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Oklahoma Doctors vs. Obamacare
Surgery center provides free-market medicine.
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Three years ago, Dr. Keith
Smith, co-founder and managing partner of the Surgery Center of
Oklahoma, took an initiative that would only be considered radical in
the health care industry: He posted online a list of prices for 112
common surgical procedures. The 51-year-old Smith, a self-described
libertarian, and his business partner, Dr. Steve Lantier, founded the
Surgery Center 15 years ago, after they became disillusioned with the
way patients were treated at St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City,
where the two men worked as anesthesiologists. In 1997, Smith and
Lantier bought the shell of a former surgical center with the aim of
creating a for-profit facility that could deliver first-rate care at a
fraction of what traditional hospitals charge.
The major cause of exploding U.S. heath care costs is the third-party
payer system, a text-book concept in which A buys goods or services
from B that are paid for by C. Because private insurance companies or
the government generally pick up most of the tab for medical services,
patients don't have the normal incentive to seek out value. [Full
article]
Many
people today would be shocked to learn that this thinking, anyway, was
pretty standard in the days before Hillary Clinton began her attack on
our health care system. An attack that culminated with Obamacare.
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Using the words 'thinking' and 'democrat' in the same phase is like using beauty and Roseanne Barr in the sentance.
ReplyDeleteTim
Love, love this post. What great doctors. Just had this discussion with my husband following my foot surgery. Actually, three surgeries on one foot, and the hospital bill alone was 18K. This was an outpatient procedure and we're still waiting for all the doctors' bills to arrive. We assume inflated hospital bills are due to hospitals recovering costs for those who don't pay, but we didn't consider the enormous salaries of administrators. Oh, the waste.
ReplyDeleteIn '94 I had an ACF C5-6 at a private surgery center opened by the neurosurgeon himself. We had an HMO at the time, so he dickered with the insurance company on a price they could both be happy with and I had the best surgery I could have received.
If Ok didn't have tornadoes, it could've been a contender on our short list. Lots 'o conservatives there. And home state to our S-I-L.
No worries -- once they're done chasing down UPS for carrying packages [the contents of which they deem not their business] they'll be all over this fella like a ProgProle on a hand-out.
ReplyDeletee~C