A letter to the editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal just came to my attention. It reads:
In his Sunday commentary, “On the road to health care hell,” Steven Miller quoted Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute, hardly a person who could be trusted to give an even evaluation of government spending on health care, considering that the Cato Institute wants to limit government.
It is wonderful of Mr. Miller and Mr. Cannon to place all responsibility for Southern Nevada’s public health crisis on the government and none on the greedy bastards who violated their oath to do no harm, and to line their pockets with as much wealth as they could squeeze out of the public. Those who treated Mr. Duke Breuer and sent him home with an IV needle in his arm all had licenses from the state of Nevada, so I guess that Mr. Miller and Mr. Cannon would, by their twisted logic, place the blame solely on the state of Nevada.
However, I hold the state of Nevada responsible for not providing the level of regulation that is currently required, and in view of the level of greed that these doctors have shown, it is high time to level the playing field. We should strip them of every nickel that they have.
Wallace Eastman
LAS VEGAS
Whuh? There’s a public health crisis in Southern Nevada? I’m an apologist for greedy bastards? They sent some guy home with the needle still in his arm?? Yikes!
I went back and read the original Las Vegas Review-Journal op-ed by Steven Miller, vice president for policy at the Nevada Policy Research Institute. Actually, Miller provides a more responsible critique of the U.S. health care sector than most free-market advocates. For example, Miller takes seriously the alarming number of medical errors that Eastman decries.
Eastman may be surprised by how much he and Miller have in common. Nevada’s physician-licensure laws obviously are not doing enough to protect patients from low-quality care. While Eastman argues that more stringent regulation would fix things, I suspect Miller would argue that licensing simply does not work that way; that physicians inevitably come to control the licensure process and manipulate it to protect themselves from competition, including competition from delivery systems that would reduce medical errors.
My guess is that Eastman and Miller agree that there are greedy bastards out there trying to squeeze as much wealth as they can out of the public, but that Miller would argue it’s the very regulations Eastman supports that’s letting the greedy bastards get away with it.
(As for my trustworthiness: Sure, I want to limit government. When I claim government is ineffective, readers should bear in mind my viewpoint. That’s fair, and doesn’t worry me.)
