Health Care Won’t Improve With Carter Budget

Daily Observer

January 29, 1979

President Carter’s State of the Union Message January 23, 1979, was dull and inconsistent. The president said that his major goal was to stop inflation. He would do this by trimming the budget and controlling hospital costs. He cited rising hospital costs as a major factor in the inflationary spiral. Since most hospitals are non-profit institutions it might more accurately be stated that rising hospital costs are a product of inflation.

The term hospital is a code word for medical care, trimming hospital costs is a trial balloon for trimming the costs of medical care. This can be done only by trimming the amount of medical and hospital care available. In other words, rationing health care. We already see the results of rationing at local hospitals. There are shortages of beds in the nursing homes, shortages of hospital beds, supplies and personnel.

In virtually the same breath that the president promised to roll back hospital costs, he extolled ecstatically the deregulation of the airlines. Deregulation has enabled the airlines to fly into the blue and turn a tidy profit. Perhaps if the president deregulated the health industry he might find that competition forced prices down. After all there is no justification for fear of flying when prices are so cheap.

The president continued with a plea to unfetter the economy by restricting bureaucratic control but simultaneously he will increase the watch dogging of Medicare costs, which means of course, more expensive watchdogs. We already have an extra burden of these useless individuals stocking the Professional Services Review Organizations (PSRO) that are scattered about the country.

The president also decided to appease the so called hawks by increasing the military budget. First he uttered the following reassurances, “For example” he said, “just one of our Poseidon submarines – less than two percent of our nuclear force – carries enough warheads to destroy every large and medium sized city in the Soviet Union. Our deterrent is overwhelming.” The statement is supposed to justify the increase in military expenditures.

The president said in his campaign that he promised never to lie to us. He probably doesn’t. But the truth is vulgar. Furthermore the president did not clarify what the United States would do with the remaining 95% of its nuclear strike force after all Soviet cities were pulverized. I mean we can’t just let all that investment go to waste.

In brief it is easy to see that the in the thinking of the President medical care is low on the totem pole, whereas airlines and defense industry are right there on top. One might think that what is sauce for the goosey airlines should be sauce for the gandered medical sector. But it is not. Why should this be? After all, only a small sector of Americans flies.

Unfortunately no computer measures the value of health. How can it be that we fail to rat proof cities while creating more missiles, at the same time that we pride ourselves on good old American productivity? After all didn’t the president tell us that our economic system is the best in the world? Even better than Uganda. Sure it’s the best. After all you can measure the profits of Defense and Airlines, but you can’t measure the productivity of good health. All you can measure is the cost of illness. Not being able to hang a dollar sign on health, but able to measure the losses of poor health makes medical care a good whipping boy. When Americans are dumb enough to get sick all they do is cost the government money. Since we can’t stop them from getting sick, we can stop them from getting well. How? Easy. Blame inflation on the cost of medical care, then ration medical care.

Health will not be improved by Carter’s Bitter Budget pills.