorough appraisal of the situation would show that government interference is to blame, and that instituting even more government interference is not going to do anything but make matters worse.

For anyone from Houston (or there on business or for care at the world's largest medical center) and who might want to attend it on this short notice -- or who may wish to prepare himself to help defend the freedom of physicians the next time it comes under attack -- I provide the following list of resources on Paul's recommendation.

• "Health Care is Not A Right" by Leonard Peikoff
• "Ted Kennedy vs. Universal Healthcare: A Double Irony" by Richard Parker, MD
• "The Right Vision of Health Care" by Yaron Brook
• "FAQ on Free Market Health Insurance" by Paul Hsieh, MD
• "Moral Health Care Vs. 'Universal Health Care'" by Lin Zinser, JD and Hsieh, MD
• "The Grass Is Not Always Greener: A Look at National Health Care Systems Around the World" Michael Tanner, March 18, 2008, Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 613.
• "Health Care in a Free Society: Rebutting the Myths of National Health Insurance" John Goodman, January 27, 2005, Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 532.

Of the last two, he states that, "[T]hey are fairly useful for concrete factual information, but ... don't go all the way in making the full moral argument for free market medicine."

-- CAV