Health Industry
Complex
Daily Observer
Regulations Strangle the System
Watergate has exposed the danger of
dictatorship that might evolve from the unopposed, unrestricted executive
branch that rejects law and the Constitution to impose its own value system on
the nation. But while congress and the
courts ponder and investigate this problem, the nation is sliding insidiously
into an administrative and corporate dictatorship that is being imposed by the
congress and other legislative bodies.
A live dictator can be overthrown, his
palace guard destroyed, his rule blunted.
An administrative dictatorship is another matter. It is inadvertently imposed. There is no grab for power, no overthrow of
an existing system. It results from an
evolutionary change in the social order.
But nonetheless, as the nation becomes blanketed by congressional
programs the result is a dictatorship by statute, codes and rules books. The process is inexorable and
unalterable. A system of codes is
enacted. An army of functionaries is
hired to administer these codes. They
criss-cross the country like a jungle-gym, and to deal with them on a rational
basis we have to crawl through its mazes and perform mental gymnastics to squeeze
by the small spaces between the lines in the code-book.
Ultimately there is no living
individual responsible for the statutory system. It emanates from Congress, but Congress,
politically, is as reluctant to change it as it is to raise taxes, or enact any
unpopular measure. An administrative
dictatorship stands as immutable as the Statue of Liberty destroys. Even the president is powerless to throttle
the programs so that new programs can be offered in the place of the old. When a program fails it isn’t junked, it is
amended.
The political process and the balance
of powers which have worked so admirably in the Watergate mess are impotent in
the face of administrative programs.
Politics is gradually being squeezed from the center of our lives by the
legal pincers that more and more govern our manner of life.
There is no leverage that can be
brought against programs run by statute, because there is now way of reaching a
responsible party. Every officer of the
program can retreat, when under attack, to the sanctity of the law he is administering. Reasonable requests are parried by the rule
book. Common sense exceptions become
illegal under the law. There is no
single person or group who can be held responsible for inequities under the
law.
I suspect that the country will brought
finally to its knees by a health-industrial complex which will make the
Eisenhower military-industrial complex look like a tinker-toy, because who in
his right mind can be against health. In
just a few short years we have found that because the insurance plans promise
to pay for semi-private accommodations (which are really semi-public), all
hospitals have to be built on the most inefficient basis. Corridors stretch out over miles of the
nation to house a population of sick that could be maintained more comfortably,
with more dignity and far less cost, in hospital designs built on the block
plan, in which each patient could have a private cubicle with toilet
facilities.
Because the medical bill is rising, the
government is establishing the infamous PSRO’s (Professional Standards Review
Organization) which will provide inspection teams to check on treatment, invade
the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship, introduce cost-accounting into
the management of an individual’s disease, and adversely affect patient care.
Title Nineteen, of the Medical Law, is
so structured that individuals, who through the free medical care they receive
have become well enough to work, find themselves earning enough to suffer the
penalty of having to pay for their medical care, and not being able to afford
this, again fall into the welfare rolls, whereas special grants in select cases
would avoid this. However, there is no
one to go for a special grant, no person is empowered to alter the law for a
common-sense reason.
The Food and Drug Administration is
demanding proof of efficacy for all drugs, much of which can’t be determined in
an experimental laboratory; thus depriving the public of the empiricism from
which many of the most effective drugs on today’s market derive, namely digitalis,
aspirin, quinidine, quinine, rauwolfia, to name a few. The public is being called a fool, and robbed
of the right to determine what will or will not help. The FDA standards for Vitamin C, as Pauling
has pointed out, are probably woefully low, and Vitamin E, despite repeated
attacks by the cognoscenti, is now being proved useful in condition such as
angina, intermittent claudication and varicose veins.
New hospitals can’t be built unless
they receive state and local approval.
Patients are placed in halls because it is illegal to open new hospital
wings. Protests are meaningless, because
the programs are too comprehensive and anonymous to be reached by political
pressure. The market place has been
destroyed in our zeal to protect against unfair market practices.
Paradoxically, it is the legislative,
not the executive branch that is stifling our freedoms. Unless some way is found to politicize
administrative programs and reintroduce a market place formula, the breath of
freedom in America will be replaced completely by administrative smog.