Keith Smith co-founded the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, which describes itself as a “free market-loving, price-displaying, state-of-the-art, AAAHC accredited, doctor owned, multispecialty surgical facility in central OK.” In a recent interview, Smith advised “not to consider the poor in the aggregate.”
They are individuals; and I believe that individuals that do not have the means to secure care that they want or need should be treated as individuals–partly because, to consider them in the aggregate is to beg for a centralized solution that will fail them and ultimately will just ration to them.
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I think that the first way to address the problem of the poor is to just have a whole lot fewer of them by making sure prices are mashed down. And then, the issue of the poor is very much more manageable. I believe that it’s a local and and individual solution that–it’s individual, per patient. Because otherwise you court the disaster of a national centralized solution that will do anything but deliver quality and care to those people.
