Hazardous to your Health
Roche, George C. III
Book Review: Hazardous to Your Health by Marvin Henry Edwards Arlington House, $9.95 There are a few "generally accepted assumptions held today in Washington," said Representative Philip M. Crane...
...You may think that euthanasia-"mercy" killing-died with the Nazis, but some proponents of a national health service advocate the killing of "unproductive and incompetent elderly...
...third is that the mere allocation and spending of money will eliminate these problems...
...As an example of the latter, see any Veterans Hospital...
...and lastly, that certain traditional economic laws are passe, and therefore can be ignored...
...But we might well ask: 'Can national health insurance even solve the problems that admittedly do exist?' Government has made similar promises in the past: it has promised to solve the problems of agriculture, of housing, of welfare...
...In return, its advocates promise to solve a fictional health crisis...
...And this in no coincidence...
...Despite the talk of doctors getting rich with higher fees, the author proves that doctor's charges have risen only incrementally not even keeping pace with inflation...
...In the debate over medical care, these four assumptions hold almost unopposed sway...
...The propagandists for national health insurance have leveled their attacks on your doctor and on his system of private medical care...
...First is the disposition to treat problems as crises...
...It's not too late to stop the juggernaut...
...In the midst of political and media hysteria over the subject, we have the calming voice of Marvin Henry Edwards, editor of Private Practice magazine, and author of Hazardous to Your Health: A New Look at the 'Health Care Crisis" in AmericaThough Edwards runs a magazine for doctors, he is not a doctor himself, and therefore not personally concerned with the question of whether doctor's fees would go up or down under government medicine...
...second is the notion that government, particularly the national government, has the answers to all our dilemmas...
...For if national health insurance or any of the broad-scale government health programs which have been proposed become law, it is the patient who will pay, in terms of higher medical costs (through increased taxation) and lower quality medical care...
...His latest book The Bewildered Society, was published by Arlington House last spring...
...In fact, he writes: "This is not a pro-doctor book...
...Instead, government intervention has compounded the problems...
...And Senator Kennedy would saddle America with a National Health Plan costing a minimum of $77.billion in its first year...
...Do you and I want to spend from $12 to $80 billion a year to replace private medical care with government medical programs that have failed wherever they have been tried...
...Edwards asserts and, in what will be a surprise to many people, demonstrates that America has no health care crisis...
...Certainly bills up for passage mean less liberty for every American: loss of freedom to choose your own doctor, and loss of privacy-opening of your confidential medical records to federal bureaucrats, without your consent...
...Costs have skyrocketed in hospital charges, the very area where government is mostly intimately involved...
...Edwards proves that the glib advocates of state-run medicine consciously try to deceive the American people with phony statistics, expecially in the infant-mortality area...
...He shows that we have a very healthy ratio of physicians to population, that middle-class Americans spend a small amount of their incomes on medical costs and health insurance and that Americans of all income levels, races and ages are enjoying a virtual health-care boom...
...But if national health insurance is enacted, it well be you, the patient, who will be the victim...
...None of the bills so far proposed in the Congress contain this totalitarian concept, but it may yet come...
...The most frightening, and perhaps most important chapter in the book is entitled: "Has Your Mother Outlived Her Usefulness...
...Impossible as it may seem, if you've recently paid a hospital bill, these costs would zoom still higher under socialized medicine, while the quality of care would deteriorate disastrously...
...Book Review: Hazardous to Your Health by Marvin Henry Edwards Arlington House, $9.95 There are a few "generally accepted assumptions held today in Washington," said Representative Philip M. Crane (Republican-Illinois) in a recent speech at Hillsdale College...
...Doctors have made up the difference by simply working more hours...
...Hazardous to Your Health: A New Look at the "Health Care Crisis" in America is the best book on socialized medicine and what it can mean for America...
...Marvin Edwards also discusses in-depth the alleged doctor-shortage and cost-crisis...
...George Charles Roche III George Roche is the President of Hills-dale College in Hillsdale, Michigan...
...While we could always use more good doctors, Edwards shows that our ratio of one physician to each 640 patients is an excellent one, exceeded by only a few small countries such as Israel...
...This is, instead, a pro-patient book...
...If you are worried about health care, if you are concerned about continuing state encroachment on personal freedom, read this important book...
...Even the American Medical Association has submitted a plan for semi-government medicine...
...In short, government medicine does not work...National health insurance will destroy private insurance in the United States...
...The evidence is clear," concludes Marvin Edwards, "that national health programs are costly and inefficient, and result in greatly reduced standards of medical care...
...As Edwards so succinctly puts it: "Goodbye, Marcus Welby...
Vol. 6 • October 1972 • No. 1
