Healthcare, the Nobel Peace Prize and National Security

My primary care doctor just told me he’s leaving his current practice, as did my last doctor a bit over a year ago. The reason both walked away is the administrative burden of our current healthcare system.

Yet, I read an article the other day that claimed that if the nation had a single-payer system we would save $500 billion per year on… administrative costs. Well, the doctors I know (and the doctors they know) are quitting because of the intrusive, administratively burdensome mess generated by the “Affordable Care Act.” Further, my own (30 year) experience working for the Department of Defense suggests the one thing you could guarantee was that, short of some draconian actions, rising administrative costs and complexities were the only certain things under the sun. In short, anyone who thinks we’re going to save administrative costs by expanding government’s role in healthcare (or anything else), has no experience with government at any level, ever.

The point is important because that $500 billion per year is the key projected savings that would supposedly make a single-payer system cost effective. It’s also worth noting the single-payer system would provide healthcare to an additional 40 million people, but there’s no substantive discussion about producing more graduates of nursing schools, or medical schools, or of expanding current residency programs. So, consumption will increase (more people receive healthcare) but the number of people providing healthcare will remain basically unchanged. And costs will go down? Sure.

So, it’s important that we – the nation – address the current problem now, before it becomes a crisis. But the concern extends far beyond healthcare.

In China, (where they have nationalized health care (and de facto government control of everything else)), they “managed” to let a Nobel Laureate die. Liu Xiaobo, an outspoken critic of the Xi regime, died last week of cancer, having been moved from prison to a hospital only last month, and then apparently having been selectively denied proper care.

The point is that China, despite its repeated claims to being a great, peaceful and modern country, remains an oligarchy that brooks no opposition, and is intent on expanding its hegemony, first in the immediate seas around East Asia, then to all the Western Pacific, and eventually, well…

Put it this way, China just established a military base in East Africa and their naval units conducted live-fire training in the Mediterranean Sea.

China is also threatening India over disputed borders, and while busily insisting on its good intentions is, in fact, assisting North Korea’s evil leader. Nor has China forgotten the Middle East, announcing just this past week its intention to extend overland trade routes through Pakistan and Iran and on through Syria to the Mediterranean.

The long and short of it is that the world, after nearly three decades with few great powers confrontations, is now facing two aggressive great powers – Russia and especially China, and several rising powers (Iran and North Korea) that have ill intentions to the US, the West and our allies.

Copyright2017 Arrias
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