Word: nationalized
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Exxon has produced a boxlike "alternating current synthesizer" that can be built into new machines or fitted easily to existing electric motors. It will control the speed of electric motors, which burn up about 60% of all electricity generated in the nation. The device uses microprocessor technology to enable an electrical current to be regulated and changed so that it varies from the fixed norm that is established by utilities; in the U.S. the norm is about 115 volts and 60 cycles. Put simply, this means that the speed of a conventional motor can be automatically varied according...
...legislative and political activity underlines a pressing national concern. As recently as 1965 the nation spent $38.9 billion in medical outlays of all kinds (hospital bills, physicians' fees, lab tests). That amounted to 5.9% of total spending for all goods and services. Since then the bill has increased by 429%. This year the total is expected to reach $206 billion, or 9.1% of the gross national product. The White House estimates that at the present rate of increase, medical costs will double every five years, a rise far in excess of inflation. Says Dr. Richard Corlin, president...
...growing number of policymakers, including Carter and Kennedy, are convinced that the nation must slow the surge in health costs as part of any effort to control the general inflation that saps the economy and erodes the dollar. But any attempt to do so must be based on a clear understanding of why those costs are so high in the first place, and that understanding is not easy to acquire. The economics of medicine are so unlike those of any other market that even many doctors and hospital administrators find them illogical. Says Dr. David Thompson, director...
Unquestionably, this system has saved innumerable lives and improved the nation's health by encouraging people to seek medical care that they could not otherwise afford (few could without insurance: total payments to doctors and hospitals will work out to more than $3,500 this year for a typical family of four). But the system could hardly have been better designed to fan inflation than if that had been its purpose. It has in effect repealed for medicine the last vestiges of the law of supply and demand, a free market equivalent of the law of gravity, and made health...
...supply of doctors has increased gradually to 2 per 1,000 population from 1.5 in 1960. But to the chagrin of classical market theorist, no competitive fee cutting has occurred. Indeed, one physician calculates gloomily that every time a new doctor begins practice the nation's medical bills go up another $250,000 a year. Reason: the typical physician generates that much additional business in the tests and hospital admissions...