“In all of politics, there is only one question and that is, “who decides”? Should the nexus of decision making be the coercive power of the state or individuals making decisions for themselves? Only individuals working with their doctors can hold all of the information about their unique situation. This decision-making should not be abdicated to a nameless faceless bureaucracy that cannot know what is best for everyone. I worked as doctor in Canada or many years and the people there have chosen the nameless faceless bureaucracy over individual autonomy. The result is a system rife with dysfunction and a paucity of quality care. When I was Medical Director for Diagnostic Imaging in Thunder Bay, Canada, our wait time for a CT scan was seven months and for an MRI scan, it was 13 months. Many in the US desire that we go down the path of more government control of health care. Dr. Sabrin proposes a better way. One based on individual decision making empowering the sacrosanct doctor-patient relationship for the best possible care and with rational pricing predicated on competition and choice. It is time that we heed Dr. Sabrin’s advice.”
Lee Kurisko MD, Author; Health Reform – The End of the American Revolution?
“Economics is our most beneficial science. Its practitioners seek to demonstrate how to increase well being for all participants in markets. They’ve delivered their promise in many of those markets, but the American medical care market is not one of them.
“Economist Murray Sabrin demonstrates why. Another term for freedom of choice in markets is personal responsibility. Throughout life, we accept and embrace individual accountability as we pursue betterment for ourselves and others. Except in medical care, where we have forfeited responsibility to an array of special interests who want us to be sick. Foremost among those are governments, for whom sickness means dependency, on which they thrive. Pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies embrace sickness-as-a-business. Big food, big alcohol, and big tobacco don’t help.
“Sabrin identifies two routes out of this dead end. First, personal responsibility for the pursuit of well being. Good personal practice based on readily available information about diet, nutrition, exercise and good habits could eliminate up to 80% of chronic ill-health conditions of the US population. Second, personal responsibility for payment and use of medical services, based on the individual as single-payer, health savings accounts, catastrophic insurance, plus the charitable and community services that emerge in healthy populations, would replace the convoluted unaffordable government-designed regulatory, payment and delivery bureaucracy.
“This book is deeply researched, incisively informative, logically sound, and highly persuasive about the right future for medical care in America. Since the current state is demonstrably unsustainable, Sabrin’s book is vital.”
Hunter Hastings, Economics For Business, Mises Institute
