Mark Perry writes:
Venn Diagram of the Day on the intellectual inconsistency in the minds of those who understand that government price controls in Venezuela create shortages, long lines and misery, but who apparently don’t understand that it’s also price controls for kidneys (and other organs), i.e. a price fixed at zero, that create kidney shortages, long lines (the kidney waiting list is now at a record high 101,616 candidates), misery and death (13.5 patients died every day last year while waiting for a kidney) for those desperately waiting for a kidney transplant.
It's worse than just a waiting list for transplants. The US government took over dialysis treatment as what they now call 'single payer' back in the 1960s. Thus the treatment was frozen there. What was affordable and doable in the 1960s, 3 times a week dialysis became the standard.
ReplyDeleteThere have been advancements (short daily dialysis for instance) that vastly improve outcomes but the US government's stranglehold works against these advancements. The federal government has squeezed all the profit out of treatment leaving the profit for clinics and hospitals to be in the drugs and other things needed for the complications caused by the primitive treatment. This works against improved treatments that eliminate complications but not vastly less costly than 3X/week.