Where Dick Morris sees socialist doom, capitalist hope also exists
January 22, 2009
8 comments
Dick Morris makes some very reasonable arguments about how Obama's first term very well may lead to a great deal of socialist policies and have some damning long-term implications. However, on the issue of health care, I believe he is very wrong in assuming that there cannot be a capitalist silver lining in the clouds. As I have said before, there are some very good opportunities coming up for aggressive conservative and libertarian politicians to gain political capital with the public on the issue of health care. It is simply a matter of taking these ideas to the public and presenting them as long-term solutions.
We know that there is going to be a serious problem with rationing health care because the supply of doctors and technicians won't match the demand. We also know that this is because of the fact the supply of such qualified people has been artificially lowered by the education system's current structure and professional licensing. The more market friendly solution involves conservatives and libertarians proposing the following:
- Move a portion of the health care spending by government into funding additional seats for students at all existing medical schools, with a goal of an average increase of 5-10% in seats every year for the next 4-5 years.
- Provide tax credits to tax payers who give endowments to universities to create, maintain or expand medical schools.
- Allow medical workers to write off 100% of their training-related debt off their income taxes.
- Lower the education requirements for technicians such that professional certification on equipment is all that they need to be licensed to operate medical machinery.
- Increase the GI Bill by up to 300% if used for medical school.
- Establish a policy of reciprocity wherein doctors trained in accredited medical schools in other first world countries and in good standing as practitioners in those countries are automatically given the benefit of the doubt as to being qualified to work in the United States.
- Provide support for the comprehensive digitalization of medical records if and when such proposals are sound as presented.
Free market supporters must accept the fact that a full frontal assault will not work with the public because the public believes that the free market has mostly failed here. The solution is to work with Obama and the Democrats in Congress where it makes sense, and to propose policies which will strongly encourage a rapid growth in the number of qualified, skilled workers to boost the ability of the free market medical services providers to do the work they do at a cheaper rate.
Free market supporters must accept the fact that a full frontal assault will not work with the public because the public believes that the free market has mostly failed here.
I think the best way to counter this is to point to the veterinary industry. I think the case for free-market medicine can be made by demonstrating the fact that vets are less-regulated than doctors, yet costs are less and there isn't the shortage of doctors like the one pertaining to human medicine. Let's ask people if they would subject their pets to the same bureaucracy that humans must endure.
Comparisons to less-regulated places like Thailand and Brazil might do some good, too.
Off topic, but I thought you might like this article about Hamas using civilians.
Use socialism to break the guilds?
It is probably regulation and the ridiculous indemnity costs.
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Off topic, white on black is much harder to read. If your posts had 1 or 2 lines it wouldn't be a problem, but for substantive posts the dark on light you had was easier.
And you tagline is almost invisible.
The indemnity costs are part of it. The insurance system and the other administrative costs are a more serious problem these days. Keeping up with insurance cost can require doctors to retain more people than they should have to keep. Over testing and other waste is a major cost to the actual buyers of health care.
What I am proposing is to steer the spending priorities in ways that will significantly increase the supply of labor and providers. That way, more people can be covered under the private system. I'm also saying that we shouldn't be foolish and automatically discount Obama's push to digitize our medical records keeping systems. If the proposals that his administration puts through make sense, they may give us an opportunity to help medical providers break the backs of the insurance companies who are already salivating at the prospect of heavy regulation of doctors and to ultimately steer the public away from socialized medicine.
I'm with Triton on this one. Perhaps it is just a failure of imagination, but I'm having a hard time conceiving how a health care system terminally afflicted by socialism will be cured by more socialist government jiggering in the marketplace.
The reason is that the public momentum is against us. Libertarians who believe that they can just trumpet free market principles before the public have failed to accept the fact that they not only have no political capital with the public as leaders, but that the media has successfully tainted their normal arguments because of the last 8 years.
The way that free market supporters can win back the public is by proposing and implementing small, but effective policies that provide some protection to the free market. For example, if we shift funding from immediate care to educating more doctors, the public will see that as a sign that we are more responsible and think more long-term. While the socialists focus on immediate care uber alles, we focus on the long-term labor needs which make it cheaper for the existing private hospitals and doctors to provide their own services.
Eventually, if free market supporters play their cards right, they will have enough political capital with the public to start moving toward the complete abolition of this edifice, except for perhaps the vestiges of Medicare and Medicaid that provide emergency treatment for indigent patients. I doubt the public will ever let us go that far, and I think we should make our peace with that for the most part.
Triton, like most libertarians, doesn't have a long-term view of this. I'm a former leftist, so I see and appreciate the need for long-term thinking that may require us to seemingly abandon our principles since our goal is to coax the public into accepting them over time. The left did this with Fabian Socialism, which is why I have argued in the past for a Fabian Capitalism/Libertarianism on the right.
Well, I would disagree, naturally. I think my view is based precisely on the long-term ramifications of which path is pursued. Simply tinkering with a government-laden system will not improve anything overall; you might eliminate some problems, but only at the cost of inventing new ones.
I don't have any problem with a gradual move towards a free market. At the same time, though, I'm not going to pretend that any compromises are satisfactory. The public may be stupid enough to blame the failures of government on the free market, but that doesn't mean I have to go along with it just to protect their sensibilities.
Perhaps if I had faith in the ability of the people to come to the correct conclusion via indirect means then I might consider such a strategy. But I don't have that kind of faith in them. Frankly, I think we're all doomed, so if I must be stampeded over the cliff along with everyone else, I might as well speak my conscience along the way.
I have no such faith either, which is why I advocate libertarians and conservatives working within the zeitgeist to try to accomplish their goals. If we have to accept big government, then let's steer it toward ends that are helpful to our goals over the next 2-3 generations. If the left hadn't done things this way, they wouldn't be as successful as they are now.