Unsafe at Any Blood Pressure

[Draggingtree]

Ludwig von Mises Institute:

 

Unsafe at Any Blood Pressure

Mises Daily:Thursday, October 25, 2012 by Christopher Westley

 

What if the unintended consequences are actually intentional?

That's the thought I had recently upon learning about upcoming Medicare fines on hospitals that readmit patients due to complications within 30 days of an initial discharge. The logic is straightforward: If hospitals do not make a patient well the first time, then they suffer the additional cost of a fine.

This particular intervention, which is based on the assumption that fixing a broken-down body is similar to fixing a broken-down car — and that doctors are nothing more than glorified mechanics — will create its own new round of unintended consequences. Just three that come to mind are

1. an upward pressure on prices for all other hospital services to compensate hospitals for readmittance fines,
   
2. the outright rejection of patients that hospitals consider likely readmittance threats, and
   
3. increased tendencies to simply let patients die when healing them is likely to result in readmittance fines.
   

In healthcare, this power is pushing toward a single-payer system in a process Mises once called "socialism by installments."[2] Unfortunately, such a system would be single payer only a fiduciary sense. When the government controls so much of healthcare provision, we all pay in one way or another.