Thoughts on Healthcare

Published by admin on Wed, 10/15/2025 - 8:37am

By:

Fritz Groszkruger

Older and wiser is not necessarily a hard and fast rule. Upon realizing that a dead ash tree would eventually fall on the fence we were building, I decided to get it on the ground before dark. I hurried. Not wise. I did a perfect job, with a nice hinge it fell right where I planned for it to fall.

Next, this old fool hardly started limbing it when he cut the one keeping the entire tree from rolling over onto him. I found myself lying on my back screaming in pain like a little baby. I could move my parts enough to get into the car and to the ER. I’m not Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis so Dawn drove.

I found out that the ER is like medical care used to be. There’s a problem. Let’s see what it is. Let’s fix it. Medicine outside the ER is like school, 90% having little to do with getting things done. I get 4-page surveys of multiple choice questions so the hospital can be improved. Now I write back just to do what needs to be done and ignore Medicare and insurance.

When I moved to Dumont in 1977 I could see a doctor (actually a physician's assistant), he’d treat the problem, and then he would ask what else he could do for me. After a short chit-chat I paid my $13 and was on my way with a constructive outcome.

At the ER they drew some blood and analyzed it, and did a CT scan. I got some morphine in my bottom and pills to take home and they assured me I wasn’t going to be paralyzed by a compression fracture of a couple lumbar vertebrae.

Veterinarians and doctors both have to attend eight years of college. Our son had a sweet dog (Alice) who had a broken leg that required surgery with hardware. It cost $1,600 to get her fixed up and she hunted for several years after that. A broken human leg would cost $20,000 to $100,000.

I Googled “compare veterinary costs to medical costs.” My eyes nearly popped out of my head at the results. They explained why the vet costs more than the doctor. What? Reading on, the idea was that few people carry insurance for veterinary care so they only surveyed out of pocket costs. Google readers need critical thinking.

The difference is how the system gets paid. During the 1930s there was some government help for healthcare. Then Lyndon Johnson’s administration passed Medicare in 1965. Think about how often we go to the doctor before we are 65 years old. A huge percentage of medical business was removed from the discipline of millions of voluntary transactions in 1965.

People look at Richard Nixon as evil because he allegedly hired burglars to spy on Democrats. But he cut the dollar’s ties to gold and instituted wage and price controls. Both of those things were way more destructive than his dirty tricks.

With wage controls, the only way to hire or retain better employees was to offer benefits. This led to group plans, basically instituting a one-size-fits-all healthcare system. Before that, wages were important. Workers shopped for doctors and insurance. Insurance cost was based on the insured's potential cost to the company. Now, many people consider a job solely on what medical benefits are offered. Lifestyle choices and provider choices were trivialized.

As I ring the bell outside Fareway and watch shoppers come and go it is obvious that there is a huge part of the population that could not care less about their health and medical costs.

The difference between costs for veterinary services and human medical services is government involvement. Politicians want to help. But they ignore human nature and are subject to pressure from special interests. The AMA (American Medical Association) actually finagled Congress into limiting the number of doctors through restricting residencies to prop-up doctors’ incomes. Pharmaceutical subsidies have created an environment of pill taking over basic nutrition and exercise.

The government has mostly left the veterinary business alone.

Please contribute to this discussion with a letter to the editor or directly to me at 4selfgovernment@gmail.com