So, You Want Hillary-Care? Part II
Like a lot of other ideas, I base my response to socialized medicine on what I have seen and experienced in my own life.
In this country, Kaiser Permanente is a form of “managed health care” or socialized medicine. From a seriously blown cancer diagnosis followed by delayed treatment, resulting in premature death (old family friend) to another case of delayed treatment for an infection, resulting in blindness in one eye, (one of my former students) their track record is a bit scary. Now we go across the Atlantic to Great Britain, where one of my mother’s cousins was a doctor whose medical skills were almost entirely limited to sending his patients to other doctors and milking the British government for lots of money. Oh yes, before I forget, take the case of the British actress, Eunice Black (she played a dowager in some of the Monty Python and Benny Hill stuff), who was blinded in one eye by the inappropriate use of a surgical laser and not even told that the sight would never come back until much later.
It’s easy enough to see that we have some serious problems with affordable health care in the United States, but I have a really hard time seeing socialized medicine as the cure.
There is a major difference between The Government and a Whore.
A whore will not fuck you after you’re dead.
I’m thinking specifically of the IRS.The whole idea of socialized medicine has me scared. The funny thing is, I’m the target audience of the whole idea. I’m a sole breadwinner in a family of 4. Total annual income about 65K. I pay well over 7.5% of my adjusted gross income in medical expenses and deduct the overage from my taxes every year. Shouldn’t I be really keen on “free” health care? Well I’m not, because I’m not an idiot like the fools Hillary and Barack are playing to on a daily basis in the media.
Did anyone see the puff piece on the Today show this morning with Barack? Oh it was lovely. Barack is visiting a 61 year old, black caretaker for an 86 year old black man who happens to be handicapped. She is only making $10.50 an hour and often does “backbreaking” work. Well Barack witnesses this scene and wants to help. So he is shown dusting the apartment, nodding his head at her complaints and then is interviewed spewing his crap about how something “fundamental” needs to change. She can’t make a living wage and his expenses are through the roof. In the end, the reporter is ga-ga over Barack’s compassion and how he may be no caretaker, but he sure feels at home in that environment. Of course they then cut to Matt Lauer & that new woman’s face all aglow with adulation for the wonderful, compassionate Barack Obama.
That’s how we will lose the election! Shallow, meaningless symbolism will penetrate the dimwitted, well-meaing public and we will have an economic and health care nightmare on our hands.Sorry about the lenghty rant. I had to get that off my chest!
ROFLMAO!!!
I mean, come on! The feds can’t even make a brothel profitable?!? No WONDER this country is such a mess!
Oh, I don’t know. Seems to me the whores in congress are making out all right money-wise.
Socialized medicine isn’t the answer to the problem - take out the Insurance companies running medicine and the lawyers raping the healthcare system and forcing the AMA to police itself - then American medicine will get better. . .[and no I am not stupid, the lawyers and the insurance companies are not taking care of the ‘problem’ doctors - no more than Unions are protecting the Workers anymore].
There are few programs that the Gov can run - hell right now it can’t even run itself. The problem comes with them either creating new rules, taxes and/or bureaucracies which muck up things even further - or is as is going on in the Bay Area - throwing good money (probably with the very best of intentions) down a real scammy rat hole and ending up looking really stupid when murder, mayhem and exposure to the utter complete waste of taxpayer money [see stories on the murder of a reporter and Your Black Muslim Bakery].
As far as taking money - at least whores are up front about taking your money and give you something for it. Congress on the otherhand is becoming more and more secretive about taking it and usually putting it into their own (or own family members) pocket.
You would THINK -seeing as how the government is so good at screwing people- they would be great at running a brothel, I suspect that excessive quality control testing and procedures did the project in.
Posted by yatalli
08/10/2007 at 10:42 AM
Heard an interview on Bob Brinker’s show this past weekend. Regina Herzlinger, author of
“Who Killed HealthCare?: America’s $2 Trillion Medical Problem - and the Consumer-Driven Cure.” Interesting analysis of how we got into this mess and ways out.Essentially, and it is much more involved but here is the core of it, employers become our healthcare providers by paying for it with pre-tax money and providing the benefit as they see fit. We get a cafe approach where I, a single male, am paying for gynocological coverage and women help pay for viagra. NOT THAT I USE THAT STUFF!
Better, says she, if we were paid the money directly and bought our own medical coverage with pre-tax money. The employer would no longer need to run a health insurance program and we could buy what we want.
And as far as government run, she points out that it would be a government monopoly open for partisan political manipulation. Not to mention all the other ills such a system engenders.
Okay, I will not take any questions or answer objections as I have not yet read the book and the interview was long. However, if anyone wants to get a thread going to discuss how to fix the system and not just bitch about it, all good and fine.
I’m ALL open for a thread about how to fix the problem. I honestly haven’t heard much of any real solutions from anyone, Rickvid, but I like your idea. I think the big stepping block to it would be that congress doesn’t trust us with our own money, let alone pre-tax money.
Also, I forsee so many people losing their jobs because they are no longer needed (i.e. people at companies who sole reaason for being is administering the health insurance). Course this is the same argument I hear all the time for not getting rid of the IRS, imagine the unemployment!!! Its asinine, but I hear it a lot as people’s sole reason for keeping a broken system.
Our country is REAL good at building bureaucracy, just not very good at dismantling it.
