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Yes, yes.
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Okay.
We said last hour that we're going to talk about healthcare.
And healthcare is kind of topical right now because we just had this idiot film written by which Michael Moore was in.
It's called Sicko.
And some of the responses that people have given, you know, said, one person said it should be compulsory viewing for everyone.
There are people, some advocates of socialized medicine in our country claim that healthcare is too important to be left to the market.
And that's why some politicians in this political campaign are calling for us to adopt healthcare systems such as those in Canada and the United Kingdom and other European nations.
Now, the suggestion that we would be better served with more government control, as I'm wont to say, doesn't even smell, it doesn't even pass the smell test.
Now, for example, let me ask you, I want somebody to call in and tell me whether this is what they want.
Do we want the government people who ran the troubled Walter Reed Army Medical Center to be in charge of our entire health care system?
Or would you like the people who deliver our mail also to deliver health care services?
How would you like the people who run the motor vehicles department, the government education system, the foreign intelligence and other government agencies to also run our healthcare system?
And you kind of say, well, after all, these are non-profit organizations and these people are not motivated by greedy profits.
And they're truly wonderful, selfless, and caring people.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, for me, to deliver my healthcare services, I choose the profit-driven people to provide my healthcare services.
I'm talking about the people with the same kind of motives like those who deliver goods to my supermarket, to deliver my, those kind of people who deliver my overnight mail, produce my computer and my software programs, produce my car and produce a host of other things I use.
Those are the kind of people, people motivated by profits.
Those are the kind of people I want to deliver my healthcare system.
Now, look, here's a basic principle here.
There's no mystery why our greatest complaints, things that Americans complain about the most are in the area of government-delivered services.
We complain about schools, we complain about our post office, complain about the motor vehicles department, but we don't complain so much about our supermarkets, our cars, our software programs.
Why?
Well, in a market system, there are the ruthless, absolutely ruthless forces of profit, loss, and bankruptcy that make the producers accountable to us.
In the area of government-delivered services, there's no accountability.
For example, take government schools for decades.
Government schools can go on delivering low-quality services, and what's the result?
Do they go out of business?
No.
The people who run them earn higher pay.
It's nearly impossible to fire incompetence.
And the taxpayers who foot the bill are given higher tax bills.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, the problem with our healthcare system is government intervention.
And the solution is not more government intervention, but less government intervention.
Let's talk about the various kinds of government intervention that hamstrings or reduces the effectiveness of our health care system.
One is the tax treatment of health insurance.
That is, premiums are deducted from our pay before taxes.
And that explains why so many of us are willing to rely on employers to pay for and choose our health insurance.
And what the result of that is, since there's a third-party payer, that is, we're not paying for it out of our pockets directly, we have little incentive to shop around and wisely use health care services.
Another government issue or government intervention at some level that raises the healthcare premiums itself is something called guaranteed issue.
Now, guaranteed issue are laws that require insurance companies to sell insurance to anybody who seeks it.
So, why not wait until you're sick before purchasing health insurance?
Now, guaranteed issue laws make as much sense as leaving your house uninsured until you have a fire and then purchase the insurance to take care of the damage.
Or like having your car uninsured.
And then, when you have an accident, go buy insurance.
Now, what do you think that does to insurance costs?
It raises it for everybody.
As a result of government price controls, doctors are beginning to refuse to accept Medicaid and Medicare patients.
That is, the government is saying, well, you can only charge such and such.
And so doctors say, heck, I can't make any money just charging such and such.
Now, before we buy into this business about nationalized health care, we ought to look at other systems.
That is, the people who are advocating socialized medicine, they're saying, well, we should have something like Canada's, or we should have something like the United Kingdom.
Well, here's what you need to do, folks.
You should go to the, it's on my website, but you can actually go to the Fraser Institute and they annually publish a book called Waiting Your Turn.
And they do it each year.
And the 2006 edition gives the waiting times.
And let me ask you, I want somebody to call in and say, oh, that would be wonderful for America.
The shortest waiting time between a person's referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist, the shortest waiting time was for oncology, and that was five weeks.
The longest waiting time was for orthopedic surgery, and that was 40 weeks, followed by plastic surgery, 34 weeks, and neurosurgery, 31 weeks.
In Britain, Britain's Department of Health just recently acknowledged that one in eight patients waited more than a year for surgery.
Well, what about France?
France's failed health care system resulted in the deaths of 13,000 Frenchmen during the heat spell of 2003.
Most of these people died of dehydration.
But during that calamity, hospitals in France stopped answering the phones and ambulance attendants told people to fend for themselves.
Now, do you think that we want to welcome this kind of tragedy into our country?
Now, by the way, folks, look, I have absolutely no problem with socialism or socialized medicine.
My only problem is when they want to drag me into it.
That is, if you want to go be a socialist, do it all by yourself and with people who want to be a socialist with you, but just leave others out.
That's my opinion.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
If you go along the borders with the United States and Canada, you go to places like Buffalo, Minneapolis, Washington, Seattle, you'll see many Canadian patients coming to those hospitals.
Matter of fact, Cleveland, Ohio is the Canadian hip replacement center.
That is, because of the long waits in order to get hip replacement, people are just coming to the United States.
Matter of fact, there's a film, Stuart Browning, he wrote Dead Meat.
And you can check it out on FreemarketCure.com.
And you can link to it through my website.
But the tragedy occurring among many of the people in Canada.
So the solution is not more government, but less government.
And let's go more to the market.
Let me give you another example of how a free market could solve some of our medical problems.
There are roughly about 100,000 Americans who are now on waiting lists for transplanted organs, and roughly 70 000 of them are going to die before an organ becomes available.
What's the solution?
To sell organs.
Let people sell their organs.
Now people say oh, that's awful, Williams.
No, it's not awful, it's.
Look, I have a kidney now whose kidney is Walter Williams kidney.
It's mine, And so if I own something, I have the right to sell it.
Matter of fact, that's the test whether I own something.
That is, do I have the right to sell it?
If I don't have the right to sell it, I don't own it.
Now, of course, if George Bush or the United States Congress owned my kidneys, well, then I don't have the right to sell them.
But if I own them, I have the right to sell them.
And if we could sell organs, more organs would become available.
I guarantee, you know, for example, if I ever die, I don't like to say when I die.
I like to say if I ever die.
I can imagine the doctor, I'm laying in there, I'm brain dead.
And the doctor asks my lovely daughter, who's 32 years old, it says, would you like to donate your father's kidney and liver?
And I can just imagine my daughter, she loves me dearly.
She said, I want my daddy to be buried just like he came in this world.
No, you can't have his kidney and liver.
But suppose the doctor says, well, I'll give you $50,000.
You know what she'll say?
Say, do you want his eyes too?
And so what that would mean, it would be more kidneys and more livers and more eyes flowing into the supply of those transplanted for the organs for transplant.
And so instead of somebody dying, while my kidneys are going into the ground, instead of somebody dying, they would be able to live.
I mean, it's not rocket science, ladies and gentlemen.
Markets tend to cure things.
Now, markets are not perfect.
It's not a utopia.
We're going to have to wait until we get to heaven to be in a utopia.
But the markets are the best thing that we have on earth.
And what is a market?
A market represents millions and billions upon billions of independent decision makers engaging in peaceable voluntary exchange in trying to improve their lot.
That's what markets are.
Let's go to the phone.
David in Dayton, Ohio.
Welcome to the show.
Hi there, Mr. Wade.
How are you today?
Okay.
I work in healthcare.
I just want to call you talking about it.
I think that the price controls already in place from the government in the form of allowed amounts to pay for things from Medicare and Medicaid are already a perfect example of why we need government control because why we need government control?
We need less.
We need government control because these prices are out here and what they do is by continually reducing the prices that physicians, hospitals, outpatient providers can charge, they reduce the amount of service that people want to provide.
That is absolutely right.
And here's something that the average American does not know is that, say my doctor says, Walter, you need this procedure.
You really need an MRI, but I only have the ability to give you a CAT scan.
And so I say to the doctor, well, look, okay, so you're going to get reimbursed at, let's say, $800 for the CAT scan.
Well, I'll add $500 to it so that you can get me an MRI.
What is that called?
Oh, that's called the upcharge.
Yeah, that's called an upcharge, and it's illegal, isn't it?
Yes.
That is right.
And so the doctor would be tried for Medicaid fraud.
That's right.
And so this would happen straight across the board if we had complete government control of our system.
They'd be telling us what to do.
Exactly.
All the time.
That is absolutely right.
And a lot of people, thanks for calling in.
That's very, very good points.
A lot of times, people do not realize the kind of controls over our lives, either by the government or by third-party payers, such as the insurance company.
Matter of fact, I told my physician and my wife's physician some years ago, maybe three, four, five years ago, and we have private insurance.
We told him that we do not want our treatment based on reimbursement schedules.
We want our treatment to be based on best practices.
And if we have to reach into our own pockets to pay money in addition to whatever an insurance company pays, that's what we want.
And matter of fact, my doctor is Stephen Mark, really, great doctor.
He's since retired.
And so, yeah, matter of fact, he's retired because he put out of the you know, he just got fed up with the medicine business.
But I also gave him another instruction.
I said, well, the first instruction was, we don't want our medical treatment based by reimbursement schedules.
Then I told him, since I'm a lover of wine, I said, on my last breaths, I want to be served.
I wrote out a little note as part of his instructions.
I want to be served a very, very nice wine, something like Chateau de Kem, like a dessert, a going-out dessert.
And I said, I want it to be served to me, even if it had to be served intravenously.
And that's what he promised to do.
By the way, folks, in Canada, it's easier to get an MRI for your dog than yourself.
That is, you just walk into a vet and the veterans hospital can do an MRI on your dog, you know, just kind of maybe a couple hours, two days' notice.
But for you, you might be waiting a number of weeks.
I think at one time, a PAP smear, in order for a woman to be able to get a PAP smear, it was something like 16 weeks, 15 weeks.
I forget the exact number, but all this data is in the Waiting Your Turn put out by the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Let's go to Chicago and welcome Tim to the show.
Welcome, Tim.
Hi, Walter.
You're the best.
Oh, thank you.
Yes, sir.
It's a pleasure listening to you.
I just wanted to reinforce what you were saying by making a point about cosmetic surgery and that part of the medical system and the fact that people usually pay for a lot of that, if not all of it, out of pocket.
And as a result, the quality continues to improve and the costs continue to go down.
That's right.
I understand that the prices are falling for plastic surgery.
You're absolutely right.
Yeah.
So why can't the liberals simply see that?
Well, you know what we need to do?
We do need some kind of health insurance.
That is, what people need to be able to do is to be able to buy insurance for catastrophic illness.
That is some illness that's going to cost you $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, $50,000.
You buy insurance for that.
And matter of fact, insurance premiums for catastrophic illnesses are relatively cheap.
Now, where you find the huge cost of insurance is when people want their insurance company to pay the first dollar of their treatment.
That is, they go into hospital and something costs them $150 or $200.
They want that to be covered by the insurance company.
Now, if we had something like a medical savings plans where people could put away money, let's say deducted from their paycheck and put away money that would only be used for medical care, then people would be reaching in their own pockets and then they would ask the doctor, how much this procedure costs.
Right now, people go into their doctor.
They don't ask them anything about costs.
Why?
Because somebody else is paying.
It's a third-party payer.
And you're absolutely right.
Tim is absolutely right, ladies and gentlemen, that plastic surgery is not reimbursed, and people are shopping around, and the prices are falling for it.
Let's go to Mary in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
Welcome to the show, Mary.
Hello.
Pleasure to be on your show today.
My point is that if the health care system was turned over to the private individual, private contractor, or however you want to put that, that the poor will definitely be forgotten because they won't be able to pay any premiums.
Well, you know, see, this is one of the things.
I think you don't know this, Mary.
You know, in many cities, before we had so much government intervention, there were general hospitals, doctors giving medical services to poor people, to indigent people, for free or very, very reduced price.
It was a voluntary contributions that they're giving.
Now, we've been a nation since 1787, and there's no history in our country of our having to step over dying people because they could not get medical treatment.
That is, because people got medical treatment.
Now, maybe a poor person did not get the same kind of medical treatment that Walter Williams would get, but a poor person doesn't have the same kind of car Walter Williams has or the same kind of house.
So there are differences.
Maybe a person will have to go to clinic.
Maybe he'll have to spend a day in the clinic.
Maybe he'll have to do some kind of work for the hospital in order to be treated.
But excuse me, but if a person that has a degenerative hip or needs a hip replacement and they can't pay for it, orthopedic surgeon is not going to do that surgery for free.
They're going to cater to the people that have the money.
Well, you know, lawyers do pro bono services and doctors have done pro bono services as well.
And that, matter of fact, there's, I forget the name of the hospital, the name of the hospital slips my mind, but it's in Philadelphia.
It's a children's hospital where they don't charge anything.
The doctors volunteer their services and people bring their children from all over to this particular hospital.
Children is, I have no problem, and I live near Pittsburgh, and that's exactly what the children's hospital in Pittsburgh does.
However, we're talking about the elderly, which our population is getting larger all the time, and to leave these people in chronic pain because they simply don't have the money.
Well, you know why?
I do.
But you know why that happens?
You know why that happens?
Because government is involved in it.
Actually, the reason we're in the situation we are is not because of the government, is because of the greed of the medical profession, because when Medicare, before it had caps, the corporations and the greedy doctors were raking into the city.
And it was going to drain in.
I'm probably not going to convince you on this, but here, let me ask you this question.
Okay.
Do you want the kind of system in the United States that I describe in Canada and Great Britain where they are?
I don't think.
Do you want that?
I don't think exactly the same system at all.
If the government's running it, if the government's running it.
But let me ask you a question.
Where in the world have you seen a system that you're proposing working?
It worked in the United States for a long time.
It worked when Medicare, when the population was there to pay the premium.
So Medicare did not come in until 1965.
Now, what's in the world did we do before 1965?
Okay, let me give you an example because I do work in the health care system.
I know, for example, that 35 years ago, a doctor got for a gallbladder operation about $120.
Today they get $3,000.
That occurred in that period when Medicare was paying unlimited and they just jacked the rates up and down.
Of course.
Of course they'll do that.
That's where it's all coming from.
But of course they will do that because government got involved.
Exactly, but poor people were covered.
Now, if we go to the private system, as you propose, they're not going to be taken care of.
You know, they won't be.
And I live in a very poor county, the second poorest county in the state.
Yeah.
And, you know, I work with poor people.
And actually, I work in physical therapy, and we have not raised our rates since the entire time in six years that I've worked there because the companies or insurance companies won't reimburse anymore.
If we want to charge $150, it doesn't matter.
You'll get $20.
And we literally have patients that we get $10 for an hour of physical therapy.
Well, look, why don't you volunteer your services?
We do.
I have a very generous boss.
We do pro bono care all the time.
Okay, so that's exactly what I'm talking about.
One of the folks, and we have to get ready and make some more money because we're greedy too.
But one of the effects of government programs is that it enables people to discharge their responsibilities.
To say, look, why should I, matter of fact, here's what I do.
For example, I get appeals many times at my school to give to the United Way.
And I tell them, no, you go down to the IRS, and I already gave.
I'm not going to give any more to take care of some people.
And so what it means is that if I did not have to, if the government did not take so much money away from me, I would be more generous than I currently am.
I'm still very generous, in fact, you know, even though the government still takes money from us.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
And before we get back to phones, here is an immigration update.
And here's a title of it.
It happened in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
It says, a woman stopped out to buy a newspaper Thursday to return home to find her toilet bedroom.
I mean, her toilet door was closed.
This is an 80-year-old woman.
She was wondering.
And what she said when she opened the door, What she saw when she opened the door, she found a person who had broken into her house, sitting on her toilet.
I guess he was taking care of business.
And so she asked him, How long are you going to be here, among other things?
And when the man responded in Spanish, which she did not understand, she told him she was calling the police.
The man is described as a Hispanic male in his late 20s, and he's wearing a sleeveless black shirt.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, if you see this person, turn him in.
That's our immigration update.
But let's go back to the phones.
Let's go to, by the way, that last caller, we were talking about the healthcare blah, blah, blah, blah, and prices.
Look at some examples.
When the government stepped back in its regulation of airlines and eliminated the Civil Area Aeronautics Board, what happened to airline prices?
They fell.
When the government stopped, actually abolished the Interstate Commerce Commission.
What happened to prices in terms of delivering goods across our country?
They fell.
And I'm sure that if you get government out of medicine, not only is the quality going to go up, but the prices are also going to fall.
Let's go to the phones.
Tony from Erie, Pennsylvania, welcome to the show, Tony.
Hey, how are you doing, Walter?
Okay.
Hey, could you imagine the bureaucracy that would be opened up with socialized medicine in this country?
And you'd be opening up to potential fraud.
I mean, look at the welfare system right now.
How much fraud is in the welfare system?
And by the way, the welfare system is another form of socialized medicine.
Oh, well, yeah, and particularly Medicaid.
And by the way, a lot of people, I forgot to mention this when I was talking about the failed VA.
Remember the story about the VA hospital, the Walter Reed Hospital, how our veterans were being mistreated there?
Well, people are kind of saying, well, people are talking about socialized medicines, they're saying, let the people who run the VA take over our entire medical system.
I find that incredible.
But the key point, ladies and gentlemen, when politicians go to the VA hospital, they have a VIP suite for politicians.
Now, that's what happens all over the world with these single-payer systems, that the elite, the political elite, they exempt themselves from what the common man has to put up with.
And which is understandable.
If I were elite, I would want to do the same thing.
Yeah, an example I got here is I have a friend that lives up in Canada.
We're not too far from the Canadian border.
And he needs a liver transplant and a hip replacement.
He's been on that waiting list up in Canada for almost 10 years.
And he was down here recently.
And he told me, don't ever let them talk you into getting socialized medicine.
That's right.
And I've gotten the same response from Canadians.
And they have added, if you get socialized medicine in the United States, where are we going to go?
That's a good point.
So at least let's do it for the Canadians if we're not doing it for ourselves.
Let's go back to the phones.
Let's go to Terry in Burlington.
Welcome to the show.
Iowa.
Yes, right, Iowa.
Hi, Terry.
Hi.
My point was the increased cost that results from the fixes that come from things that the unintended consequences like mandates.
My example is mandates.
When politicians come in and try to fix things, one of the things they try to do is mandates.
So they come in and say, okay, everybody is required to cover this.
So then everybody comes in and gives us, everybody, all these companies have to cover, let's say, vitro fertilization.
Even though very few people need that kind of coverage or want it, everybody has to have it, and that increased costs for everybody.
Oh, you're absolutely right.
That is these mandates just kind of the one-size-fits-all mentality, it raises the cost of the treatment.
Right.
Another example I have is like Massachusetts right now is going through their enforcement of their new law.
And there is an article in the Boston Globe just recently about how now the poor people have a worse deal than they had before because now they have copays to pay.
Yeah, right.
And moreover, and I believe it's in Massachusetts, I think the governor signed a law that everybody has to have health insurance.
That is, if you don't buy health insurance in Massachusetts, you're a citizen of Massachusetts, you're a criminal.
Imagine telling somebody that they must buy health insurance.
Right.
So now the poor people have copays where before they had free.
Well, not free.
They paid zero price.
I was paying for it.
Exactly.
So now they have a worse deal than they had before.
Oh, that's right.
You're absolutely right.
That is, people need to ask the question, well, they need to approach things like this.
Okay, we're going to have this particular program, A.
Then you say, well, what's the effect of that?
And they say, oh, it's going to cause C.
Well, what's the effect of that?
That is, you just can't look at the first effect.
You have to look at the stream of effects that occur from doing one thing or doing a.
Politicians never say, well, what then?
Well, you know why?
You know why?
Because if things mess up, who's picking up the tab?
It's not the politician.
Right, it's us.
It is you and I as taxpayers.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
Let's welcome Dan from High Springs, Florida.
Welcome to the show, Dan.
Yeah, I was just wondering, do you believe that the rich should get better health care than the poor?
Yeah.
I mean, just like the rich get a better house than the poor, a better car than the poor, anything, yes.
But see, here's one point.
Here's one point.
That the free market is pro the common man.
For example, here's some examples.
Who do you think became richer?
Fords for the making cars for the common man or Rolls-Royce that was making cars for the rich?
It's Ford.
What record companies make the most money?
The record companies that produce Michael Jackson records or Pavrati records?
That is, what movies sell the greatest.
Where do you make the most money in terms of making movies, in terms of making almost anything?
It's by catering to the common man, which includes the poor.
And so I'm saying that the market will always take care of the common man.
But the next hour, ladies and gentlemen, if you don't think that Walter Williams is objective, I'm going to lay into some of my fellow economists and try to teach you how to dissect economic nonsense.