I was for the whole idea of universal healthcare until I came down to podunk northern Florida. This idea that the irresponsible who smoke, eat at Mcdonald's, and drink the malt liquor everyday should be provided healthcare is insane. I've always wondered why do hospitals treat the drug dealers and gang members who get wheeled in with gunshot wounds. What value to society do these people provide that justifies the usage of the resources of the hospital? Even the deformed babies or retarded kids... These circus shows will always be a burden or hindrance on someone. Why not free their souls from their defective bodies? The cost to keep these things alive will clearly outweigh any benefit they will provide. You know why you don't give the poor and needy any money? Cause they will continue to look for donations and not get the motivation to get a fucking job. Either you go starve and die in a corner or get a job. If you provide people with some kind of safety net, they will take advantage of it to a point of abuse. And whose going to pay for this net? Do you think the abusers pay their fair share? Of course not. For the religious idiots, you people have nothing since the beginning of time but fight and kill other people because they didn't worship your god. And you care about people now? Puh leez. It's the 21st century and what do we hear? We gotta keel da goddam Moozlims! God sent Hitler to hunt the Jews. 9/11 was caused by the gays. Religion advertizes do good activities to sign more up for membership. More membership means the CEO of this joint will be able to afford a bigger house and another Benz. It's time to stop wasting the potential of this country to keep the weak alive be it the banks, the retard or the religious nutcase who needs donations every Sunday to maintain his lifestyle while he preaches idiotic bullshit. It's time to evolve.
Healthcare costs spiraled out of control when the government got in the game. Government funding skews fraud, waste and corruption by factors of many magnitudes. With no accountability and no risk for bankruptcy the government has created a giant inflation mechanism in healthcare over the last 40 years. Ask yourself why 40 years ago could doctors make housecalls? Throw in no tort reform, high liability factors which forces providers to run every test less the guy who comes in with a runny nose die of some rare virus and his family sues the practice into oblivion. Don't forget medical boards that create artificial shortages of doctors via medical school quotas. Heavy regulation by state and federal which add layers of costs to the average practice. The Healtchare market is the farthest thing from a free market but it is still viable in the US because choice still exists. However once the Statists complete their take over of the healtchare system we will enter a medical dark age where the state owns your body and will determine when you live and when you die. Medical Innovation will starve After 2009 we will all be fetuses in the eyes of the state.
IRM21, I rather agree with you. I would prefer a solution that involved de-regulation and opening up medicine to greater competition, with the government primarily playing the role of information provider instead of its present role as protector of the AMA, the AHA, and the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Tort reform is sorely needed, as you point out, because physicians have used malpractice suits as an excuse to practice bad medicine by ordering way too many unnecessary, but very lucrative tests. We have far to many poor showing up at emergency rooms with sick kids because they have no reasonable alternative. The retail clinics springing up in some parts of the country seem to be a step in the right direction, and I have heard that Wal-Mart plans to get into the provider racket with in-store clinics. That's the kind of innovation that we need more of, in my opinion. But watch, State medical societies and the AMA will likely fight these lower cost care providers tooth and nail using the old "safety and quality arguments." If they can't jawbone them out of existence they'll try hog tying them with regulations-- enough to wreck their cost effectiveness. Medicine in the U.S. is no longer about the Hippocratic oath, it's about money. We also need prescribing pharmacists as in many other civilized countries. This alone can have a major impact on costs. The AMA would bring out the heavy artillery to stop that one, as controlling access to effective medicines is the American Medical Cartel's primary means of maintaining power. They lose that, and the Internist's wife will be in Fiat instead of a Benz. Though the Cartel will deny it with their dying breadth, there are a myriad of practical ways that cost can be brought down without significant impact on either quality or safety. Sadly, our lily-livered politicians won't have the backbone to implement any of them. Instead they'll look for "changes" that don't step on anyone's toes, and talk forever about how to pay for out-of-control costs.