Text 3448, 170 rader
Skriven 2006-07-06 08:19:00 av Robert E Starr JR (3921.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
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@MSGID: <lcsoa250p28u7vepffii31jc390dukfeai@4ax.com>
@REPLY: <kurtullman-347578.16595402072006@news.west.earthlink.net>
On Wed, 05 Jul 2006 13:09:19 GMT, Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>In article <35ula25dsrl52p32ktvcusr192mg6s1d4a@4ax.com>,
> Josh Hill <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 3 Jul 2006 19:23:20 -0700, "ravend03x" <rkimd3@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> >
>> >Ideologically, it does make sense, but the majority of stakeholders
>> >(medicare/medicaid, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, for
>> >profit hospitals, etc) have some choice words about universal health
>> >care...
>> 
>> That's a good sign that it's long overdue.
>> 
>> The facts suggest that universal health care would be better on every
>> account -- better care, care for more people, lower individual cost,
>> lower overall cost -- except the profits of insurance and drug
>> companies companies.
>
>  Longer waits, lower quality of life scores, fewer choices in 
>treatment, higher levels of disability (all shown by studies of Canada 
>and/or British systems w/in last five years). The other systems are by 
>no means all sweetness and light.. when you get sick..just like ours. 
>Different set of trade off. 

The studies I've read about show dramatically better statistics where
it counts, health and cost. And note that I'm not suggesting
socialized medicine, or suggesting the UK as a model -- other
countries, including Canada, have systems much better than the UK's --
France, Germany, what have you.

In that context, it's interesting to note that the US /Government/
already spends more per capita on medical care than the governments of
France, Canda, and Germany. Yet those countries provide free universal
care with that money and their health care statistics are better than
ours. So we could provide better health care to everybody in the
country with the money the government is already spending, give the
rest back to the voters, and eliminate the cost of private health
insurance.

Something is /very/ wrong with this picture. Since we spend more than
twice what they do per capita, we should be able to take some of what
we spend, provide a service that's even better than theirs, and return
the surplus to the public. Or, alternatively, /reduce/ the size of
government, which should appeal to conservatives.

>> >> > The big problem I have with, say, a government run health care system
is
>> >> > that....well...the government would be running the health care system. 
>> >> > ;-)
>> 
>> >Ain't that the truth... the sheer inertia is in itself mind-boggling!
>> 
>> Government wouldn't run the health care system under any proposal I'm
>> aware of. It would merely handle the insurance. And consider this:
>> Medicare is much more efficient than private plans, and /already/ sets
>> insurance rates.
>> 
>      But they aren't more efficient and they set rates that are lower 
>than private insurances. Also, as we are seeing in Canada and Britain 
>and Germany, when budgets come from government, they rise and fall based 
>on political consideration.  Canada is saying that they will have to 
>spend several billion dollars on maintenance and new buildings because 
>the previous administrations (even up north it is always previous 
>administrations) neglected capital improvement needs. Also, I have never 
>seen EVERY nurse (all 5,144) in a state submit their resignations over 
>lack of pay increases as happened in BC in 2001. 

OTOH, we have a severe nursing shortage and a lot of nurses leaving on
their own -- low pay, work loads that don't allow them to care for
their patients. And that last is due to the economic pressures of
managed care, which every doctor and nurse I've ever spoken to about
it considers a health care disaster.

But again, we aren't talking about socialized medicine -- rather
Medicare.

That being said, I agree that there are drawbacks to Medicare,
including rates that are sometimes too low (and sometimes too high),
stingy bureaucratic requirements (e.g., they required my father to
return his unpowered wheelchair when he got an electric one, even
though he needed both -- the electric wheelchair wouldn't fit in a car
or cab and he didn't have the strength to manipulate the manual one
when he was on his own), silly paperwork, stupid bureaucrats, what
have you.

It's just that, when all is said and done, it seems to be a lot better
than the system that we have now. And in truth, I haven't heard many
Medicare recipients, many of whom had private plans before they turned
65, asking to get rid of it. On the contrary, anyone who proposed
abolishing Medicare and going back to private plans would disappear
under a hail of cane blows.

>> Also, it's complex and hard to understand, the government was banned
>> from negotiating with the drug companies over prices, and elderly
>> people were banned from buying cheap drugs in Canada!
>
>  But the individual plans were free to negotiate to their little hearts 
>content. Humana for its plan, Anthem for their, etc.

Except that according to what I've read the individual plans don't
have the size necessary to get the best deals. Witness the fact that
drugs purchased in Canada are a lot cheaper.

>  They were banned 
>from buying drugs over the internet, they can still go to Canada and buy 
>them.

No they can't, or not most of them. What are they going to do, spend
$400 on a plane ticket so they can fill a prescription? What was
banned were the group purchases that people and organizations were
using to buy the same drugs for lower cost. And there's only one
reason that those were banned: the Bush Administration and the
Republican Congress were in the pay of the drug companies. Because
there's no conceivable way that Canadian pharmaceuticals, which are
the same damn pharmaceuticals we buy here sold by pharmacies that are
regulated according to standards like our own, actually harm the
American public.

> Actually I always thought it hypocritical for the Dems to make 
>such a big fuss about it, since over the Internet there was no way to 
>know who you were buying from and even what you were really buying.

Give me a break. I buy medications on the Internet all the time,
sometimes from here, sometimes abroad. There is no difference between
ordering something from a licensed pharmacy in Canada and ordering it
from a licensed pharmacy here. None. Except that the medicine from
Canada is cheaper because the Canadian government negotiates prices
which the Republicans won't allow /our/ government to do.

No, if they'd really been afraid of fly-by-night operators, they would
have set up a registry of authorized pharmacies in industrial
countries. But instead, they sold us out to drug company campaign
contributors. Shameful.

> But 
>I am sure when the first batch of bad medicine made it in, it would have 
>been teh FDA's fault..

Yeah, right, people were dropping right and left from bad Canadian
medicine. 

Kurt, why not just call a bunch of greedy corporation-owned Republican
hack legislators what they are? Why go to such lengths to ignore the
facts?

-- 
Josh

"I love it when I'm around the country club, and I hear people talking about
the debilitating
effects of a welfare society. At the same time, they leave their kids a
lifetime and beyond
of food stamps. Instead of having a welfare officer, they have a trust officer.
And instead
of food stamps, they have stocks and bonds."

- Warren Buffett
                                                                               
                    
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