From Victor Davis Hanson's latest column:
The cost of health care is spiraling out of control, and not just because the proverbial evil “they” (fill in the blank: pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, medical corporations, trial lawyers, etc.) charge too much. Such profit-mongering entities may well gouge us, owing to a lack of competition, fear of lawsuits, or government mandates and interference. Yet the larger culprit is, of course, we the people. The cost of our health care is soaring because, to be frank, that health care is usually very good, and it does things routinely that almost no one else in the world contemplates — such as providing 83-year-olds with heart-valve replacements, 78-year-olds with hip and knee replacements, and those who drink, smoke, and are chronically obese with drugs and weekly doctor visits...
If we wish to get health-care costs under control, then we should at least be honest with the American people and admit that we are all paying a collective fortune largely for three reasons: (1) to keep functioning into their 60s those who drank, smoked, and ate too much and in a past era would have passed on at 60; (2) to give us all an extra three to five years of mobility and functionality after we reach 75; (3) to fit us up with IVs, feeding tubes, and respirators so that in our last six months of life we can die in a rest home or among machines and specialists in a hospital rather than in our own home with a few morphine tablets for pain and a bowl of soup with a straw on the nightstand...
Again, health care is expensive because Americans, with some good reason, have decided that the ancient tragic view — we all age and break down, and pay for the sins of our 20s and 30s in our 50s and 60s — can at last be replaced by the therapeutic promise of vigor and health into our 80s.
Health care costs will be controlled under socialized medicine because that's the only way care can be provided for everyone. More money is spent on prenatal care, babies and children than on adults, because it is more cost-effective.
To put it another way, my father had a double bypass at 75, a move which gave him an extra six years of life. Under socialized medicine, it is unlikely he would have been given this life-saving procedure because he was "too old." Like my grandfather in England, he probably would have been told to go home and play with his grandchildren until he keeled over because he had lived long enough.
I don't think Americans will accept limitations on their care based on costs. Americans expect that if a medication or procedure is available, they can (and should be able to) get it. This sense of entitlement will leave Americans sorely disappointed when they are given a cane instead of a knee replacement at 60.
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