Texas Insider

11:00 am CST - June 16, 2009

McAllen Proves Government Run Health Care Doesn’t Work

By Laura Elizabeth Morales

President Barack Obama recently tried to make an example out of McAllen to push through measures to create a socialized health care scheme in the United States. Obama has said McAllen is an example of what not to do.

Washington politicians seem disappointed by Texas’ success and keep trying to find ways to tax Texans out of prosperity, force private companies out of business and create poorly run, expensive Washington style programs in their place. The best example of this is the current debate over costs of health care in McAllen.

Atul Gawande happily wrote in the New Yorker about McAllen’s per capita income, just twelve thousand dollars. He relished in quoting Pres. Obama, ““The greatest threat to America’s fiscal health is not Social Security. It’s not the investments that we’ve made to rescue our economy during this crisis. By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. It’s not even close.”

Yet, Gawande failed to portray the other side of the story. McAllen’s “health care conundrum” is a prime example of why government run programs like Medicare actually cause health care costs to increase, and it all has to do with crippling the free market.

“If the government guarantees health care to people, costs have to skyrocket. When someone else is footing the bill for health-care costs, consumers demand medical services without having to consider their real price. The artificially inflated demand this creates sends expenditures soaring out of control. It is irrelevant whether the government finances this spending spree directly, as it does with traditional Medicare, or indirectly, as with Medicare Advantage. In the end, the results are the same,” said Yaron Brook, Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, in 2008.

“A recent article in the New Yorker, for example, showed how McAllen, Texas is spending twice as much as El Paso County – not because people in McAllen are sicker and not because they are getting better care. They are simply using more treatments – treatments they don’t really need; treatments that, in some cases, can actually do people harm by raising the risk of infection or medical error,” Obama said in a Townhall meeting.

President Obama and Washington want to make you believe that McAllen is an example as to why the country needs government run medicine, but in reality they are proving the exact opposite: government run programs hurt prosperity by crippling the free market.

“Democrat proposals are going to cost much more than they will admit. Haven’t we seen this somewhere before? Medicare costs are much higher than published with a debt of $38 trillion and fiscal collapse looming by 2018. Now, President Obama wants to add another entitlement program,” said Frank S. Rosenbloom, MD, in an article with the American Thinker.

“Though well-intended – with the goal of achieving greater health, equity, consumer protection, cost-efficiency, and effectiveness of care – measures that expand government influence often achieve the opposite. Further, this path can also lead to harms that reach beyond the realm of economics or even that of health,” according to the CATO Institute.

Conversely, it is free market solutions that will fix the problem.

“In a free-market system, competition and one’s own personal stake motivate people to do their best. In this process, the winners create wealth, jobs and new investment, while others go back to the drawing board better prepared to try again,” wrote Governors Rick Perry of Texas and Mark Sanford of South Carolina, in a letter to the Wall Street Journal in 2008.

12 Comments

Clifford Fry, Ph.D.
1:04 pm CST
June 16, 2009

Laura Morales’ article is correct. In addition, government run health care will impose below market reimbursement rates for doctors, decreasing the supply of doctors and medical care. Doctors, not government insurance, provide medical care. Government run health care will involve severe rationaing of health care. The government will decide who gets and who does not get health care.

Mario Barrera, OD
4:39 pm CST
June 16, 2009

When I renew my professional liability insurance(malpractice) if I live in Harris county(Houston) or Tarrant county or Rio Grande Valley (McAllen) my rates will be higher. Everyone knows that there are more personal injury lawyers per square inch in the valley than almost anywhere else. You can’t drive one mile down any highway without seeing an add for their services. We don’t have a healthcare crisis, we have an attorney crisis. What we really need is universal lawyer care. We need the government to dictate what a lawyer can charge and collect. Under universal lawyer care everyone will get a government appointed lawyer. Sue me and I’ll get my government lawyer to sue you and they can fight it out and they will get paid at a rate determined by the government. My plan makes as much sense as the governement’s plan to pay doctors and I bet I will get more support.

crawford
8:23 pm CST
June 16, 2009

IF YOU DON’T KNOW BY TODAY,YOU WILL NEVER KNOW IT,YOUR FRIEND IN WASHINGTON D.C. WILL TAX YOU INTO ETERNITY.GOVERNOR PERRY KNOWS WHAT TO DO,HE’ MUST ,I DIDN’T THINK IT WOULD COME TO THIS EITHER.
WE HAVE EVERYTHING ANY COUNTRY WOULD NEED , SO LETS START TO IT,ANYBODY ON WELFARE THAT CAN WORK AND WON’T,TEXAS DOESN’T NEED YOU.

CWJensen
9:18 pm CST
June 16, 2009

Funny MCALLEN TX………………………………………….for every doctor there are 10 lawyers waiting to sue him or her.
ACTUALLY NOT FUNNY AT ALL…………………………………………………..I am surprised you can find a Doctor to practice in the Valley.
I know for certain that most will NOT even take you as a patient without and extensive costly physical to CYA.
YOU WANT affordable healthcare……………………………………………..take the lawyers out of healthcare…………………………………………………You want to punish people in healthcare compensate
fairly or continue to watch prices soar. IF that is NOT POSSIBLE we need to have government legal services to sue the government healthcare.
CAN U HEAR THE LAWYERS SQUEALING?

Pat
9:32 pm CST
June 16, 2009

Yes, Dr. Barrera, I think that is a great idea. Why doesn’t someone whisper that into Obama’s ear? He can control the lawyers too. I’m sure he wants to control everything anyway.

It is almost impossible to find a doctor who will take a Medicare patient. Medicare pays them so very little on the billed amount and now they are talking about cutting it even more. I guess the point is just let senior Americans die, huh?

What are we going to do when students no longer can afford to go to medical school since it will take the rest of their lives to pay off student loans. They keep talking about Medicare being a free government program. How’s that? A fee comes out of every working person’s paycheck, and then, when you go on it, it still cost every month. I think they have added so many welfare benefits to it and stolen from the social security fund for so many years that that has caused the problem. What about Medicaid? Does that come out of the Medicare fund? If so, that’s paying for poor people now and also those who sit at home and let the government take care of them. Children and people who can’t help themselves (physically unable to work) are one thing, but taking care of the lazies is ridiculous.

Larry S
9:37 pm CST
June 16, 2009

The more I read about this subject, the more I wonder what the heck Obama is thinking about health care. I’m worried my own doctor will cut me loose as a patient when I become eligible for Medicare in another 10 years. Let’s stop this insanity.

Sharon
9:57 pm CST
June 16, 2009

The biggest cost to healthcare has been the abuses by illegals that have been allowed those coverages for many years that WE pay for! If that was stopped, that would save a bundle for all of us on healthcare! Many of the illegals get healthcare when a lot of our own are turned away! Obama needs to be impeached, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone in congress with enough backbone to get that process started! In the meantime, we all stand by and watch this President and his administration destroy our country and take our freedoms and rights away! A very sad situation indeed!

Charles
10:33 pm CST
June 16, 2009

Although the Obama administration would have us believe that he can lower the cost of medical care for all of us, and add government paid medical insurance for those who don’t have any, his speeches and press releases never address the problem of how to pay for all of this cheap medical care. Sooner or later it has to be paid for, and somebody has to pay it. Those who don’t have enough money (at least not on the books) to pay for their medical care and/or insurance will have it apid by those who do have money, and it will be paid through more and higher taxes. How long will it take for the government to run out of people to tax, and ways to tax them? We don’t know, because Obama won’t tell us!

Ric
6:54 am CST
June 16, 2009

Why doesn’t the Government look at, or better yet, talk about the Government run health care for chldren in Obama’s so called home State of Hawaii. IT FAILED.

linda
12:03 am CST
June 16, 2009

Home state of Hawaii? Do you really believe that story? This guy has a plan of de-struction, not con-struction….of our country. Many folks are beginning to see this socialist muslim for what he is, and yet where were they when time to vote came? Winning with 52% (OF THOSE WHO VOTED) certainly does not mean the country believes in him….yet, he acts as though he received every vote. I’ve said what I thnk of his national health care plan on another topic here…..but I just want to be left alone to take care of myself….that is how I was taught as a kid, and it still holds…..true! Self-reliance is now a foreign word apparently. Each day becomes worse than the one prior…..I almost hate to wake up anymore…….the daily ‘executive orders’ have already started, and my feet have not even hit the floor in the Central Time Zone.

Anthony
4:05 pm CST
June 16, 2009

Being somebody that lives in McAllen, and reviewing all the posts I am disappointed to see how some individuals change the truth. The fact is that since proposition 12 was passed almost all medical malpractice suits were brought down to ZERO. The other reality is that using liability as an excuse Doctors and Hospitals have used that to increase their profits. I personally had a problem where I got 7 different diagnosis in the Valley, and all WRONG. Needles to say, all the different Doctors made me go through their therapy and some even were recommending surgery. I ended up going to the MAYO clinic, there I was diagnosed in less than 5 minutes, no therapy and I am cured. The cost of health care in the Valley is a problem, and it needs to be addressed.

Maria
12:11 pm CST
June 16, 2009

I live and work in the Rio Grande Valley, in the medical field (but not as a physician). I have seen firsthand and in more depth than the New Yorker the way the system works down here. Physicians are all friends, most own business outside the medical field, and most are much more interested in the quantity of patients they can see in a day than in actually caring for patients. I see physicians rush in a room, not tell patients their prognosis or diagnosis, not attempt to speak to family members about important matters. I have seen physicians refer to any specialist that they can, for the slightest reason. I work in a large hospital where getting a consult for a neurologist or a psychologist can take a week for an acute patient, because these doctors were so overbooked. It is unfair for all healthcare in McAllen to be judged by outsiders, but also many physicians and healthcare workers have never really worked anywhere else, so I’m not sure how well equipped they are to judge themselves.