The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care
	Author: David Gratzer Published: 2008-03-20
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Customer comments on this selection. Not impressed. I gave this a shot, hoping to get a different perspective on the issue of health-care in the United States. Wasn't impressed with Gratzer's take. Some of his language seems too slanted. I understand the strategy of spinning a fact to serve one's argument, but he over-spins to the point of just being down right erroneous. For example on page 156 under "Safer Drugs" he writes the following: "Here's the FDA's dirty little secret: clinical trials involve a relatively homogenous group of healthy individuals who collectively are totally unrepresentative of the people who actually take pharmaceuticals." Uh, wouldn't that be the "dirty secret" of pharmaceutical companies and the CRO's employed to conduct clinical trials? This type of shabby spin, coupled with the sensationalist language ("dirty secrets"...come on) that made the book feel more like a prescription of propaganda. I'm just happy that I didn't spend money on this. Libraries are a good thing. The Somali Model I've enjoyed Dr. Gratzer's book immensely; I've been a fan of his ever since his epic battle with David "Imp of the Perverse" Kucinich. Here is a man, I thought, with such courage of his convictions that no fact is salient enough to shake him, no statistic hefty enough to rock the pillars of Freemarketianity upon which his faith so surely rests. I must, however, give his book only three stars - and, I think, so must every libertarian. The problem with single payer health care is not that the government controls every medical decision, any more than the problem with American "you payer" health care is that HMOs control every medical decision. The problem is that, in both systems, it is the plutocracy of "doctors" who callously tell patients of all income brackets what kind of health care they "need" and thus drive the cost of health care ever and ever higher. What America needs is to get rid of this autocratic system once and for all and embrace the principles of DIY health care. We don't need European or Canadian style health care; we should be looking to Somalia for our model. Several months ago some "doctors" told me that I desperately "needed" a liver transplant to go on "living." I told them that, as I was a firm advocate of DIY health care, I would not be relying on their "expertise" to cure me. At any rate, I couldn't even come close to affording the procedure, and as for raising my taxes? Well, I suppose saying "over my dead body" might be a little redundant at this point. Sure, there should still be doctors for those who can afford them, but the rest of us need not concern ourselves with that. Doctors should become something like a jewel-encrusted platinum cell phone, a luxury silly rich people can afford, but the rest of us Real Americans know we can do without; in fact, we know we're happier without such clutter in our lives. Instead, the marketplace will provide us with simple DIY kits for heart surgeries, spinal taps and kidney biopsies, complete with tools and instruction manuals, reasonably priced and readily available at your local Home Depot or Costco. For my own surgery I've constructed a Home Liver Transplant kit, which, though a little crude, will do the job nicely. It was tremendously difficult to find a reciprocating saw small enough for my needs (and I can't really say where I got my new liver); the paucity of supplies is, indeed, the only real barrier to the DIY Health Care enthusiast, but my faith in the market is such that I know it will correct such oversights in time. Heck, if my kit works, I could be the next DIYHC millionaire! Not too shabby! I hope Dr. Gratzer will consider the changes I advocate; I might, perhaps, be able to write a second preface for a new edition of his book - one which, of course, will go after the preface written by His Holiness Milton Friedman. Achieving the perfect orderliness of a soylent green society David Gratzer's "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care" is perhaps greatest paen ever written to the one true religion: laissez-faire capitalism. It's a celebration of the triumph of the bottom line, an adoration of profit, and a joyous prayer of hope for the perfect orderliness of a soylent green society. Over the last 30 years, we've stood in awe as we've witnessed unregulated capitalism's transformative powers. Where once our edible ecology lacked such keystone species as E.coli and salmonella, our meat, fruit, vegetables, and water have become veritable Edens for those precious pathogens. Where once financial regulation checked glorious greed and encouraged the unbearable ennui that comes with stability, our new, deregulated, economic environment has brought excitement to investing and incredible profits to those few deserving oligarchs who were most prepared with the connections to exploit the system to their advantage. Now, David Gratzer and the insurance industry wants to do the same for health care. He's heard the complaints. He's read studies like the 2004 Commonwealth Fund report which looked at satisfaction in five nations. He saw that they found that U.S. Americans were by far the most dissatisfied with their health care system (over twice as dissatisfied as Canadians)and less likely to receive care because of cost (17% of Canadians vs 40% of U.S. Americans). Yes, he's studied it thoroughly and has decided that the problem with the U.S. system is that it is not capitalistic enough. It needs to be deregulated like the food and banking industries. The problem isn't lack of access, it's about deciding who deserves what level of care--it's about rationing health care by one's ability to pay. Even more importantly, it's not a matter of whether someone can receive the care they need, but whether society will allow him or her to access a free market solution to pay for that service. Is our society advanced enough to provide a patient's loved ones an opportunity to sell their organs to pay for needed health care? Have we achieved that level of compassionate capitalism yet? Do the poor and working classes care enough about life to make sacrifices to preserve it? If not, do they really deserve all of the benefits of life? These are the fundamental questions to which Gratzer alludes, but, unfortunately, fails to fully address in his book. That's a shame, because these are the questions that must be answered if we are ever to fully achieve the libertarian society he envisions. That said, Gratzer does honor laissez-faire capitalism with the blind worship that it deserves as the answer to everything (along with lower taxes and drilling in the ANWR). That's why I'm giving his book four stars. Excellent Argument for Free-Enterprise in Health Care.... The Cure does a good job of illustrating the diverse ways in which our health care system is inefficient and expensive compared to it's free-market alternative. The only problem, and the reason that I, as a hypercritical anal-retentive perfectionist, take off a star, is that Gratzer ironically could be more consistent in the application of those very principles, more organized in his argument, and more illustrative with examples. His whole discussion of the FDA, for example, for the most part argues within the framework of retaining the organization. But, as his reference to 'public choice' theory shows, he's aware that as long as the agency exists, it will have incentives to act less efficiently than free-market alternatives, one example of which would be, as he mentions, the Underwriter's Laboratory with electrial devices, which works well. More concrete examples of the utter wastefulness of the third-party payment system would also help the reader understand how consumer lack of motivation is probably the biggest cause of skyrocketing costs. Also, he ignores as a formal point, although he mentions in passing, the huge suits and judgements brought and allowed against various hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and other health groups that motivate them to engage in CYA testing across the board, thus also raising prices. Take This Prescription If only politicians would give the ideas in this book a chance. As the author skillfully argues, American health care is very good, but the American health care system as it currently exists is a huge mess. The good news is that the author doesn't just point out the problem. He explains why there is a mess and then gives prescriptions to make things better. The author is an MD with experience practicing in Canada and the U.S. so is able to speak to both the socialized (single-payer) system and the U.S. health insurance based system. The author's thesis is that the U.S. health care system is in such shambles because of the way the system is designed. The current system prevents the free market to function like any other sector of the economy. The solution is more choice, more competition, and fewer regulations. One of the key problems is the way health care is paid for--it is treated less as insurance and more as pre-paid healthcare. For example, you don't insure your car for routine maintenance but mainly for high cost and catastrophic accidents. For routine maintenance, you pay out of pocket based on a consideration of price and quality of an auto repair shop. The same should apply to health care. The author argues persuasively that a routine visit to a doctor should be paid for by the patient, whereas an operation would be paid for by a high-deductible insurance policy. The patient would be able to pay for routine visits through their own health savings accounts. A shift to this paradigm will bring down costs for everyone and make health care more affordable. The author also provides solutions to the problems and rising costs with Medicare and Medicaid which are both going broke. He offers solid solutions there, but it's hard to see the politicians going for them. For those that want to educate themselves on how to fix the health care system, this is a must read.
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