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s_baar has left a new comment on your post "What Exactly is Obama's Healthcare Reform Proposal...":
For awhile, HMOs were squeezing doctors to force them to lower their rates. The AMA retaliated by cutting the number of slots in medical schools, further restricting the supply of doctors.
Where did you hear this?
As usual, "RTFG" is the answer. (Read The F***ing Google) I found a reference after a minute or two of googling.
I found this source.
It's published in a mainstream academic journal. That even meets Wikipedia's censorship standards. I'll excerpt the interesting bits.
Until the late 1990s, it was predicted that the nation would experience a surplus of physicians in the United States.
This research was, of course, funded by the AMA licensing cartel.
According to the most recent statistics available from the World Health Organization, when compared with the number of physicians per 100,000, the United States currently falls at 256.
The AMA licensing cartel keeps the supply of physicians artificially low, compared to other "developed nations".
This information resulted in the Health Professions Education Assistance Act of 1963, signed by John F. Kennedy, Jr, which doubled the number of annual medical school graduates, from 7409 in 1965 to 15,135 in 1980.
President Kennedy was one of the last Presidents to attempt to perform his job honestly. That's why he had to be murdered.
Obama is *NOT* suggesting "increase the supply of doctors" as a solution.
Given this dramatic increase in the number of residency-eligible physicians produced, it is no surprise that a surplus of physicians, this time in the range of 150,000, was then predicted to occur by the year 2000. In response, the number of medical school slots was again reduced, and in 1997, the Balanced Budget Act limited the product even more by financial disincentives and by capping the number of residency slots that would qualify for federal funding.
The number of slots in medical schools was reduced in the late 1990s. It takes about 8-10 years from when you're admitted into medical school until you get your license. If the supply of medical school slots was cut in the late 1990s, it would start showing up as a shortage and higher prices now.
What that article didn't say was "The reason was due to doctors being squeezed by HMOs.", but you can read between the lines. Increasing growth of HMOs led to doctors being squeezed to cut their prices. The AMA retaliated by cutting the number of slots in medical schools.
I found a source for "The number of slots in medical schools was cut in the 1990s." That source doesn't indicate the reason, but I can figure that out for myself. State-supported research sometimes gets the facts correct, but is still short on logic.
That article still has as a hidden assumption "State licensing requirements for doctors is beneficial."
I found some other interesting articles when researching this.
I liked this article.
Efforts to change the situation began as early as 1847. In this year, the American Medical Association (AMA) was formed to protect the interests of one group of doctors-the drug healers, or allopaths.The AMA was not originally an organization that represented "all doctors". The AMA originally only represented "doctors who treat people by giving them drugs". The net effect of AMA regulation is that other forms of competing medicine were outlawed.
These measures were all adopted by Congress between 1910 and 1920. The number of healing schools fell from 131 in 1910 to 69 in 1944. The closings meant many fewer physicians were trained. Not surprisingly, only the drug-medicine schools survived. The other healing schools were either shut down or failed because their graduates could no longer get a license.
Via State licensing requirements, competing forms of medicine to were outlawed. All doctors were required by Congress to treat people via drugs, at the expense of other types of medicine.
In the present, most people think "doctor" means "someone who solves your problems by giving you a drug".
As I mention repeatedly, drugs are not genuine medicine. They mask symptoms while covering up the underlying problem.
I liked this article on how the State quashed a promising medical treatment. There's no way to be sure if the claims are valid or invalid, without conducting a proper scientific experiment. There are enough stories like this circulating to make me believe "There are promising medical treatments that the State has quashed, because they threaten the established interests of the medical/pharmaceutical/death industry." Even if one individual story turns out to be wrong, there are enough such stories to make me realize that something is going on.
Notice that the scientist had his research papers stolen by State bureaucrats, exactly the same way that Tesla had his research papers stolen by State bureaucrats.
There are lots of stories about "Zero Point Energy is a suppressed technology!" and "There are certain suppressed medical technologies that are really effective!" Many individual such stories may be false. If I were trying to suppress a technology, I'd deliberately plant a bunch of fake stories to distract people from the truth.
Now that I've been looking around, there are a lot of articles on "The AMA originally started as an organization represented doctors who treated people via drugs. They lobbied to get alternative forms of medicine outlawed." This is another article on that topic.
The final answer on the "healthcare crisis" is "The reason healthcare is expensive is due to State licensing requirements for doctors." The State restricts the supply of doctors. This drives up prices, reduces patient choices, and reduces quality of treatment.
Once you realize that State licensing requirements are damaging, you'll understand that all mainstream debate of the healthcare problem is one big evil fnord.
The people who currently hold State doctor's licenses have an extremely valuable perk. They can always profitably lobby to block reform.
The only solution is for people to start working as agorist doctors, and for agorists to visit them instead of a State doctor. That'll be more important if you're working full-time as an agorist and don't have a State-sanctioned health insurance plan. Agorist healthcare won't be viable until the counter-economy is much more advanced. People should start boycotting restrictive State licensing requirements for doctors.
1 comment:
Medical schools have stringent admissions standards that relate mainly to achieving a "diverse student body" rather than actually selecting the candidates with the most potential to be great doctors. These MD recruits are then put through a maze of bureaucratic hoops to secure their slots in school, including receiving federal funding or loans. When they make it through school they have to do a residency, a sort of indentured servitude where they're subjected to long hours, an overload of patients, and inferior resources. I don't know why anyone would subject themselves to this process, only to owe hundreds of thousands of student loans with the liability of medical malpractice lawsuits looming over their heads. I think most doctors live paycheck to paycheck just like the rest of us.
During the entirety of their medical training the students are given very little information about nutrition, exercise, and alternative (not drug, non surgical) therapies. Despite their efficacy and low cost, chiropractic, midwifery, and homeopathy are just a few of the practices that are taboo among the MD (allopath) community. The lesson taught to the students is "protect and defend the cartel at all cost" regardless of what the research says.
When the doctors graduate from school and complete their residency they're fully indoctrinated. The problem is, most people take their doctors advice with very little skepticism. Just like an auto mechanic, a doctor has a financial interest in the course of treatment they recommend. It's up to us as consumers to fully vet those recommendations, but with a third-party single payer system their is very little incentive for a consumer to do their due diligence.
As a voluntaryist, it's my responsibility to take care of my body. I eat balanced meals, stay away from pharmaceuticals, artificial food additives, and other chemical agents. I exercise regularly. It's important to me to demonstrate my commitment to libertarian principles by caring for my most important possession, my body.
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