Socialists vs. Your Health in Houston

Thursday, July 17, 2008

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.
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

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gus, I just want to inform you that you now also can watch Dr Peikoffs deliver his speech "Health Care Is Not a Right", online, for free, legally. And it's awesome! Check it out for yourself: http://www.afcm.org/hcinar_video.html

Gus Van Horn said...

Thank you for mentioning that!

Matt said...

Damn. Well, I suppose I'll be there. Can't let this nonsense go on uncontested.

Gus Van Horn said...

Great!

And invite any like-minded friends!

Mike said...

We don't have a health care system in the US any more than we have a used automobile system. We have a health care *market*, and excessive government interference has reduced the elasticity of prices while increasing the elasticity of costs. It's the worst of both worlds... all the costs of national health care without even the basic benefit of everyone being covered. Remove the government interference and the market will do the rest. It's already been proven in model instances such as the emergence and development of the LASIK surgery market and the sea change in the psychiatric market from hospital/insurance-based back to pay-as-you-go cash-for-service.

Gus Van Horn said...

To, "the basic benefit of everyone being covered", I would add, "such as it is".

You indirectly raise a good point: "What does everyone 'being covered' even mean once the government has gotten its hands around the throat of our medical sector?"

Better to have no coverage and the prospect of a physician motivated by the profit motive when you need one than universally sloppy, deficient care for "free".

In the former case, you may have the money (and prices would be lower for many routine procedures anyway) or you might receive charity if you are really desperate. In the latter case, even if you are relatively well-off, you might find yourself on a month-long waiting list for a critical procedure or rationed out of it altogether.

Gus Van Horn said...

I have quite a few problems with this article, but this very statistic was, in fact, cited at the meeting, which I was able to attend. Thanks for pointing that out.

In fact, as I will elaborate later, this approach is central to the strategy of this particular effort to enslave physicians.