On Thu, Sep 13, 2007 at 04:41:18PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote: > On Thu, Sep 13, 2007 at 03:13:06PM -0500, Harry Penner wrote: > > In other words, the people who have a choice whether to accept the > > quality and wait times associated with health care in the government > > system, don't. That doesn't make you pause to think, even a tiny bit? > > > > If you can't let go of that nutty socialism-is-good-for-the-people meme, > > try thinking of it this way instead: > > government monopoly on health care = microsoft/your goliath of choice > > government monopoly on health care = everybody gets it > Is that the same way that government monopoly on DSL (that is what the telephone system is nearly everywhere) means everyone gets it? Or what about the government monopoly on rail travel? Or what about the government monopoly on electric power? You know that there are people who can't afford to get it for free and so have to bribe the government to keep from having it shut off. Or what about getting passports issued? > > free market health care = open source > > free market health care = only those who can afford it get it > Please show me two examples of things that can be done by both the private sector and government (so, things like military defense don't count) that the government does *better* than can be done in the private sector. (BTW, you can't use the Post Office as they are really a self-sustaining entity not funded by tax dollars). > > ...and now we can all feel good about discussing politics on > > debian-curiosa. ;) > > Those who can't afford it have to either have insurance or do without, > and insurance companies tend to be much slower at approving care than > the monopoly government system is at providing it. So sure you get a > shorter wait list but you have to wait a while for things to get bad > enough to be approved before you can even get on a wait list. > This stopped being true a long time ago. The name of the game today is prevention. Today, insurance companies will quickly approve things that were some time ago viewed as frills or unncessary since those things are often much cheaper than waiting for a crisis situation. > Some things work better when everybody has access to it and everybody > pays for it (as taxes do). Things like health care, public transit, and > the like. > Really? Is that why tax payers fund public transit and then have to pay to actually use it? If that is your idea of an ideal system, then I don't want it. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez http://people.connexer.com/~roberto http://www.connexer.com
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