Entitlement Addiction Hard for Doctors to Let Go Of
July 7, 2008 by Jason K. Vaughn
Filed under Principle 03, Principle 04, Principle 06, Principle 09
HIGHLAND, UT | 7 July 2008| Health care continues to be a big item in this year’s election campaigns and politics as the push toward a nationalized health care systems receives more and more pressure. Today, New York Times reporter, Robert Pear, tells the story of how the recent cuts in medicare allowances have prompted many doctors throughout the nation to shut their doors to older patients; so the American Medical Association (AMA) has reportedly created a campaign aimed at U.S. Senators to sway them to undo the cuts that went into effect last week.
Most people view entitlement benefits from the patient’s perspective. Very few, perhaps, view the angle of the doctors. With those benefits coming down, the doctors receive less profits which makes treating older Americans less attractive. Several Prosperity Principles come into play as one considers this situation throughout the country.
Key Points
- With the current cuts, doctors no longer see the profit center they once saw, but this is fallacy. What they thought of as profit was actually government subsidies that gave doctors a false sense of validation. The unintended result was two-fold. First, doctors became addicted to a fiat source of revenue. Whether they knew it or not this source would ultimately dry up. Second, this drove prices higher as the medical field recognized the government would pay any amount to guarantee health care to the older generations of our country (a right that does not exist). These two unintended consequences tend to feed off each other until the revenue source becomes overburdened and ceases to supply the profits. This results in lazy doctors who have no idea how to work for true profits.
- This is the economic side. The moral side, the side carrying the most important equations reveal that even if the government just continues to print more currency it results in stealing property from Americans and cankers the souls of all those involved. This behavior gives false prosperity to doctors who don’t use their minds to create value for their customers. It creates a sense of entitlement in their customers who falsely believe it is a God-given right to live healthy lives. Those in government usurp more and more power over the citizens. And the common citizen’s resentment grows as his prosperity mysteriously slips through his fingers in ways he cannot account for.
Conclusion
Medicare alone will not cause the moral and economic demise of this nation, but it is a piece of the puzzle that robs each individual of that moral and economic prosperity. As Jay Perry so aptly expressed:
A careful analysis of U.S. history reveals that virtually every serious problem now confronting American society can be traced to a departure from the sound principles taught by these great statesmen.
The unstated solution is only a return to those ideas will solve those problems. Though difficult and painful, scaling back and eventually completely discontinuing such entitlement programs as medicare is the only solution to bringing this country back to a principled lifestyle of prosperity.
Action Items
- Study the Founders—what did they believe about government dole?
- Seek to regulate your own actions according to the Founders’ ideas, whether you are a consumer of products (i.e. a patient) or a producer (such as a doctor).
- Take responsibility for your own life by living according to self-reliant principles.
MRFC Principles: 
(3, 4, 6, 9)
Sources
Robert Pear, Doctors Press Senate to Undo Medicare Cuts, New York Times, July 7, 2008.
Jay Perry, The Real George Washington, NCCS, p. xv.
No doubt. This concept is analogous to the issue of human slavery, because in reality, that is what it is. The doctors are the slaves, and the recipient of Health Care are the masters.
The slave owners in the South of the US before the Civil War, thought that the economies of the South would be essential to the prosperity of the US. They believed that they were actually prosperous because their use of slavery allowed them to obtain an abundance of material goods. But once slavery was denied them, many slave owners starved to death or became extremely ill because they didn’t have any idea of how to do even the most menial tasks themselves.
This also demonstrates that freedom is not the only ingredient necessary for prosperity. The slaves were just as dependent on their masters as their masters were dependent on them. Many slaves went back to be employed by their previous masters, because they had not learned how to direct their own labor. It had been stolen from them, so many lacked initiative.
Another action step would be to read, “Up From Slavery” an Autobiography of Booker T. Washington, a slave that helped other slaves overcome the dependency on others to direct their labor.
I see many parallels between my own life as a slave working on becoming free and the stories of freed slaves that Mr. Washington helped.
A doctor who has a sense of entitlement and refuses to treat the poor is not a doctor I want to visit. There are doctors out there who charge little to nothing for treating the poor. I think to be a good doctor, one has to care about people and not just profits.
Jason–you’ve pointed out a pattern here that doesn’t just affect doctors, it affects all of us. And, the pattern I see isn’t the one of government dependence–it’s that pattern of dependence in general (the opposite of self-reliance), regardless of the party being depended upon. Surely, dependence on government brings all sorts of additional problems and violations of principle with it. But, how many professionals in markets that don’t receive major government benefit/interference allow themselves to grow comfortable in their marketplace and sluff off the need to continuously innovate and improve? They grow dependent on the current market conditions and subsequently struggle when market conditions change (which they always do)?
No one can know in advance exactly where the markets will go, and we have to work with the conditions we have today. I always find it interesting, however, to watch the shake-out that happens in a market when major changes occur. Look at today’s mortgage market, for example. How many of us know someone who is a good, hard worker that used to be employed in the mortgage industry that is now struggling to make ends meet? Ironically, some of the “producers” that I know in the mortgage field are making more money now than they’ve ever made. And that is because their businesses weren’t founded on a single tactic or strategy. They were founded upon principles. Principles are unchanging, but their application changes as situations change. That is where real innovation comes from. But, if one is unfamiliar with principle, they are left to try new strategies and hope that they will work.
Profit truly is the tool of validation. But, as shown by these doctors, simply making a profit isn’t enough.