Medical malpractice.

• Author: Hazlett, Thomas W.
• Position: Selected Skirmishes

ClintonCare's new approach to doctoring: First, do some harm.

I PROPOSE THE FOLLOWING ANTI-CRIME program for America: federal funds for midnight basketball in Washington, D.C., eligibility limited to the White House gang-bangers who concocted the Clinton Health Care fiasco. Those Generation Xers have all that energy and nothing to do late at night but cook up predatory social welfare schemes. I say: Put 'em on the court and keep 'em off the computer terminals where they will do real harm, tearing up markets and destroying family-doctor relationships decades in the making. And, while you're at it, you might toss in a little supervisorial grant to me, Tom Hazlett. I could referee--it would give me a chance to blow the whistle on those neighborhood toughs.

Many accuse the Clintonites of concocting a hastily contrived, ill-thought-out health-reform plan. The naysayers simply fail to see its intricate logic. For instance, with all the unemployment the Plan would have wrought, queuing up in long lines at the doctor's office wouldn't have imposed much of a social cost. Jobless folks have time to kill. Now that's planning ahead.

Hillary's theory is that we are oppressed by drug companies and heartless insurance executives, and that her plan to shove everyone into regulated co-ops will allow us to bargain down the money-changers with tough spending caps.

A second opinion is in order. Mine is this: The top-down approach to health care aims to control costs by reducing quality. The price controls, both implicit and explicit, are a scam.

One doesn't lower "costs" by giving a patient who is screaming for 100 ccs of Demerol two tablets of Tylenol instead. Tell the patient who's about to have a cold, shiny, stainless steel probe shoved up his digestive tract that the more accurate survey device, an MRI machine, is beyond his Alliance's global budgetary guidelines. Now, sir, bend over. This may be the one pain our president fails to feel.

I have lived in a Japanese hospital, survived on Japanese hospital food, and sampled their health-care system first-hand. They have their successes--that's why I traveled there--but on average, there is no match: You'd rather get sick in America. And not just because we still speak English.

Having comparison shopped, I can vouch for it: The American system is outstanding. It is too damned expensive, and reforms that promote genuine competition (such as letting midwives deliver babies and nurses give physicals) would be...