Barter & Health Care

Barter & Health Care:

So, apparently today the big thing for the 'progressives' is this video.



This is supposed to be evidence of the woman's idiocy, but phrased as it is -- as a comment about what people used to do in "the old days," before health insurance -- it's quite true. This is what they used to do, if they couldn't pay the country doctor in cash.

If we were to indict Obamacare on one thing, it might even be this thing: why is it that doctors aren't free to consider barter for poor, rural patients today? It is because they have to carry malpractice insurance, which forces them to set rates of pay above the level that the poor can afford.

What was the #1 thing we could have done to address that? Tort reform. What was the #1 thing left out of Obamacare?

Tort reform.

Doctors today have a lot of problems: huge student loans, for example. Yet if you could do something to get the tort/malpractice issue under control, they'd be a lot more free to help the poor get the care they need, at a price they could afford. Barter isn't as absurd as the Left seems to think: my father traded an old truck for roof repairs just this year. These things happen out in the country; why shouldn't they?

A lot of the price issue with health care has to do with access to new and expensive technology, including diagnostics and drugs. Barter can't do anything much to address that issue. Yet, if we wanted to enable a class of "country doctors" who could work among the poor and make their living in the old fashion, tort reform is the #1 thing that is keeping that old reality from being possible today. That's a shame, and it's a shame that Harry Reid explicitly chose not to address that issue. It would have made things easier for doctors, and for the rural poor: but I guess the thing that really matters is ensuring that insurance companies and the trial lawyer lobby have their interests protected, instead.