The Good Doctor on Obamacare

Dr. Ron Paul diagnoses that by "turning the good of healthcare into a right, your life and liberty are put in jeopardy" — Healthcare Is a Good, Not a Right. His prescription is a "return to a true free market in healthcare, one that empowers individuals, not bureaucrats, with control of healthcare dollars."

The propaganda tells us that it is the "free market" that is to blame for America's very real heathcare woes, but Dr. Paul, who began his medical career in the days before "managed care," sets the record straight in an interview — Ron Paul, M.D. Speaks on Health Care — in which he looked back on his experience as an intern at a city hospital in 1961:

The amazing thing was it was a city hospital and there was no government; there [was] very little insurance and nobody was turned away whether they were illegal or legal, and nobody, nobody was quizzed. If you didn’t have the money, you didn’t pay, and people came in, and it wasn’t that bad. People didn’t lay on the side walks. You’re more likely to hear stories today of people being neglected in emergency rooms…and dying on stretchers—because we have managed care.

In a 2001 commencement address to medical school graduates — The State vs. Doctors — he contrasted the above picture with the current situation:

Managed care is not market-driven; it’s government-mandated. It has driven charity out of the system. No more church-financed hospitals and free care for the indigent. Everyone is charged the maximum, and no test is left undone for fear attorneys will be ridiculing us in court alleging our negligence. And if it’s not the attorneys, it’s the HCFA [Health Care Finance Administration] agents threatening us with fines and prison if we misinterpret any of the 132,000 pages of regulations. This system artificially pushes costs up, bringing calls for price controls, which only mean rationing and shortages.