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A dizzying week calls for steady remedies. We’ve got the great Larry Elder, who’s hoping to save his home state by taking on Gavin Newsom in California’s upcoming recall election. Next, we bring back our pal Dr. Jay Bhattacharya since CoViD wants to stay in the news. Should the Delta variant motivate you to encase yourself in plastic wrap before leaving the house? You’ll have to listen to find out. Plus Rob tells us about his recent bout of vertigo, the guys chat healthcare (both human and canine) and not-so-petty crime.
Music from this week’s podcast: Scene D’Amour from Vertigo by Bernard Herrmann (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
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US Government vs Free Market health care—One real world example:
The patient (no names need mentioning) experienced discomfort in a molar and being a retired military veteran who was promised a lifetime of free healthcare, traveled at some expense to the finest US Naval Hospital in a certain region of never ending interest and involvement from our Super Power government.
Front desk: Are you in pain?
Patient: No. No hurry.
Front: Well, we can’t see retirees unless they’re in pain.
Patient: PLEASE! For god’s sake, make it stop paining!!! (Pretends to feint)
Later, DoD dentist: You need a root canal, but we don’t have the expensive medical device needed to do it properly. I’ll do it half-ass, but you’ll need to have it done again somewhere else within about 90 days.
Patient: Well, do your best. Thanks for serving!
…About 90 days later…
Civilian dentist: I’ll fix you right up with this expensive medical device!
Patient: That incredible 21st Century technology must have cost you a lot since our government can’t afford them for our finest military hospitals to care for the troops overseas.
Civ dentist: Yeah, about as much as my Porsche 911.
So, US Government medicine: Dentist makes $80,000. She drives a Honda and lives in a modest government house on the base. Although her services cost the patient nothing (He ‘earned’ them! Thanks for serving!), they are not state-of-the-art and she is literally unable to properly satisfy the patient’s basic medical needs.
Free Market medicine: Dentist makes $180,000. He drives a Porsche and lives in a beautiful house he owns on the beach. Although his services cost the patient the market price, he completely satisfies the patient’s medical needs and adds him to his list of thankful clients.
That’s really great as a story about the problems and limitations of government monopoly medicine. But I do wonder.
Was that “Free Market” medicine?
Was that the “market price”?
Usually the answer to both would be No. Most health care is far from free market health care with clear published prices that allow comparison and competition.
Elective procedures that are not covered by insurance (e.g. cosmetic surgery; LASIK) illustrate real free market benefits. Every provider must compete for satisfied customers willing to pay.
The result? The services have the same improvements in quality and costs that we see in other markets such as for mobil phone and other consumer electronics.
Anesthesiologist Keith Smith observed that in standard (not competitive) healthcare, “while the physicians and the nurses were being paid much less, the hospitals were raking in record profits.”
So he started a cash-only free market surgery center. An early caller “needed a breast mass removed and wanted to know how much it was going to cost.” So he made some calls to figure out what to charge for a complete package.
“I told her $1900 is our all-in price. She said ‘That’s interesting. The so-called not-for-profit hospital down the street wants $19,000 and that’s just for the facility.’
“… After we crunched our numbers on our end, we realized we were profitable at that number. To this day [as of Nov 2019], that’s still our price.”
For the long story and much more about what’s happening in free market healthcare (and how our current system is messed up by comparison and not really free market), read or listen to this interview:
Keith Smith on Free Market Health Care
Kevin Smith?
I liked “Clerks II” better than “Clerks.”
You are absolutely right! For generations the government has been too deeply involved in our healthcare for me to call it “free market medicine”. As Rob likes to say, I should have spent five more minutes writing my story.
I felt that too. I’m glad that well-off people like my grandparents and Rob Long have access to so much expertise and technology. But one of the reasons Obamacare care passed is that the cost of health insurance really hurts low-income Americans and small businesses. Of course Obamacare doesn’t make anything better but it’s easier to sell government nonsense when stuff become horribly expensive.