Malpractice Lawsuits and President Obama

When has the government outperformed the private sector in efficiency and productivity? Time and again we are subjected to rhetoric of the benefits of socialized medicine and the need for universal healthcare. Typically, the argument asserts that a national healthcare system will increase the amount of insurance and reduce the costs for everyone. This statement may appear valid to anyone who has taken a basic economic class — an increase in supply will lower costs. However, our healthcare system is far more sophisticated and labyrinthine than a simple supply-and-demand diagram and it is naive to expect sufficient change from a socialized system.

Supporters of President Obama’s plan fail to account for the externalities of socialized healthcare. Will the patrons who receive socialized healthcare still request benefits at the same rate, or will they demand more? Will doctors be subjected to an increased number of malpractice suits? And will expensive medical treatments, like MRIs, still be available? When implementing any change, we need to look past the initial benefits to anticipate future problems since “the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t.”

I agree that reform is needed and ideally we will have a system under which all Americans can receive necessary medical treatment. However, taxing our way to optimality will only lead to further problems in both our economy and healthcare. Winston Churchill once stated, “I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handles.” We will not find a solution to our problem by looking inside our bucket. Instead, elucidation is needed from the public sector and examining the reasons for the high cost in medicine that brought us to this point. And we can start at the very reason President Obama was booed Monday — by fixing the outrageous cost of malpractice suits.



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