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Posted by Kris Krieger on July 17, 2007, 12:36 am
>> Pat wrote:
>> >> "3D Peruna"> wrote
>>
>> >>> I also know that government involvement in health care is what's
>> >>> caused this mess,
>> >>> Get the government out of health care and it will get better for
>> >>> rich and poor alike....
>> >> You better straighten up your act, freeloader.
>> >> Some of the people around here are gonna start calling you names,
>> >> and crying, and other little gurl tactics.
>> >> Got any spare yellow cake you wanna barter? ;-)
>>
>> > This was put in by New York's previous governor, who was a
>> > "conservative" Republican.
>>
>> I don't know what "conservative Republican" means anymore.
>>
>> >http://www.ins.state.ny.us/website2/hny/english/hnyec.htm
>>
>> > Between this, Family Health Plus and Child Health Plus, NYS nearly
>> > has universal health care.
>>
>> And that makes it good/right/proper?
>>
>> Nobody has ever made a logical argument that explains why governments
>> should provide food/housing/medical care to people. It simply is not
>> the role and function of goverments. I don't agree with Don that
>> there should be no governments. Governments need to be limited to
>> the few things that they're good for. Otherwise stay out.
>>
>> Private individuals will do a far better job of dealing with the poor
>> & needy. I don't speak from an "academic" position, but somebody
>> who's seen my parents struggle through some serious health &
>> financial issues, and other people who, because of the system, are
>> unable get out of it--as it's designed to keep them in it, not get
>> them out of it. I've seen organizations do much better with far less
>> money to help those who actually need and deserve the help. Get the
>> government out of it and it will get better (but not before we get
>> through a small painful transitional period).
>
> We tried the "all private sector" approach before and found it didn't
> work as well as we had hoped. There was a little thing called "The
> Great Depression". While their purposes and effects may have changed,
> many of these programs are from that era and were designed to stop
> that from happening again. They may not be great, but they seems to
> have worked so far.
>
>
Uh, there were no HMOs until fairly recently - i.e., IIRC, about 20 years
ago.
I remember when Emergency Rooms were for *emergencies*, but people were
not turned away from teh ER because of "overcrowding". I remember when
you paid your physician directly - and none of them overcharged because
then they'd never get any business. I also remember when peopel went
into medicine because they wanted to be physicians - and even tho' the
pay was decent, they still lived in the same town as "the little people",
and you could call your doctor preety much any time of day or night if
you had something serious going on.
Yeah, there have been a lot of medical advances, and many of th enew
procedures do cost a lot - it's a matter of specialized production of
equipment, specialized training for professionals, an dso on. And yeah,
pharmaceuticals ain't cheap, even if one stopped the blatant theft that
goes on.
But part of the problem is that HMOs come between patients and
physicians, to the detriment of both. Part of the problem is that the
emphasis is not on wellness, but on trying to treat disease after it
happens, rather than trying to do things that will prevent or at least
mitigate disease. And partof th eproblemis that too much money is goign
into bureaucracies (andinevitably getting lost) rather than goign
directly to pay for services and research and so on.
IOW, there are waaaaay too many middlemen.
It'ssort of like buying peaches. If you go to the Farmer's Market and
buy peaches from the grower, you pay less, and the grower make smore,
because there aren't 7 layers of middlemen all taking a cut. It's not
all that different, at least not in principle.
The problem with gov.t getting involved is that it adds layers of
bureaucracy - middlemen - and each layer dilutes the funding. Adding
even *more* gov.t (i.e. layers of bureaucracy) to the mix is only going
to make things worse.
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