My favorite - Michigan Shouldn't Copy Canada's Health System
For later arguments
The American people won’t be able to claim they were not warned.
Actually, I think Australia’s Medicare system works well - about the only socialist idea I’ve ever seen that does. I think it works because Australians also have the choice of private care alongside if they want it and are willing to pay (or have insurance).
Thank you, LL
It’s so horrible we’ve just got to try it. The only reason I can see for socalized medicine is if you want to kill off elderly pensioners so you have to pay out less in social security.
I'd be curious to hear from FReepers down under or others who have familiarity.
Major PING. Great post.
Thank you so much for posting this...scary but necessary information.
I really do not understand the health care crisis in American, I have had health insurance and currently do not, yet I have never been denied any care at any clinic or hospital.
get it through your thick head that the failures of socialized healthcare around the world doesn’t matter because the right people haven’t implemented it! Now we have the right people with BaCock and that racist wife of his Michelle!
Just give them a chance to prove 150 years of failed socialism was just a fluke!
:P
Bookmarked! Thank you.
The cold, hard, reality is that each of us is entitled to the health care we can purchase, either directly or indirectly through an insurance package we can purchase. Anything beyond our ability to pay is charity.
Sadly, as medication takes longer to develop and as instrumentation becomes more complicated to build and maintain, cost becomes prohibitive. At some point, one must choose between having the family housed, clothed, and fed and one person taking all the resources for medical care. Each decision must be made on an individual case-by-case basis by the people affected and paying the bills. Only then are we truly free.
Conservatives are going to loose, and socialized medicine will become the norm in America, UNLESS conservatives get their act together and start selling market-based healthcare, something we don’t have and haven’t had for a long, long, long time.
It’s time to channel your inner libertarian and start railing against the subsidies from Medicare and Medicaid that squeeze heavy prices onto private, non-subsidized consumers. It’s time to take on the AMA and occupational licensing. Yes, I’m calling for an end to licensing doctors and replacing the licensing scheme with voluntary certification. Why? Look up Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, and his work on occupational licensing. He called for the same thing, and this was before costs sky-rocketed.
To put it bluntly, the left has completely captured this debate. They own in. They’ve managed to frame the debate in terms of government handouts for free versus super-expensive private insurance. Anybody with a brain can see that the high cost of healthcare in this country has zilch to do with insurance companies (whose premiums merely reflect provider costs) and EVERYTHING to do with providers. Unfortunately, doctors have so much respect and political clout that nobody outside of the economics profession talks of taking them on.
Why does it cost an arm and a leg to have a cast put on or get some antibiotics for a cold? Licensing laws require doctors to be present, even if only for five minutes or to do something like give a shot, while nurses and the like do the bulk of the work. Modifying licensing laws won’t help, as these laws are invariably written by those in the occupations (doctors write the licensing laws, electricians write the licensing laws for electricians, etc., it’s called regulatory capture—again, look it up). We need to throw away the licensing requirements and replace them with voluntary certification programs.
Nurses can open up dirt-cheap clinics for minor ailments, without needing to pay for valuable doctors’ time. People could open up clinics that specialize only in stitching up cuts, or putting on casts, etc., all for much less than a fully-staffed doctor-led clinic could. It could work, but only if the law allows it.
The current licensing laws are like requiring you to see somebody with a PhD in engineering to have the hard drive replaced on your PC. It’s ludicrous.
pping
bttt
For “Socialized Health Care” read “health care rationing” or even “health care rationed based on affirmative action guidelines”.
Dear Mr Obama
Please start you healthcare rationing with illnesses that are 99+% preventable as it is only fair. Unlike old age, breast cancer, MS and other terrible diseases, HIV/AIDS is PREVENTABLE. HIV/AIDS treatment costs est $620,000 per persons life. with 50,000 new US cases per year mostly homosexual males with some drug addicts.
So let’s start saving money there if we are concerned with the percent of GDP going to healthcare instead of making macular degeneration patients go blind in one eye or denying my mother a hip replacement.
Really? That may be true with respect to Australia and Britain, but my understanding is that citizens of many of these countries have no private care options.
Canada seems to be one of them. If Canadians had private care options in Canada, there would be little reason for them to cross into the US to receive care denied to them by the socialist bureaucrats in their home country.