A weekly column
When Government Plays Doctor
This week, concerns about swine flu have dominated the media and many government officials. While the American people should be made aware of infectious diseases and common sense preventative measures, much of the hysterical reaction from government only serves to remind us how detrimental to your health it can be when government plays doctor.
As a physician, I have yet to see any evidence that justifies the current level of alarm. Influenza typically kills around 36,000 people every year in this country and hospitalizes a couple hundred thousand. So far there are only a handful of confirmed deaths attributable to this strain, and most of those sickened have or will fully recover. Every death is tragic, but I see no reason to deal with this flu outbreak any differently than we typically deal with any other flu season. Instead, government in its infinite wisdom is performing even more invasive screening at airports, closing down schools and sporting events, and causing general panic.
We had a similar outbreak in 1976, with only 1 death from the flu, but mandatory vaccinations killed at least 25 before the program was abandoned.
When government gets involved in healthcare decisions, the cure is so often worse than the illness. And yet, this administration will likely consolidate the government's power over your health with sweeping new reforms that are already being discussed in the Senate.
Government has not improved healthcare, and has not made it cheaper. Quite the opposite; costs have skyrocketed, and quality has gone down in many ways. Gone are the days of the country doctor making house calls, or of voluntarily giving away medical services at charity hospitals. The bureaucratization of healthcare these past 45 years has made things worse. It saddens me as a doctor that physicians are less and less accountable to patients, but more and more accountable to government red tape, insurance companies and attorneys. It seems so perverse to me that important medical decisions that will directly affect the lives of all or nearly all Americans are being hashed out behind closed doors in Washington rather than between doctors and patients.
There is perhaps nothing more valuable to a human being than his or her health, which is why I've always considered the practice of medicine so crucial to our well-being. Any intrusion by government into the privacy and trust between doctor and patient is detrimental to the art of medicine. It distorts the whole dynamic of who the client really is when doctors must answer more to government or insurance companies than to their patients. The best solutions to improving quality and lowering costs of healthcare would be measures that put decisions back into the hands of patients and doctors, where they rightfully belong. I have introduced HR 1495 The Comprehensive Healthcare Reform Act, which promotes health savings accounts and tax deductibility of healthcare costs as an important step in this direction.
The unfortunate reality of this recent health crisis, as with any crisis, is that it presents opportunities that the unscrupulous will take advantage of, while the fearful become more compliant.
Posted by Ron Paul (05-04-2009, 02:02 PM) filed under Unspecified
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Comments: 27
I think it is an illustration of the press and government trying to cause a panic for their own purposes. Ron Paul said it right "it presents opportunities that the unscrupulous will take advantage of, while the fearful become more compliant." The unscrupulous being both his fellow legislators and the media.
I was reading this morning that the company making the vaccine just happens to have a very large supply on hand. Now isn't that handy.
I fear that when Obama promised change he was thinking change for the people and dollars for his backers.
We need a voter rebellion and a giant recall election of every professional politician in the government from top to bottom. Poliwonk you riled me up. I think you and I as well as everyone else need to start cleaning our guns.
Wow....perhaps there is the underlying motive behind all of the overblown hype.
The Hong Kong government Monday faced growing pressure to release 300 guests and staff quarantined for seven days in a hotel where East Asia's first swine flu patient stayed.
Tensions rose at Hong KOng's Metropark Hotel, sealed off by armed police and medics in protective clothing since Friday when a 25-year-old Mexican guest was confirmed as having swine flu.
One quarantined guest, Indian businessman Kevin Ireland, 45, told the DPA by telephone that the lock-in appeared pointless as delivery people were allowed in and out of the hotel.
'I ordered a pizza and handed my money to the policeman with gloves on, who gave it to the pizza delivery man who didn't have gloves on,' he said. 'What kind of quarantine is that?'
'The same thing happened with 20 other people who placed outside orders for batteries, cigarettes, beer and takeaway dinners.
'Nobody seems to understand what kind of quarantine this is. We are all hanging around together, there is no restriction from going from room to room. We are all congregating in the lobby for meals.'
China has a population of about 1.3 billion. Now don't you think that there would be at least millions of people infected with the swine flu ( oops...H1N1 ) if this thing was anywhere near a pandemic level?
36,000 people die in the US from regular seasonal flu each year and we don't even talk about it.
I figured with all the media and political hype going on that there is something also going on in Washington that they don't want us to know.
Perhaps it was announced today - the stupid idea about taxing businesses that have overseas operations. As one news show explained, NO OTHER COUNTRIES DO THAT, even France which loves taxes. Businesses pay taxes in the country where their business is. If Obama gets his way, US companies with overseas plants will be doubly taxed. And economists say that means more jobs lost IN THE US!!!
The United States is supposed to be a Republic and people here are supposed to be free to make their own way. Of course there are of necessity some social programs but those are not really socialism. The government does not own our fire departments, police, schools, etc. They are owned by the communitys and are a co-operative effort.
My message to all the Obamaites is that trying to change the defination of Socialism does not change what Socialism is.
As to mega corporations. It seem to me there is a Taft-Hartley act on the books that is not being used.
Knucky, this does not hold water very well. Yes we need to fix government and the way to do so is to down-size it to the mandates of the Constitution, not expand it to take over the healthcare industry.
As to Corporations not paying taxes, That is Democratic propaganda. Corporations are the major source of taxes for the government. The rich in this country pay the lions share of taxes in spite of what the Democrats say.
If we required that corporations and wealthy individuals pay what they really owed, and dismantled the military industrial complex, we could downsize government and provide universal health care!
The same loopholes and shelters are avalable to all taxpayers and no they do not pay at a lower rate. All you need to do is check the tax code to learn that. 15% is a lot less than 35% and 70 million lower income tax payers do not pay taxes at all. I am one of those. I have not had to pay taxes for over 10 years because my Social Security is not taxable.
Dismantle the Military Industry? What do you plan to do for Military hardware if this nation is attacked? One thing we do not need is to be weak and vulnerable in today's world.
Col. George W., May 5, 2009, 8:23pm EDT