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2007-07-12 Home Front: Politix

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Posted by Mike 2007-07-12 00:36|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top

#1 And some bad stuff.

The bit about using government funds/regulations to create more physicians has already been tried, in a subfield of medicine. This is an interesting case study known by those who study business but few others.

In the 1970's the government established capitation plans for universities to create more seats in their dental school classes, and for universities which did not have dental schools to create them. This was done with the idea of creating enough dentists to break the back of the fee structure, greatly decrease the cost of dentistry, and therefore (supposedly) increase the amount of dental care received by low-income Americans.

This failed miserably. The architects of this notion (leftists in that era - interesting that this idea is now espoused by someone on the right) did not account for several factors. First, they assumed that the cost of the service was the only thing preventing the public from using it at higher rates. It turned out that cultural, personal, and geographic distribution factors were equally as important. So from the standpoint of increasing utility, the plan didn't work.

Additionally, they didn't take into account the fixed costs of operating a dental office, and that areas with sufficient population to justify those fixed costs and enough cash flow to live were already saturated. More and more dentists crowded into the same areas that already had dentists. As a result, many dentists went bankrupt (again, this is not know by probably 99.9% of the general public who probably assume that all dentists are wealthy types). In fact, loan officers in banks were obliged to considerably lower their assessment of dentists during the 1980's in many parts of the country.

The end result has been that as soon as the capitation went away in the late 1980's, dental schools (even good ones) were been forced to close and others have reduced class size.

Government intervention to tweak the market like this won't work. Training professionals in any field is expensive and market forces once the professionals are out working are complicated. If you create twice as many professionals who can't earn enough to live in their field, their services won't be available to the public anyways, and you haven't helped anybody.

Posted by no mo uro 2007-07-12 06:03|| 2007-07-12 06:03|| Front Page Top

#2 So whaddabout the other nine, no mo uro?

I liked pretty much all of 'em, except I am skeptical that government pressures for more doctors is the answer; tort reform and less red tape - somehow - might be more beneficial.

But I can see the MSM and the left-wing liberal losers having a lot of fun with the list, and their 'sound bite' interpretation thereof. Can we get Dan Rather back to report on the subject?

Posted by Bobby 2007-07-12 07:53|| 2007-07-12 07:53|| Front Page Top

#3 I like most of them, just not the ones about health care and trains.

Some of the others need a little tweaking, too.

Posted by no mo uro 2007-07-12 08:02|| 2007-07-12 08:02|| Front Page Top

#4 Bad ideas, and bad politics. Nothing new here.

Posted by JSU 2007-07-12 08:14|| 2007-07-12 08:14|| Front Page Top

#5 I think 6 or 7 of them are feasible. A couple are pie in the sky. His immigration thoughts are weak imho. Also, I didn't get how he's going to execute the "culture" policy. I like #1 though.

Posted by Broadhead6 2007-07-12 10:16|| 2007-07-12 10:16|| Front Page Top

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