How to reduce health care cost

The news story below shows how to reduce heath care cost.

If you want to reduce health care costs, one of the best ways is to allow more doctors and nurses to practice medicine without the lengthy training, which is more about keeping the doctor and nurses clubs small and keeping out competition, instead of protecting the consumer. These monopoly clubs are enforced by the government.

The government requires all emergency room visits to be treated. An illegal pregnant woman goes to the emergency room to deliver. The hospital is obligated to provide the service, which may cost $6,000, even if she has no insurance. This means the hospital must raise the cost to other consumers to pay for the delivery. A midwife could do the delivery at home for a few dollars! Government rules and laws prevent this free market from working.

Hospitals could train surgeons as the 15 year old below was trained. A surgeon could be certified by the hospital to do appendectomies after observing a certain number, and being observed by an experienced surgeon. The hospital would be liable for any malpractice, which would make the hospital careful in its training. The hospital could also train nurses the same way.

If doctors want to hang out their training and licenses to compete with those who do not have a license and years of medical school, let them do so. The consumer will decide which one they want to contract with.

The doctor who performed my hernia and gall bladder surgery was the son of a surgeon. He spent his teens watching his dad perform surgery. He probably knew how to do a hernia repair before he went to medical school.

There are two ways to survive; produce or plunder. Plunder is easier. This country was founded on the tradition of individualism, not plunder. Now plunder has a halo of moral certitude over its head so it has become acceptable.

The free market works in providing goods and services. We simply have too much government involved in health care to say it is anything near a free market.

You will get your universal health care. If you like long lines at the post office and DMV, wait until the government provides health care.

Charles
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15-year-old performs surgery in India
By MUNEEZA NAQVI, Associated Press WriterThu Jun 21, 1:24 PM ET
The 15-year-old son of two doctors successfully performed a filmed Caesarean section birth under his parents' watch in southern India in an apparent attempt to set a record as the youngest surgeon, officials said Thursday.
Instead, the boy's father could be stripped of his licenses and may face criminal charges.
Dr. K. Murugesan showed a recording of his son performing a Caesarean section to an Indian Medical Association chapter in the southern state of Tamil Nadu last month, said Dr. Venkatesh Prasad, secretary of the association. The video showed Murugesan anesthetizing the patient.
Murugesan told the medical association that he wanted to see his son's name in the Guinness Book of World Records.
However, Amarilis Espinoza, a spokeswoman for the record book, said in an e-mail response to a question from The Associated Press that the organization doesn't monitor or endorse such feats because it would encourage the practice of "bad medicine."
The mother and baby were reported to have come through the surgery successfully.
"We were shocked to see the recording," Prasad told the AP, adding that the IMA told Murugesan that his act was an ethical and legal violation.
Murugesan owns and runs a maternity hospital in the city of Manaparai, Prasad said in a telephone interview from Manaparai. The family could not be immediately reached for comment.
Murugesan, who could possibly be prevented from practicing and face criminal charges for allowing his son to perform the operation, expressed no regret and accused the Manaparai medical association of being "jealous" of his son's achievements, Prasad added.
"He said this was not the first surgery performed by his son and that he had been training him for the last three years," said Prasad.
Prasad said that his team had reported the surgery to the state's top medical association in state capital, Chennai.
State health secretary V.K. Subburaj told reporters Thursday that the government would investigate.
"We'll get the report and then we'll see whether there are any violations ... prima facie it looks like there is a big violation," he said.
"We will definitely take action against the concerned medical officers."