Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
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Readers of the NYT article on Donald Trump’s pick to be Secretary of Health and Human Services might have gotten this impression. The piece told readers:
“His [Price’s] resentment of government intervention in medicine drove Mr. Price to become involved in the Medical Association of Georgia early in his career, and his work there led him to run for office in 1995, when the House seat in his district opened up.”
If Mr. Price really does resent government intervention then surely he would be outraged by protectionist rules that prohibit hundreds of thousands of qualified doctors from practicing medicine in the United States and bringing doctors’ pay in line with pay in other wealthy countries. (Doctors can’t practice medicine in the United States unless they complete a U.S. residency program.)
Presumably, Mr. Price is also outraged by government granted patent monopolies that raise drugs by ten or even a hundred times their free market price. These protections are equivalent to tariffs of several thousand percent. The story is the same with medical equipment which is also made expensive by these government interventions. (We need a mechanism to pay for innovation, but there are more efficient routes. See Rigged, chapter 5 [it’s free]).
If Mr. Price doesn’t object to protectionism for doctors and drug companies then the NYT is wrong in saying that he has resentment of government intervention in medicine. It seems more plausible that Price resents government actions that reduce the incomes of doctors. It would be helpful if the Times did not confuse these issues.