Why Congress Shouldn’t Practice Medicine
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has proposed a new rule that would effectively put to rest a provision inserted into last year’s fiscal cliff bill by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) to help a U.S. company.
The original provision threatened to slash payments to the Swedish maker of a radiosurgical device called the Gamma Knife, thereby helping its competitor, a U.S. company that makes Linac — short for linear accelerator — machines. (WSJ)
Is the Linac any better than the Gamma Knife?
Hopefully, we should be using whichever is better.
JD, that is a very good assessment you made. We should, indeed, be using whichever is better.
Yeah, I would just let the free market decide which one to use. Not Medicare, Medicaid and Congress…..
Unfortunately health care is so ridiculously regulated, it will take a lot of work and time to achieve a free market.
What if the free-market makes the wrong choice?
If the free-market makes the wrong choice, the free-market will correct its mistake far faster than if the regulators/bureaucracy make the wrong choice. One of my favorite quotes:
“…in the long run the aggregate of decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is less likely to do harm than the centralized decisions of a government; and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster.” — John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong financial secretary, 1961-1971
We should be buying whichever one is better. We are part of a global economy, protectionism is a horrendous political strategy for economic growth or economic protection.
Not good to allow political protectionism to determine policies.
Protectionism is always bad. It’s amazing that this is even debatable, there is absolute consensus in economics in favor of free trade.
We should avoid any type of protectionist measures.