On socialized medicine

This debate drives me bonkers because it’s so ham-handed.

Many of us do not want more bureaucracy controlling our lives; we also do not want to support those who do not have their acts together. Why? Natural selection benefits us and makes a better world for our kids — after all, natural selection got humans this smart in the first place. We don’t want some 90 IQ idiot criminal ruining life for people with 120 IQs and good moral character.

But then people demand a bureaucratic solution, claiming that (a) we owe it to all people who happen to be human and (b) bureaucratic well-intentioned solutions are a good answer. They then point to the post office and medicare/medicaid, forgetting that the post office is quasi-commercialized and market-regulated, and medicare/medicaid are not socialized medicine but reimbursement programs.

I propose a middle option that gives both sides what they desire:

Have our government, pooling the resources we’ve handed to it through taxes, purchase a health care plan for its employees — all American citizens. Then let us buy it at the reduced rate available, and let the private market regulate it, because although neither free enterprise nor government regulation are ideal, free enterprise reacts more quickly.

This would satisfy both sides. The vastness of government is used to reduce the cost of health care, and yet, it is also purchased so that the irresponsible and disorganized who spend their money on wine and entertainment instead of necessities manage to hopefully kill themselves off.

In the meantime, let’s talk about problems with health care:

• Overloaded hospitals: forced to take everyone who shows up, they have long wait times, unless you’ve paid extra to have expedited health care in the form of a physician who can check you in directly.
• Incompetent doctors: many of these people are doctors because of the monetary reward, and demonstrate little competence.
• Incompetent nurses: believe it or not, a nurse is your primary caregiver in a hospital or doctor’s office. Many of these are oblivious, lazy and under-educated.
• Nosocomial infections: hospitals are breeding grounds for disease. Maybe a redesign would help. See below.
• Poor design of hospitals: these are austere, mechanical places. Announcements ring out constantly. Every 45 minutes, someone comes by to do another small task like take temperature or apply pills. It’s nearly impossible to get rest.
• Bad diagnostic skills: physicians find a niche, and get used to seeing the same ten causes and solutions, and so anything outside of that is bungled. Maybe rotate them, like we do active duty military personnel?
• No sacralization: by trapping doctors in this debate, we’re alienated them behind mountains of paperwork, bureaucratic rules and poverty, when we really need them to be developing empathy for patients and improved skills.

Just a few thoughts while this debate rages on. At the end of the day, it’s not about socialized medicine… it’s about the liberal worldview (people first, even incompetents) versus the conservative one (ideals first, natural selection) and for that reason, no one on either side is actually thinking about health care itself.