How The Government Ruined U.S. Healthcare (And What We Can Actually Do About It)

Wednesday, March 22, 2017
By Paul Martin

by Alice Salles via TheAntiMedia.org,
ZeroHedge.com
Mar 22, 2017

Government’s meddling in the healthcare business has been disastrous from the get-go.

Since 1910, when Republican William Taft gave in to the American Medical Association’s lobbying efforts, most administrations have passed new healthcare regulations. With each new law or set of new regulations, restrictions on the healthcare market went further, until at some point in the 1980s, people began to notice the cost of healthcare had skyrocketed.

This is not an accident. It’s by design.

As regulators allowed special interests to help design policy, everything from medical education to drugs became dominated by virtual monopolies that wouldn’t have otherwise existed if not for government’s notion that intervening in people’s lives is part of their job.

But how did costs go up, and why didn’t this happen overnight?

It wasn’t until 1972 that President Richard Nixon restricted the supply of hospitals by requiring institutions to provide a certificate-of-need.

Just a couple years later, in 1974, the president also strengthened unions for hospital workers by boosting pension protections, which raise the cost for both those who run hospitals and taxpayers in cases of institutions that rely on government subsidies. This move also helped force doctors who once owned and ran their own hospitals to merge into provider monopolies. These, in turn, are often only able to keep their doors open with the help of government subsidies.

This artificial restriction on healthcare access had yet another harsh consequence: overworked doctors.

But they weren’t the first to feel the consequences hit home. As the number of hospitals and clinics became further restricted and the healthcare industry became obsessed with simple compliance, patients were the first to feel abandoned.

According to Business Insider, the average doctor has thousands of patients, and each visit lasts less than 30 minutes. Prior to the government’s slow but absolute control of health care, the doctor listened to the patient — many old timers will confirm — even if they couldn’t afford it. Few were turned down. Now, doctors can hardly recall the conversations they have with the people they are supposed to be looking after.

The Rest…HERE

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