Anyone who thinks health-care costs can be brought under control ought to be required to read British physician Theodore Dalrymple’s* piece in the Wall Street Journal issue dated April 16. Here’s an excerpt:
The British system is now capable of absorbing infinite amounts of money with minimal benefit to the health of the population, though with great benefit to the pocketbooks of those who work in it. . . [P]oliticians think that they and their ilk know best, and by all indications Mr. Obama rather likes centralization. In my professional lifetime . . . I have seen a hundred schemes of cost reduction, but I have never seen any reduction in costs . . . that lasted more than a few months. I can’t remember a single health minister who did not promise more efficiency at less cost, or a single one who actually managed to achieve it.
*a pen name of Anthony Daniels