August 23, 2007

Reputations lag far behind realities, and nowhere is that eternal truth illustrated better than in the august pages of the New England Journal of Medicine. Formerly a repository of scientific findings on the benefits of alternative treatment protocols and the like, the NEJM has evolved into a vehicle for the promotion of agitprop favoring single-payer socialism in medical insurance.

The latest example of such non-science gracing the pages of the NEJM is an editorial by Jacob B. Hacker, a political science professor at Yale, published in the August 23 issue. What is the source of the inefficiencies and the other obvious problems afflicting the U.S. health care system, and the difficulty of forging a consensus on reform? Is it the heavy tax bias toward employer-provided health insurance? Is it the erosion of discipline in the consumption of health care resources caused by third-party payment? Is it the obvious problems manifest in single-payers systems overseas, from which patients come to America for treatment?

Well, no. It is instead fear: The fear of the unknown by those who realize that current arrangements are highly problematic, but who simply do not understand the "a single public insurer is the only hope."

So there we have it. The public is dumb and trapped in a marriage with the devil it knows, and salvation lies with an extension of Medicare to all, "our country's most popular and successful public insurance program."

This editorial is so infantile that only the NEJM is worthy of it. The long-term fiscal implications of Medicare for all? Hacker has not a clue. The inevitable rationing of care as budget pressures force public officials to make choices on which treatments will be covered and which not? Hacker never heard of it. The inexorable squeeze on payments to doctors, hospitals, and other providers, as the bureaucracy in the here and now mandates "savings" from providers who are stuck in the system, at the expense of less supply over the longer term? Don't listen to those uncaring economists.

That the NEJM finds such drivel publishable truly is amazing, and, sadly, is an indicator of the politicized depths to which the journal has sunk.

Posted by Benjamin Zycher at August 23, 2007 11:18 AM

Comments

Post a comment