Re: TownHall.com – 4/27/2008 – “Naming the cause of medicine’s failures” – Paul Jacob

Jacob claims that “farming, distribution, and marketing of our food supply works best with minimal government involvement” but fails to identify what would happen without that “minimal involvement” or what that “minimal involvement” might be. Does Jacob believe that government involvement with transportation (such as building and maintaining roads) interferes with the distribution of food supply? Does Jacob think that government financing of agricultural research, either in government national laboratories, in our state colleges of agriculture, or with research grants to private and public institutions necessarily harms our food supply? Both of these government involvements in agriculture are substantial --- does that mean he thinks they should be cut back?

Back in the good ol’ days when government kept out of medicine, salesmen went from town to town selling really bad useless potions as tested safe and effective medicines. Does Jocab think that any government regulation of medical products is over involvement? If not, where does he draw the line between under-involvement and the appropriate amount of involvement?

Socialism does not necessarily imply rationing any more than does capitalism. Costco, a purely capitalist corporation from whom I buy most of my food including rice, has began rationing rice to its customers due to a recent rice supply/demand imbalance. In reality, socialist run businesses can be just as efficient as private run businesses, provided that private run and socialist run businesses use the same management principles. Take the national oil company of Brazil as an example. There are lots of examples of inefficient private companies (some being overly bureaucratic and/or with management overly concerned with providing unearned benefits to themselves and their friends) that are no better at managing their business then are governments.

I guess Jacob’s problem is a frequent one: seeing the bad but not the good associated with things you instinctively oppose and seeing the good but not the bad with things instinctively favor. Half the story is better than no story so long as you remember your telling only half the story. Believing the partial story you tell is the whole truth is really quite dangerous. Jacob needs to put equal emphasis on identifying what government ought to be doing in medicine and what it ought not to be doing, because without this, his position on government involvement in medical care is meaningless.

As an aside, one thing our government is supposed to do, if you believe our founding father’s on this issue, is “to fix the standards of weights and measures” (US Constitution, I Section 8 #5), and defining safe and effective dosage of medicines fits well within this responsibility. Congress’ power to “to regulate commerce … among the several states” (US Constitution, I Section 8 #3) clearly gives the government the authority to impose those safe and effective dosages onto the practice of medicine, at least in so far as interstate commerce is involved.