The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

574 THE FREEMAN Septembera health-care "crisis" is frightening.President Nixon has proclaimedit, and the only point atissue in the present debate is"which plan" should· be enacted toalleviate it. A presidential candidatehas proposed a total socializationplan, and even the American·MedicalAssociation has a planin which doctors receive governmentmoney but avoid governmentcontrols. The sickness of Americanmedicine is the common assumption.The hollowness of this assumptionis demonstrated in H aza,rd0 usTo Y our Health, a thoughtful andcomplete analysis of the chargesleveled against American medicine.The author, Marvin H. Edwards,editor of Priva,te Practicemagazine, concludes that, "Thereis no medical crisis in the UnitedStates, but there may be one soon.Experience with governmenthealth programs in this countryand elsewhere makes it ominouslyclear that a national· health insuranceprogram may well result in asevere doctor shortage, overcrowdingof hospitals 'and physicians' offices,long waiting lists for hospitalcare, inadequate facilities, lossof privacy, Federal bankruptcy,and, eventually perhaps, discussionin this .nation of the need formercy killings of the aged to reducethe unbearable costs of governmentmedicine."Mr. Edwards notes that medicalcare is far more costly undera nationalized system than underprivate auspices. If the experiencesof European countries areindicative, people tend to overuseand overcrowd .existing medicalfacilities because they seem free.Germany has more hospital bedsper number of inhabitants thanthe United States, but all hospitalsare overcrowded throughoutthe year. The average hospitalstay is twenty-four days, comparedto six to eight days in America.Part of the reason is thatthere is a lack of interest by thepatient in regaining health assoon as possible, and doctors haveno concrete feeling for the coststhat could be avoided if the hospitalstay were shortened. In addition,the cost of the bureaucraticadministrative machinery that accompaniesevery national healthinsurance system is staggering.The Swedish citizen, for example,pays twenty per cent of his taxesfor health.Nationalized medicine was initiatedin Sweden even though seventyper cent of the Swedish populationwas already covered byprivate insurance programs. Inthe name of equality, these seventyper cent were forced into acompulsory government-administeredprogram in order to providefor the remaining thirty per cent