Eight years ago this week, we held my son's funeral. He was 24.
I have written about his death. He had an undiagnosed disease or condition. (If you or anyone you know has these symptoms, take whatever action is necessary. The outcome of doing nothing is fatal.)
The local hospital had given him full tests, and had given him a clean bill of health. The hospital was wrong.
A few months earlier, he had suffered a seizure. He was in the library. Somebody called an emergency ambulance, and the ambulance staff loaded him onto a gurney, put him in the ambulance, and took him to the hospital. He had told them he felt all right, but they took him anyway. He did not demand that they release him. Big mistake.
The meter began to tick.
At the hospital, they took away his clothes. Then they ran him through a barrage of tests. When the tests were over, and he was declared fit as a fiddle, he wanted to get out of the hospital. He was told that if he did not sign a piece of paper, the hospital would not return his clothes. Putting it bluntly, they threatened him with kidnapping. He would not be allowed to leave. Having gone through a seizure, and having gone through the tests, he did not read the paper. He signed it. Financially speaking, that was his death warrant.
The meter was now ticking legally.
The hospital then sent him the bill: a small fortune that he did not have. He was a college student. He lived very frugally. He had no savings. He was a legal adult. He had no job. My wife and I paid his tuition and basic expenses. I did not like to do it, because I did not think he could finish. He kept having the terrible spasms that disrupted his sleep and his work. But I went along with it.
The hospital began pressing him to pay his bill. He did not have the money to pay. I recommended that he go to a public interest law firm that helped the poor. I don't know if he did it. He died before it was settled.
As my wife and I drove to the funeral eight years ago, she received a telephone call on her cell phone. It was some woman working with the hospital, demanding payment. My wife informed the woman that we were on the way to my son's funeral. The woman said this to my wife: "Then who's going to pay this bill?" Ah, the tender mercies of hospital bill collectors! My wife gave a perfectly good answer: "I have no idea." That was the last we ever heard from the hospital.
I wrote about this in 2009. You can read my more detailed account here: //www.garynorth.com/public/5797.cfm.
HOW DID THIS SYSTEM COME INTO EXISTENCE?
You may ask: "How did this happen?" Bottom line: the Rockefellers.
It was a Rockefeller "charitable" organization that promoted state licensing of physicians. It also promoted state licensing of hospitals. It was the primary force that brought the state into the practice of medicine.
I am happy to say that a classic book on how they did it is now available online. It was written in 1923, which was about a decade after the process began. I have made it available for free here. (It takes 60 seconds to download.)
I first read about this process in 1963. It was a 1958 article by Reuben Kessel, "Price Discrimination in Medicine." This was the second article in the first issue of The Journal of Law and Economics. It demonstrated the economics of modern medicine, including modern hospitals. It showed how state regulation has created a system of price discrimination.
My son was a victim of this system.
The hospital gave him a clean bill of health, and then it attempted to extract its blood money as best it could. It was wrong about the clean bill of health, and it was also wrong about its ability to extract blood out of a turnip, or money out of a dead man.
The federal government, step-by-step, is placing modern medicine in a vice grip. That was guaranteed a century ago, when the Rockefellers devised the system that now exists. They lured physicians into a trap. Obama has now sprung the trap. I wrote about this in 1978, and I have now seen it come to pass. Here is what I wrote: http://mises.org/library/snare-government-subsidies.
The technology of medical care will improve. The rationing of medical care is guaranteed. If you have enough money, or if you have enough influence to get high on the list of eligible patients, you will receive top-flight care. Otherwise, be prepared to stand in line.
If you are a physician, be prepared to do a lot of paperwork, and be prepared for systematic reductions in the payment schedule as the federal deficit becomes astronomical, due to Medicare, Medicaid, and ObamaCare.
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