Bad economics & medicine.(Correction, Please!)(Essay)

ITEM: In an article entitled "5 Myths About Our Ailing Health-Care System" in the Washington Post for November 23, 2008, Shannon Brownlee and Ezekiel Emanuel write that the United States lags behind "many developed countries on virtually every health statistic you can name. Life expectancy, at birth? We rank near the bottom of countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, just ahead of Cuba and way behind Japan, France, Italy, Sweden and Canada, countries whose governments (gasp!) pay for the lion's share of health care."

ITEM: Writing in the New York Times for December 4. MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber claims that "health care reform is good for our economy. As the country slips into what is possibly the worst downturn since the Depression, nearly all experts agree that Washington should stimulate demand with new spending. And one of the most effective ways to spend would be to give states money to enroll more people in Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Plan. This would free up state money for rebuilding roads and bridges and other public works projects--spending that could create jobs."

"Health care reform can be an engine of job growth in other ways, too. Most proposals call for investments in health information technology, including the computerization of patient medical records.... More immediately, it would create jobs in the technology sector."

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CORRECTION: Many so-called experts may say a nation can spend itself rich, but that doesn't make it so, whether the expenditures are made in the healthcare field or in building pyramids. As with most public-spending schemes, the jobs "created" are visible; the ones lost and economic damage done are not so obvious. Government programs are funded in several ways, including taxing individuals and businesses, giving them less to spend on their own choices; borrowing money, thus increasing deficit spending and the National Debt: and running off more printing-press money, which worsens inflation and drives down the value of the currency. Professor Gruber, quoted above, is one of the "experts" who is pushing this insidious notion. The New York Times somehow forgot to tell readers that he was an economic adviser to Sen. Hillary Clinton and supported her "universal coverage" designs. His piece was called "Medicine for the Job Market," no doubt because "Selling Snake Oil to the Masses" would have been a bit longer and had the benefit of accuracy.

In the meantime, former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, President-elect Obama's point man on healthcare, has said the new administration's priorities in this will be "expanding insurance coverage, as well as reducing costs and improving quality." Walking on water will apparently take a bit longer. The various plans that have been advanced by the Democrats, including strategies by Obama, Daschle, and Montana Senator Max Baucus, all involve the creation of a new public entity, variously called a national board, council, or institute, that will make the decisions that otherwise might be made by doctors and those of us on the plantation who might prefer not to have such choices made by bureaucrats.

Daschle, for instance, would establish a National Health Board that would be modeled on the Federal Reserve Board. The politically appointed experts on this board would be, the senator has said, "insulated from politics." It is beyond naive to expect that hundreds of billions in public expenditures are going to be spent without political considerations.