Americans Don't Go to the Doctor. It's Not About Money.
Furthermore, for anyone to be "guaranteed" access to anything, he has to be forced to participate, both in receiving its "benefits" and in paying for them. Hence, "guaranteed universal access" means coercing not only taxpayers, but everyone as participants and contributors. All the weeping and wailing about the 37 million "uninsured" glosses over the fact that most of these uninsured have a made a rational decision that they don’t want to be "insured," that they are willing to take the chance of paying market prices should health care become necessary. But they will not be permitted to remain free of the "benefits" of insurance; their participation will become compulsory. We will all become health draftees. -- Murray Rothbard (1994).
Americans now labor under the fiscal burdens associated with ObamaCare. Despite this massive transfer of wealth by the federal government, critics of private medicine are not satisfied. This is the basic rule of all moves in the direction of more government control: it never satisfies the people who want more government control.
A recent article reveals this attitude. It complains that there has to be more government intervention, because the present level of intervention still imposes monetary costs on people who want to go to the doctor.
The assumption underlying the article is this: Americans really want to go to their doctors, but they just can't afford it.
AMERICANS AND THEIR DOCTORS
I am a typical American male. I don't like going to the dentist. I don't like going shopping. I don't like going to the doctor.
I am also a non-typical American male. When I finally did go to the doctor, she sent me to have my blood tested that same day. When the results came back, I found that was in stage III prostate cancer. If I had not gone to her, I would now be in stage IV. So, I am glad I went to her. But I was motivated. The symptoms got my attention.
Anyway, my reluctance to go to the doctor had nothing to do with money. I am on Medicare. Taxpayers paid. I just don't like going to the doctor.
I recently read an article on this reluctance. The author blamed the following on a lack of healthcare insurance. The title: Boomers and Gen Xers Skipping Health Care Due to Cost.
Between a third and a half of people age 45 to 59 and a quarter of those 60+ went without needed health care in the last year due to its cost, according to a troubling new survey from the West Health Institute and NORC at the University of Chicago.“We were surprised by the magnitude of the findings,” said Dr. Zia Agha, chief medical officer at the West Health Institute, a nonprofit applied medical research organization based in San Diego. “And 80 percent of the people we surveyed had health insurance, so just having insurance does not make you immune to health care costs.”
The researchers at West Health Institute and NORC at the University of Chicago (a nonpartisan research institution) interviewed 1,302 adults. Their findings were released Monday at the American Society on Aging’s 2018 Aging in America conference in San Francisco. Age 45 to 59 Skipping Health Care
Specifically, the survey found these results for people age 45 to 59 (members of Generation X and boomers) as a result of health care costs:
49 percent didn’t go to the doctor last year when they were sick or injured
45 percent skipped a recommended medical test or treatment
43 percent didn’t go to a dentist when they needed treatment
40 percent went without a routine physical or other preventive health care
30 percent didn’t fill a prescription or took less than the prescribed dose of medicineAge 60+ Skipping Health Care
The percentages were less dramatic for people 60 + (boomers aged 60 to 72 and Americans older than 72) — perhaps partly because those 65 and older have Medicare. But they are still concerning:
30 percent didn’t go to a dentist last year when they needed treatment
27 percent went without a routine physical or other preventive health care
25 percent didn’t fill a prescription or took less than the prescribed dose of medicine
25 percent skipped a recommended medical test or treatment
24 percent didn’t go to the doctor when they were sick or injuredYounger Americans were even more likely to go without health care due to costs last year, the survey found.
IT'S NOT ABOUT MONEY
This sentence negates the headline of the article: "The percentages were less dramatic for people 60 + (boomers aged 60 to 72 and Americans older than 72) — perhaps partly because those 65 and older have Medicare." The author is admitting that the cause doesn't have anything to do with money.
Here is what it has to do with: we don't like to go to doctors. We don't like to take the time off from work to do it. Our lives are busy. We don't think we're sick. If we are a little sick, we don't want to hear about having to take medicine. We especially don't want to hear about the need for regular exercise. We don't want to stop smoking, stop drinking, lose 20 pounds, and all the other things that our physicians will tell us to do.
Nobody wants to go to a nanny, and there is no nanny like a physician. The physician is going to tell us we have to shape up or ship out. I will admit, that when an oncologist tells you to do this, you would be wise to do it. You also have the motivation to do it. But, short of the announcement of cancer or something similar, nobody wants to hear it. Nobody wants to spend an hour or more sitting in a reception room in order to be nagged for 15 minutes. He knows exactly what is going to happen. His wife is going to ask him what the doctor said, and he will have to tell her. Then she's going to say, "That's exactly what I've been telling you!" Men don't want to hear this. Ignorance is bliss.
No woman wants to hear it, either. Her physician is going to tell her she needs to lose 10 pounds. She knows her husband wants the same thing. Wise husbands don't mention it, but the wives know. Is any husband so dumb as to tell the truth when his wife asks him this? "Does this dress make me look heavier?" The answer is "No." The answer is not this: "No more than all your other dresses."
Then some nosy opinion survey person asks if you went to the doctor last year, or went to the dentist last year, and you didn't. Then he asks whether this is because of money. Are you going to admit to this person that you would rather risk getting really sick and going to the doctor? This happens to be the case, but are you going to admit it? Of course not. You tell him that the reason is lack of money. You tell him that you really want to go to the doctor and the dentist, but it's just too expensive. You don't want to tell him that you don't want bad news from your physician or pain in your dentist's chair. That would be unmanly. Instead, you're going to tell them that you just can't afford it.
He will check off that box. Then whoever paid him to do the survey will write the article about the need for more government-funded health care. So, we read this:
The West Health Institute and University of Chicago researchers also asked Americans whether they thought helping older adults access quality and affordable health care should be a priority for Congress. They did overall, overwhelmingly — 60 percent said it was extremely important or very important that their representative advance such policies.But young people were far less likely to feel this way: only 36 percent of those age 18 to 29 favored prioritizing such care. Similarly, just 42 percent of them support increased spending on Medicare, compared with 62 percent of those 45 to 59 and 60 percent of those over 60.
No kidding! Young people don't want to pay for the geezers' healthcare cost! Will wonders never cease?!
Did this call into the question the findings of the survey? Of course not.
Agha wasn’t especially concerned, or surprised, to see less interest by younger Americans in supporting health care for older Americans. “It’s only natural if you’re looking at something 30 or 40 years into your future,” he said.
Here, I quote clinical psychologist and eminently sensible psychology professor Jordan Peterson. This is the opening paragraph of Rule 2 in his book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018).
Why Don't You Just Take Your Damn Pills?Imagine that a hundred people are prescribed a drug. Consider what happens next. One-third of them won't fill the prescription. Half of the remaining 67 will fill it, but won't take the medication correctly. They'll miss doses. They'll quit taking it early. They might not even take it at all.
Peterson is not naïve enough to suggest that the reason why people won't take their pills is that the pills cost too much money.
He says people are notorious for not taking their prescriptions. In this chapter, he tells people that they ought to take at least as good a level of care of themselves as they take for their dogs. But he knows they don't do it. He is trying to persuade his readers to do it, but after 20,000 hours of time spent in discussions with patients, he has to know that most of his readers won't do it. Even if all of his readers did do it, he is not going to sell a billion copies of his book. If he did, the royalties would pay for the university he wants to set up. But he still couldn't get enough charismatic, yet academically competent professors to join the faculty, or get the students to attend, or persuade the students to change their opinions, or persuade them to change their behavior. A clinical psychologist has the same problem that faces the typical pastor. Nobody takes his advice when it counts.
Here is the famous bottom line: a majority of voters want somebody else to pay for their medical care.
Don't tax you.
Don't tax me.
Tax the guy behind the tree.
This is why the idea of socialized medicine still has a voting bloc. When the government-funded health care system is based on compulsory health insurance, healthy young people are required to pay premiums on the assumption that someday they will get sick and will then benefit. But they are present-oriented. They prefer to keep their money now, and get someone else to pay for their healthcare later in life. Most of them are going to do their best to evade the program.
CONCLUSION
There will be never-ending surveys that are funded by naïve donors and special-interest groups that plan to take the results of the survey to lobby for government funding of whatever field they are in. If the field is healthcare, there will be surveys that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that more government funding will lead people to change their behavior, and then be more healthy.
The problem is not primarily a lack of money for healthcare. The problem is the lifestyles of people that lead to greater illness. They don't want to change when they are young and healthy. They don't want to pay when they are old and sick.