Posted by
Always To The Right on Saturday, April 18, 2009 2:42:17 PM
What happens when government regulation makes it more expensive to bill
for medical services than providers receive? More and more, providers opt out of those systems
like Medicare and Medicaid, and patients have to go out of pocket to
see specialists. And if you think that will change in universal health
care, think again (via Instapundit)
The counterargument will be that the only solution to this is a single-payer health system, along the lines of Canada and “England”.
In a single-payer system, providers would be forced to accept all
patients, since the payment source will be the same for each. Prices
will get controlled via Medicare-style diktats, so providers will have
to settle for the compensation set in Washington or nothing at all.
That may control prices, but not costs, which is
the entire disconnect in socialized systems in any industry. Marc
Siegel’s piece highlights the disconnect between prices and costs that
occur in highly regulated and socialized systems, but not in
free-market systems. Medicare and Medicaid set prices without regard
to the cost to bring services and products to market, making the
transaction less desireable — and in some cases, actually damaging to
the business. In those cases, providers will withdraw from the market,
leading to shortages and higher costs; in the medical field, those
costs will eventually include unnecessary illnesses and deaths from
lack of care.
This scenario is not academic. The health systems in Canada and the UK have shortages of doctors, especially specialists like dentists, transplant surgeons,
and the like, which is why it takes months to get testing and diagnosis
even for serious illnesses. Why? It costs a lot of money to go
through medical school and residencies for surgical specialties. The
limited amount of compensation for the work they do makes the debt
burden of training too heavy. Instead, more doctors stop at the
general practice level, leaving artificial shortages in the
specialties. Others move overseas to nations without single-payer
systems in order to ply their trade for a proper level of compensation.