So You Think Socialized Medicine Is Great?
Ah, but Vilmar, we’re dealing with the United Kingdom of Soviet States here.
My girlfriend/partner is a GP (General Practioner - Family Doctor) back in the UK. She is constantly telling me horror stories about the waste of money, time and effort due the the crazy-arsed socialistic dogma espoused by the current government. They are trying to shake things up, but are doing it top-down, which is wrong. All this is impose more hassle on GPs who are required to write new standards documents! (As if they didn’t have enough to do already.)
A lot of the money is gobbled up by an ever-growing bureaucracy. As with any welfare system, 80% of the resouces is spent on 20% of the population: the habitual hypochondriacs, the baby-statists (for every nanny statist, there are hundreds of baby statists), and the just plain bone idle.
My girlfriend recently got qualified in acupuncture. The NHS doesn’t want to know. They prefer to waste more money on “Western” methods than accept that other methods may be better, more efficient and more effective.
Like the article said.. we in the US have a different set of problems. Sure treatment is more timely and more effective than in the UK. But.. how long can we continue with the “your money or your life” system that we DO have? A co-worker of mine’s father had to have triple by-pass surgery. He got it. But the expense caused him to lose everything; almost a quarter million dollars in retirement savings… gone at a stoke. The 73 year old man once had a reasonably comfortable life. He is now indigent except for Social Security and talks now about he would have been better off if he had died; he could have then at least have left his son something. My co-worker helps out as much as he can, but there are alot of other older folks with no support at all in the same boat. We are constantly told that we should save for retirement, but what is the point if one serious illness will take it all away?
what’s the answer, Vilmar? I wish I knew..
Posted by Lucius Severus Pertinax
03/08/2005 at 01:42 AM
The answer may be HSAs and a realization (through examples such as yours to show what might happen) by young people that they need to take responsibility for their lives and welfare to include insurance.
Our existence as humans runs in cycles. The family structure used to be very strong. Families supported one another. After WWII we embraced a culture of self-satisfaction and empowerment. We worshipped material goods. We would not be deprived of them. We scattered to the winds and left family. We divorced willy-nilly. The family fabric was ripped asunder. Kids leaving home would get frustrated because they could not have homes like their parents because their parents never prepared them for that “primordial swamp” climb through society we all need to make. I left a nice home when I joined the military but I also realized that it would take me a while before I had one as nice for myself. I lived in shitty mobile homes in the desert with poor cooling systems, I lived in another in Alaska. Slowly but surely though things got better. Kids today do not realize that. Their parents, having ill prepared them, can not count on their help when THEY need it as the kids are caught in the vicious materialistic cycle and have no time for mom and dad.
So we are now paying the price for our egos.
But……….the cycle will slowly go the other way as people realize they are not “individuals” in the sense they can take care of themselves at all times. Family will become more important and hopefully people will stop being so materialistic in their desires to possess everything and never slide down the ladder of affluence.
That may be your answer (as well as HSAs)
03/07/2005 at 12:55 PM
