Re: Lack of National Health INSURANCE Helped Kill Delphi, is GM next?

On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 23:57:21 -0700, El Castor
<justuschickens@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Rumpelstiltskin <PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 20:45:02 -0700, El Castor
>><justuschickens@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Medicare is socialized medicine. One of the problems with socialized
>>>medicine is that when costs begin to get out of hand government reacts
>>>by cutting payments to doctors. Doctors don't want Medicare patients,
>>>or in many cases don't want too many Medicare patients, because of
>>>stingy government payments which simply don't pay the bills. The
>>>Canadian system is a prime example. Too little funding results in too
>>>few doctors, too few technicians, and a shortage of expensive high
>>>tech equipment, which in turn creates surgery queues, which are a form
>>>of rationing. The elderly are major consumers of health care. If
>>>Canada can delay a knee or hip replacement for one, two, or three
>>>years, a significant percentage of potential recipients will die.
>>
>>
>>
>> Gosh, you sounded like Jerry there!
>>
>> We have rationing in the US too, of course: by wealth.
>>Exceptions are made, but largely to prevent riots. As Oscar
>>noted, the worst slaveowners were those who were kind to
>>their slaves, because they concealed how horrible the
>>system was and thus delayed its overthrow.
>>
>> Have you ever been in an ER, by the way?
>
>Sure. I sliced my hand open on a piece of broken glass while digging
>in the garden and my wife always seems to be in need of stitches. You
>should see the number a cat did on her arm! I really don't mind the
>wait. It's pretty much the luck of the draw. Only fair that a heart
>attack or bleeding ulcer gets in ahead of a cut finger.
>
>>A friend
>>scratched his eye on a tree branch while we were in the East
>>Bay once, so we went to the Oakland Kaiser ER. I'll grant that
>>circumstances in Oakland would make it far worse than most.
>>We waited six hours and he was in pain all the time. I don't
>>know how bad ER's are in Canada, but that doesn't sound
>>like candyland in the US. The second time I broke my arm,
>>I waited six hours before it was attended to, and I was fully
>>covered by insurance. I wasn't in as much pain as my friend
>>had been, but still, six hours without any attention? The
>>excuse given for the wait was that there was a staff change,
>>which sounded like a supremely lousy excuse to me.
>>
>>
>>
>>>That is not to say that the US system is perfect, however neither is a
>>>Canadian system that drives patients to the US for treatment.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yet you belong to and like Kaiser, as do I, which seems to me
>>the closest thing to socialized medicine in the USA.
>>
>It may be close, but it's not the same thing. Kaiser has to compete
>financially and in terms of quality of care with a bunch of other
>providers. If Kaiser doesn't treat it's doctors right or pays it's
>nurses too little, they go elsewhere. Where do they go in Canada?
>Maybe they just decide not to become a doctor or an x-ray tech in the
>first place. Same principles apply to patients. In Canada it's illegal
>to provide health care services that compete with the government. If
>Kaiser made bypass candidates sit around seven or eight months waiting
>for surgery (or death -- which ever came first), or knee/hip patients
>hobble around in agony for two or three years, they would have other
>health care choices. In Canada, what choice do they have? Go to the
>US? For most that's not practical, but for those who can afford the US
>option, doesn't that sound a lot like rationing by wealth?


Yes, but it's not Canada doing the rationing by wealth.

I have more patience with Kaiser than other medical outfits, since
they don't seem to be just out for (huge) profit. Still, I don't like
being told I was held up six hours because there was a staff rotation.
When my friend scratched his eye, maybe there was big stuff going
on, but people were standing in line for triage. One guy's scalp was
covered with blood: he'd been stabbed. He was lurching from side
to side, and finally tried to sit down in line. The guard ordered him
to stand up. He was like that for over an hour. They did see him
before my friend though he came in later, and I have no complaint
about that. Unless there was something stupendous going on, I
don't see why that guy wasn't attended to very quickly, but maybe
there was a car accident with mangled bodies or something like
that.


>
>"Arguing on UseNet is like competing in the Special
>Olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded."

.

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