My View on Health Care

I have been living in Norway off and on for the past 3 and a half years.

I am against health care being controlled by the government. It's really a fundamental position rather than a practical one. I know that socialized medicine works fairly well. I also know, however, that true free-market health care would work at least as good, accept without as much cost.

I do not live in a country with free health care, and neither does anyone else. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is free. Norwegians pay an average income tax of 30%, a tax on the purchase of food of like 15%, a sales tax on non-food grocery items (like soap) at 25%. There are taxes on money you don't spend, there are taxes on inheritance, there are taxes on your social-security payments, there are taxes for owning a TV even if it's sitting in your house not being used, there is paying an average (depends on how many driving hours you end up needing) of 20,000 NOK ($3,365 USD) for a drivers license... I can't even name all the ways the government takes money from the Norwegian people because I've only been here for a few years and have no idea about what taxes on businesses are like accept that I know that the more you earn the higher income tax percentage you pay.

So the most obvious cost to near-"free" health care (as well as near-"free" education and all the welfare programs there are in Norway) are taxes, more than even people from my home state of Taxachusetts can imagine.

The less obvious, yet more important, cost to big government is freedom and choice. For instance: Because of the government near-monopoly on health care, if you want faster or better health care than the government can provide you basically have to be pretty well-off. Another example considering health care: Since the government is paying for it all, naturally the government gets to decide what sort of treatments you can get. This results in that many medicines and treatments that are commonplace in the US are either illegal or highly restricted in Norway.

There is a common over-the-counter cream in the States that I would always use under a band-aid if a got a cut. It protects against infection, relieves pain, and generally helps the cut heal faster and with a smaller chance of scarring. I can't remember the name of it now since it's been so long (I think it starts with an N), but I took a tube of it to a local pharmacist about 3 years ago to see if they sold it. He looked at the active ingredients and looked them up in his big book of medicine, and told me that one of them was available by prescription only, while the other was not yet approved for use in Norway. Meanwhile, the cream had been an over-the-counter drug in the USA for probably 10 years already. That is, I remember using it as a pre-teen. Another example of this sort of thing is that I have yet to use any cold medicine here that works as well as Nyquil.

But like I said, my objections are mostly ideological. Here's how the system works. All emergency care is 100% payed for by taxes. Any doctors appointments, psychologist appointments, medicine on the "blå resept" list, and approved medically necessary travel expenses get listed on a card you have called "Kvitteringskort for egenandeler" (Receipt-card for deductibles). Once you have spent more than 1,840 NOK ($309.57 USD) of your own money that is eligible to be put on the card, you send in the card in along with all your receipts. If everything is in order, they give you a "Frikort", which is a card you carry around with you that is valid until the end of the year which makes all the rest of your medical expenses for the rest of the year "free", or rather payed by the government via taxes.

Also, if you are pregnant you get the following for "free": 1 appointment with the doctor or jordmor (earth-mother, midwife which extra education in pregnancy and child-birth assistance) every 4 weeks, 1 ultrasound around week 18 of the pregnancy, and any extra care or ultrasounds that the doctor or jordmor deems necessary as a result of any complications. Our child isn't due 'till May, but I have heard stories from many that when the time comes they are reluctant to let you come to the hospital until you are 100% sure that the baby is coming. Then you get a minimum of 3 days at the hospital, longer if the baby is premature or something else complicates things. They are generally much more reluctant to give c-sections than in the States, but this varies slightly compared to where in the country you live. I do not know weather the government pays for abortions.

As for waiting lines for non-emergency care: they definitely exist. I had to wait 6 months for an appointment with a psychologist. This was not an anomaly, it was general policy written in the letter I received after my main doctor sent an appointment request on my behalf. I think they might have expedited it if I was feeling suicidal or something like that though. In a more serious case than mine though, I have a friend whose arm is permanently damaged because of waiting lines to get surgery. He used to be a waiter, but can no longer handle to load of bringing dishes to and from the kitchen.

Despite this, I must still admit that my problem with socialized medicine is much more ideological than practical. The Norwegian system does indeed work better for more people, in a practical sense, than the current U.S. system. However, I believe the U.S. system could be fixed via the use of more free-market principles. Any solution that allows for more personal freedom and responsibility is inherently better than a solution that puts power into the hands of the few.

Here are some things I believe would make the American system much better.

1. Allow the purchase of health insurance across state lines. This would automatically increase competition dramatically. Prices would go down while quality would go up, just like when competition increased in the car market or the computer market etc.
2. Make health insurance companies have to follow the law based on which State their headquarters are in. The State that has the best health care laws would get the most health insurance businesses. Based on that, other states could improve their own health care laws by copying the states which attract the most health insurance companies.
3. Doctors often give extra unnecessary tests for two reasons. The first reason is that they are afraid of getting sued. The second reason is because the health insurance covers it. I have read research that suggests doctors would be less willing to recommend unnecessary tests if they knew that their patient was paying out-of-pocket. Thus, if more people used health savings accounts, the cost of health care would decrease.
4. Make all legitimate health expenses tax-deductible, so people with lots of health problems would have a much lower tax burden.
5. Make the sale of all medical equipment and medicine completely tax-free. This would reduce the cost to hospitals, doctors etc. which would be eventually passed down to patients
6. Generally get rid of as many government programs as possible in order to get rid of as many taxes as possible. With less taxes to pay, the people would have more money to pay for their medical expenses and spend money in other ways that would create jobs for those who do not have them. The more money people have in their own pockets, the more money also they will give to charities which help the uninsured.
7. Either use force to kick out all illegal aliens, or give them all legal status. Their presence here as illegals, unable to by health insurance or demand higher wages, is a financial burden on emergency rooms everywhere.
8. Either end or dramatically change the Federal Reserve in order to prevent these financial bubbles and bursts which cause major economic havoc that in tern causes problems to being able to pay for medical care.

I am sure there in much more we could do to improve our country by reducing government power rather than increasing it. One place that I get much of my inspiration from is the Downsize DC Foundation. To check out some of their views on health care, click here. You can find more information on health care and other topics of interest by reading their blog archive by category or checking out their other campaigns.

I hope that isn't too much and you find it useful.

In Love and Liberty,

Christopher D. Osborn
Siggerud, Ski, Akershus, Norge

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Nepal: Ani-poverty Initiative Launched

Through The Rising Nepal (via Google News) I've learned about a partnership between The Universal Peace Federation (UPF) - Nepal, Healing Touch, Pepsi Co., and The Chaudhary Group which takes a conservative and spiritual approach to ending poverty.

In the article below, they mention that the focus of the initiative is to enable microfinance institutions to rise up to serve the poor community. Wikipedia, has a really great article on it.

The basic idea is that poor communities don't have financial institutions in order to get loans or to save money and earn interest, and if they had some they might rise up to be not such poor communities.

A poor farmer with no land could improve his situation, for instance, if he could afford a loan to buy better irrigation equipment or more land. The poor guy might not even have proper title to the land he has because of his messed up government, so commercial financial institutions, in the interest of protecting themselves and their other customers, can't risk giving him the loan. Developing microfinance works to fix this problem, without just giving away money so that people still have their dignity and learn to help themselves better so that they grow not to need any help(or even grow enough to be able to help others, as the UPF would especially hope).

Here's something from Wikipedia that really sums it up well.

Key principles of microfinance

Key principles of microfinance were developed in 2004 by Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and endorsed by the Group of Eight leaders at the G8 Summit on June 10th, 2004. Among the key principles, summarizing a century and a half of development practice, are the following:

• 1. Poor people need a variety of financial services, not just loans.
• 4. Microfinance can pay for itself, and must do so if it is to reach very large numbers of poor people.
• 5. Microfinance is about building permanent local financial institutions.
• 8. The job of government is to enable financial services, not to provide them.
• 10. The key bottleneck is the shortage of strong institutions and managers.^[3]

More generally, the Principles assert that “Microfinance means building financial systems that serve the poor.” Financial systems include strong financial institutions but also much more: more competitive financial markets, better government regulatory services and better complementary services (practitioner education, auditing, etc.)

I hope it all works out, and pray especially that nobody involved in this gets greedy and tries to take advantage of the poor in Nepal.

The Universal Peace Federation has an even more detailed article by Robert Kittel (A UPI Correspondent) on it which can be read here.

He sums it up like this:

The four-party alliance will create a nationwide movement to enable underprivileged sections of the population throughout Nepal to achieve economic self-sufficiency through a combination of micro-financing and in-kind product loans, coupled with basic business training and a grassroots support system.

Below is the article from Rising Nepal.

Main News Anti-poverty initiative launched [ 2008-3-13 ] Print By A Staff Reporter Kathmandu, Mar. 12: The Universal Peace Federation-Nepal, Healing Touch, Pepsi Co. and The Chaudhary Group Tuesday launched a joint initiative to uplift the existing standard of the poor in Nepal. The project's aim is to realise the motto of Project Healing Touch: "Make poverty history�. The project envisages micro-level support to increase the income-generating capacity and employment opportunities in areas with high levels of poverty and will be with the support of the both the corporate sector and civil society in India and Nepal. K.V Rajan, the former Indian Ambassador to Nepal, chairing the programme said that accumulation of wealth without being guided by social responsibility would not be justifiable. Nirvana Chaudhary, executive director of Chaudhary Group said that micro-finance was the most effective tool to alleviate poverty. The project aims at enabling those in the most vulnerable sections of society to earn a respectable living, be self- supporting, make a contribution to society, and live in dignity inspired by three of the fundamental pillars in the UPF philosophy as-that sustainable peace can only be built on the principle of living for the sake of others, that irrespective of religion, language, cultural or ethnic background we are essentially "One Family Under God,� and UPF's wholehearted support to fulfill the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. The project will initially focus on families that have suffered as a result of conflict over the past decade. It will purposely select families that have been victims of violence from both sides of the conflict. It has been agreed that pilot projects would be immediately developed in Kathmandu, Biratnagar and Gorkha, and then expanded as quickly as possible to the entire nation. To ensure the success of the project, Pepsi Nepal said it would oversee commercial viability, monitor the projects, conduct on-site training, and further develop the corporate social responsibility concept in Nepal.

Another, entirely unrelated thing I wanted to mention, was sex. Basically, there's an article by Alan Farnham of Forbes describing how healthy it is to make love. For me, it really shows how important our sexual organs were to God when he designed them, and it seems to me that we were designed so well to make love to our spouse often and throughout our married lives.

Those poor Catholics (as well as others) are not only inciting their priests towards child molestation by not allowing them to marry, and not only are they simply and truly preventing God's plan from taking effect, but they are going against keeping their priests and nuns healthy.

Here's the article, which is not religious at all. Goodnight. I hope that, for your spiritual and physical health, you're lucky enough to have your spouse beside you tonight, or even during the day.

Goodnight.

Possible Future Malaria Vaccine

It may be too late for the millions, or perhaps even billions of people throughout history who have been infected with Malaria. However, it looks like there might be some hope for the future generations in a research project being held in Tanzania, where Malaria is the nations #1 killer and my lovely wife is practicing Physical Therepy at a medical facility in Moshi, Kilimanjaro province.

I have Google News customized into different categories. You might guess that I have the election, the UPF, the Unification Church, and others as extra categories. Among these extra news search categories I've added I also have Tanzania so I can keep track of the goings on in the country which currently engulfs my girl. That's how I ended up finding the fallowing article on nationmedia.com from The East African.

Malaria vaccine undergoes clinical trials in Tanzania

By A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
The EastAfrican

Researchers at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) in Tanga Region are carrying out a clinical trial to evaluate the safety and immunological potential of a candidate malaria vaccine called MSP3-LSP.

Speaking to The EastAfrican in Dar es Salaam last week, the principal researcher for the trial, Dr John Lusingu, said the launch of the new vaccine would take place in Korogwe District.

The term MSP3-LSP stands for merozoite surface protein 3-long synthetic peptide. Similar tests were conducted successfully for healthy adults in Switzerland and Burkina Faso.

Dr Lusinga added that the two different dosages (15 and 30 microgrammes) of MSP3 are now being tested in a staggered process among child populations to further demonstrate its safety and any immediate or delayed adverse effects.

The trial is being run by a team of NIMR-Tanga researchers at the Kwashemshi Vaccination Centre in Korogwe district, said Dr Lusinga.

The study, which was approved by the Tanzania National Health Research Ethics Review Committee and the Tanzania Food and Drugs Authority, involves 45 healthy, randomly selected children aged one to two years.

Dr Lusinga said the researcher has divided children into two groups comprising 23 and 22 children respectively. In the first group, 15 children are receiving a lower dose (15 microgrammes) of the test vaccine MSP3, while the remaining eight (control group) are receiving Hepatitis B vaccine.

According to Dr Lusingu, in the second group, 15 children are receiving a higher dose (30 microgrammes) of MSP3 and the remaining 7 (control group) are also receiving a Hepatitis B vaccine.

Immunisations in the two groups are staggered. In the second group, they are administered two weeks later after a thorough safety evaluation of the outcome of vaccination with the lower dose.

Each child will receive a total of three immunisations.

“Malaria accounts for 80 per cent of deaths among children below five in Tanzania.

We are very proud to be part of a process aimed at finding lasting solutions against Tanzania’s biggest killer,” Dr Lusinga said.

Dr Lusingu has assured the public that children will be closely monitored during the entire study period of 13 months.

The African Malaria Network Trust (Amanet) is sponsoring the study. In September last year, the Dar es Salaam based non-governmental organisation donated $50,000 to the National Institute for Medical Research for a project that will run for three years.

The Health Research Ethics (HRE) project, which the money will fund, aims at strengthening ethical practices in health research in Tanzania.

The project will also involve activities aimed at improving the ethical review committees at NIMR centres and stations.

According to Amanet managing trustee, Prof Wen Kilama, the HRE project will also enable the committees to conduct meetings regularly and review proposals using agreed standard operating procedures.

“Through this streamlining and empowerment of institutional research ethics committees, NIMR will be addressing the overall problem of a rising workload of proposals waiting to be reviewed, and at the same time ensure that the safety and wellbeing of human health research participants are protected,” said Prof Kilama.

Prof Kilama added that, besides funding for this trial, Amanet has contributed extensively in capacity strengthening, trial site development and training at NIMR-Tanga.

The mechanisms mediating protection in humans were analysed by clinical experiments of passive protection in patients, and the main mechanism, which was employed to screen the ca. 5300 proteins of the malaria parasite (Plasmodium falciparum), identified MSP3 as the main target.

Click here for an informative PDF of the subject of malaria vaccines.

Click here for a more detailed article on this particular study.

This is Fipher posting from Vineyard Haven, MA, & hoping for you the keep healthy.