Monday, July 11, 2011

Hsieh PJM OpEd: The Coming Collectivization of American Health Care

The 7/11/2011 edition of PajamasMedia has just published my latest OpEd, "The Coming Collectivization of American Health Care".

Here is the opening:
In the 1930s, the USSR forced independent farmers into large state-run collective farms. Despite possessing some of the richest farmland in the world, these collective farms could not feed the country. By the end of the Cold War, the USSR survived only by importing Western grain. Unfortunately, the United States is about to make the same mistake in health care by collectivizing doctors and hospitals into government-supervised accountable care organizations (ACOs)...
(Read the full text of "The Coming Collectivization of American Health Care")

Note that this government-drive consolidation of doctors and hospitals into a few large provider groups is not some "bug", but rather a desired "feature", because it allows the government to more easily control what kind of medicine will (and will not) be practiced in the US.