Is Cosmetic Surgery "Unneeded" Medicine?
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To review: Every scarce good must be rationed. That is not economics but elementary metaphysics.
Under capitalism, the rationing is achieved by the price mechanism, a/k/a "supply and demand."
Under any other system, the rationing is done by the government, a/k/a "the politics of pull."
Armed with that, consider the following:
Yet these are precisely the kind of pronouncements you would see under socialized medicine. Corrective eye surgery? "Unneeded" — just wear glasses! Orthodontics? "Unneeded" — that's cosmetic! Paxil? "Unneeded" — use talk therapy instead! Birth control? "Unneeded" — use condoms! Expensive end-of-life "extraordinary efforts"? You know the answer.
And so on. Someone, somewhere, will be deciding what is "unneeded." And it won't be you, your doctor (whom you can fire if he doesn't satisfy you), or for that matter your "greedy" insurance company (which you also have at least some choice about). It will be a bureaucrat — whom you will never meet and whose decisions you can never appeal.
Note also the "zero sum" fraud underlying the argument — the presumption that physicians (and nurses and all sorts of other medical professionals) are a fixed resource, like a coal bed. "Lose more doctors"? As if the doctors were your property to begin with? Such is always the presumption of socialized medicine — the doctor as indentured servant, the nurse as chattel.
What is it about medicine that makes IQs drop so sharply? Almost everyone understands and accepts that "wishful thinking" has no place in the practice of medicine. Yet it is the principal component of almost everything written about the finance of medicine. Go figure.
(Via Kevin, M.D.)
Under capitalism, the rationing is achieved by the price mechanism, a/k/a "supply and demand."
Under any other system, the rationing is done by the government, a/k/a "the politics of pull."
Armed with that, consider the following:
As the baby boomers age into elderhood in the next few years, it won't be cosmetic surgeons they need and we can't afford to lose more doctors to this unneeded specialty. But the market is there; it is those who cannot bear the thought of growing old and now it is being expanded to include children."Unneeded"? To be decided by whom? By what standard? How can someone say with a straight face that something for which "the market is there" is "unneeded"? It boggles the mind.
Yet these are precisely the kind of pronouncements you would see under socialized medicine. Corrective eye surgery? "Unneeded" — just wear glasses! Orthodontics? "Unneeded" — that's cosmetic! Paxil? "Unneeded" — use talk therapy instead! Birth control? "Unneeded" — use condoms! Expensive end-of-life "extraordinary efforts"? You know the answer.
And so on. Someone, somewhere, will be deciding what is "unneeded." And it won't be you, your doctor (whom you can fire if he doesn't satisfy you), or for that matter your "greedy" insurance company (which you also have at least some choice about). It will be a bureaucrat — whom you will never meet and whose decisions you can never appeal.
Note also the "zero sum" fraud underlying the argument — the presumption that physicians (and nurses and all sorts of other medical professionals) are a fixed resource, like a coal bed. "Lose more doctors"? As if the doctors were your property to begin with? Such is always the presumption of socialized medicine — the doctor as indentured servant, the nurse as chattel.
What is it about medicine that makes IQs drop so sharply? Almost everyone understands and accepts that "wishful thinking" has no place in the practice of medicine. Yet it is the principal component of almost everything written about the finance of medicine. Go figure.
(Via Kevin, M.D.)
Related Posts (on one page):
- Kip's Law Sighting: Professor Frank Pasquale's "Boob Tax"
- Is Cosmetic Surgery "Unneeded" Medicine?
Posted by Kip on
19 December 2006
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