We Liked Our Doctor


We liked our doctor. A lot. We invested time and effort in finding him. He spent time getting to know his patients.  And when our health insurance premiums skyrocketed not so long ago -- and, yes, they soared -- we told ourselves that at least, when we need medical care, we have a good doctor.




And somewhere in all the public debate -- amid the gibberish about  Websites and "mandates" -- there is a basic idea that's gone missing. When people are forcibly deprived of the opportunity to engage in voluntary transactions with each other -- when you and your doctor are kept apart by a minefield of impassable regulation (dolled up under the ersatz label of a "marketplace") -- the result is the destruction of potential wealth. No, I am not talking solely about money, but about the many dimensions of health, wealth and satisfaction, as in, The Wealth of Nations; the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.




There are a lot of ways to keep costs down. Allowing real competition in a real marketplace is one way -- and allows doctors and their patients to choose, thrive and adapt. Smothering medicine with state planning is another -- fraught with deadweight loss.

And so, we are losing our doctor. I can't blame him for backing away from the private practice that not so long ago he was working hard to build up. No longer is it enough that he mastered the art of medicine; to continue full-time in private practice he would have had to also master the Affordable Healthcare Act, and then master the ability to comply with it -- or pay someone to handle these labors of Hercules for him. Not that I have had time to read the "Affordable Health Care" Act, either. It has been more a matter of paying the rising insurance premiums and losing access to a doctor we really liked, as we find out what's in it. This is a document compared to which even the UN budget reads like Shakespeare's sonnets. On the occasions I have tried sampling it, I have found it so full of impenetrable cross-references, opaque clauses and intricate bits of incoherent social engineering, there is simply nothing that, as an average citizen, you can do with it, except maybe weigh it -- and the accompanying 10,000-or-whatever pages of regulations.

Here's a random sample, below, plucked from page 1707. Seems to me the real message here is that it's folly these days for anyone to go into medicine. Just go straight to law school. And hope you never get sick.


(1) IN GENERAL. -- Section 1817(k) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395i(k)) is amended—

(A) by adding at the end the following new paragraph:

‘‘(7) ADDITIONAL FUNDING. -- In addition to the funds otherwise appropriated to the Account from the Trust Fund under paragraphs (3) and (4) and for purposes described in paragraphs (3)(C) and (4)(A), there are hereby appropriated an additional $10,000,000 to such Account from such Trust Fund for each of fiscal years 2011 through 2020. The funds appropriated under this paragraph shall be allocated in the same proportion as the total funding appropriated with respect to paragraphs (3)(A) and (4)(A) was allocated with respect to fiscal year 2010, and shall be available without further appropriation until expended.’’; and

(B) in paragraph (4)(A), by inserting ‘‘until expended’’ after ‘‘appropriation’’.

(Artwork created using multiple Shutterstock.com images.)