The genius of Milton Friedman is that his economic insights are as powerful as they are timeless. Despite the fact that these comments were made more than thirty years ago in 1978 at the Mayo Clinic, they ring as true today as they did then. Milton Friedman’s six-part video series below on the economics of medical care is especially timely, in light of the fact that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Obamacare this week and Milton Friedman predicted in this lecture that increased government involvement in health care would lead inevitably to completely socialized medicine. This Mayo Clinic lecture is also a testament to Milton Friedman’s effectiveness at delivering the message of individual liberty and limited government in a convincing and non-threatening way, as Milton explains diplomatically to an audience of physicians how the “power of organized medicine” led to significant restrictions on entry to their profession through the American Medical Association’s control over occupational licensing for physicians, which has contributed to the rising costs of medical care.
Also I think it should be noted that Obamacare prohibits the construction of new physician-owned hospitals like the Mayo Clinic.
