Hey Mumps, I've lived exactly 29 years (cumulative) in 6 of the United
States and exactly 29 years (cumulative) in two Canadian provinces.  I
think that I have some perspective to make a judgment on the relative
advantages and disadvantages of the health care systems of the two
countries.  I am not knowledgeable about the Quebec system (and I don't
know if Pierre Lemieux is either), but I will provide you some simple
global facts about Canada compared to the United States.

It is a well documented fact that although low income individuals need
more health care it is the higher income individuals who utilize
available health care, in the United States as well as in Canada.  So
what is Lemieux going on about income transfers from the rich to the
poor through a publicly funded system?

It is also a well documented fact that aggregate health care costs are
ridiculously higher in the United States than in Canada.  Not only is
GDP per capita significantly higher in the United States than in Canada,
but health care consumes a much greater proportion of that larger per
capita GDP in the U.S. than Canada.

You would think that these huge health expenditures would lead to better
health care, especially given the more moderate average climate in the
United States compared to Canada, right?  Well, it doesn't.  Canadian
infant mortality rates are lower than those of the United States and
Canadian life expectancy rates are higher that those in the United
States.

You can look all of this information up if you don't believe it.

By the way, I suspect that Milieux is either misinformed or
misrepresenting many points.  To say that 47% of Canadian GDP is
consumed by public expenditures is false. His comment that the $4,800 in
taxes paid for public health care by the average Quebecois family of
four is more than the cost of the most comprehensive health care plan
available in the United States is absolutely misleading, even assuming
that his figures are correct.  In the first instance, the CAD 4800 is
equivalent to approximately USD 3,200 (which is less than the per capita
spending on health care in the United States!  But ignoring that
inconvenient fact, would Lemieux be kind enough to identify health
insurance carriers in the United States who accept all comers, without
restrictions and pre-existing ailments, and who provide comprehensive
health coverage of doctors, hospitals and drugs for $USD 800 per year.
Come on, Mumps, get real. Did you really believe the stuff that you sent
along?  (On a personal level,  I had two children in the United States
born without complications and by normal delivery.  Both insurance plans
I concurrently held (one of them Blue Cross) limited payment for
childbirth so that I wound up with a substantial bill beyond what the
two insurance policies (combined) covered.  By contrast, the only bill
received for my Canadian-born children was for long distance phone calls
and television rentals.

As for opting out of the system, I can't speak for Quebec, but in
British Columbia, where I live, the main consequence for physicians
opting out of the public system is that they must themselves collect
payments from their patients; they are completely free to continue
practicing medicine and, I think,  to charge whatever they want. The
reason they stay in the system is because it is very convenient to
receive relatively hassle-free payments for all of their patients
without having to hire bill collectors and write off uncollectible
accounts.

And on just what basis does Lemieux postulate ideological claptrap as
fact, such as:
"The most visible consequence of the socialized medicine in Canada is in
the poor quality of services,  Health care has become more and more
impersonal."  Well, my friend, our family physician knows us all by
sight and by name, and when somebody makes an appointment for a specific
time they are almost invariably in his office within 5 minutes of that
time rather than waiting in an overcrowded waiting room.  The same is
true of my massage therapist, my dentist, and my chiropractor.  Indeed,
the last time that I consulted a specialist (an orthopedic surgeon), I
was also in his office within five minutes of arriving (in an empty
waiting room) for my appointment.

Mumps, Lemieux can't have it both ways.  If the situation is inefficient
as he alleges, then perhaps he can explain why you folks die sooner than
we do, despite having all of your freedom of access and spending so much
more of your money on health care.  Moreover, are we Canadians really so
obtuse to strongly support a system that serves us poorly?  Let's quit
the ideological obfuscation  and look at the facts, eh?

Lemieux states ex cathedra that (universal) public health care isn't
even just because it "is based on the idea that certain goods like
health (and education? and food? where do you stop?) should be made
available to all through coercive redistribution by the state.  If, on
the contrary, we define justice in terms of liberty . . . ."

Well, first, Lemieux might want to brush up on the UN Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covention on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and similar UN Covenants which
Canada, and I suspect the United States as well, has ratified.  Again,
you can't have it both ways, Mumps, and neither can Lemieux.  As a
constitutional democracy, Canada has undertaken certain commitments
concerning issues such as health, education, etc.  Whether or not they
pass Lemieux's ideological litmus test is irrelevant.  Let him overthrow
the country or change its constitution and laws if he doesn't like
them.  Otherwise, get with the plan or mind his own business.

His statement:  "If, on the contrary, we define justice in terms of
liberty . . . ." is a big bright red herring.  Liberty for what? to die
from inadequate health care or nutrition or shelter?  I do not define
justice as wildly excessive consumption of goods and services on the
part of those who are wealthy and privation of basic services for those
who are poor.   Words cannot express my contempt for the callousness of
those who do.

Lemieux states that: "There are private solutions to health costs.
Insurance is one."  In fact, the data for the United States and Canada
on both costs, as well as on life expectancy and infant mortality,
unequivocally demonstrate that the public policy approach produces
superior results to the market approach.  And he conveniently ignores
his own evidence that the Quebecois are very supportive of their
existing public health care system (Apparently Lemieux is a would be
philosopher-king who dismisses the Quebecois population as a bunch of
rubes who aren't as smart as he is in recognizing how awful their system
is.  Imagine!  They want to retain their public health care system as
superior to a market based system, the same as did a Royal Commission of
Enquiry into the topic after drawing on all of the expertise that they
could locate.   What do they know about the shortcomings of a public
health system, eh, Mumps; they must have overlooked Lemieux's
brilliance).

Enough dogmatic ideology about the wonders of the market.  Lemieux
should put up or shut up.   He cannot do so because the facts do not
support his argument.  This forces him to resort to unrepresentative
anecdotal data, red herrings, and ideological market dogmatism.

Now, then, was there a point to your long reposting of Lemieux?  Do you
agree with his false statements of fact or are you simply ideological
soulmates regardless of fact?  Or was there something that I overlooked?
As for Dan Smoot, don't I remember him from my Jim Crow days in the Joim
Crow deep south in the 1960s?  His literature regularly was left behind
in laundromats and cafeterias ("The Smoot Report") along with tracts by
the John Birch Society and other like-minded do-gooders who were trying
to educate those of us who weren't so enlightened to facts such as (from
your Smoot posting):   "England first started experimenting with
socialized medicine in 1911. The experiments were a failure, as they
always have been everywhere."

Gee it must be nice to have such comprehensive knowledge to make such
sweeping statements, even if they contradict the available facts
(Remember things like % of GNP spent on health care, life expectancy
rates, infant mortality rates,. etc.).  Such damned nuisances, those
facts.  And, hey Mumps, have you checked out where some of the lowest
infant mortality rates in the world exist?  Did somebody say
Scandinavia?

If you want to check facts, Mumps, you might start with the prestigious
New England Journal of Medicine.  Here's a precis of what you will find.

Reuters                                         Thursday January
7, 1999

Journal Calls U.S. Health Care Expensive, Inadequate

        By Gene Emery

BOSTON - The New England Journal of Medicine sharply criticized
the U.S. health care system in a series of articles it began
publishing Thursday, calling it ``the most expensive and most
inadequate in the developed world.''  The series, which will
continue over several months, aims to provide an overview of the
complicated U.S. health system while examining its weaknesses.

Journal Executive Editor Marcia Angell said U.S. citizens pay
$3,925 per person for health care each year, far more than the
$2,500 spent for each person in Switzerland, the second most
expensive country.  About 13.6 percent of the money in the U.S.
economy is currently devoted to health care and that rate is
expected to grow to 16.6 percent in 2002, the journal said.
. . . . .
``The American health care system is at once the most expensive
and the most inadequate system in the developed world, and it is
uniquely complicated,'' it said.  The journal said the U.S.
health care system hits the poor and families hardest. For
example, those over 65 with incomes below the poverty level and
who qualify for Medicaid assistance typically spend 35 percent of
their income on health care. The rate is even higher -- about
half -- for people who do not receive Medicaid.

Here are some more ideologically inopportune facts.

The U.S. has the highest infant mortality, AIDS, road accident,
pesticide consumption, homicide, reported rapes, imprisonment and
hazardous waste production rates among Switzerland, Japan, Sweden,
Denmark, Norway, Germany, Austria, France, Finland and Canada (The
World Bank, World Development Report, 1994 and UN, Human Development
Report, 1994).

Between 20 and 30 million Americans suffer from hunger (Congressional
Hunger Center, 1995).

Dan

P.S. I look forward to the breakup of Microsoft.


Mumpsimus wrote:

> Socialized Medicine: The Canadian Experience
> by Pierre Lemieux
>
> The Canadian public health system is often put
> forward as an ideal for Americans to emulate. It
> provides all Canadians with free basic health
> care: free doctors visits, free hospital ward
> care, free surgery, free drugs and medicine while
> in the hospital -- plus some free dental care for
> children as well as free prescription drugs and
> other services for the over-65 and welfare
> recipients. You just show your plastic medicare
> card and you never see a medical bill.
>
> This extensive national health system was begun
> in the late 1950s with a system of publicly funded
> hospital insurance, and completed in the late
> 1960s and early 1970s when comprehensive health
> insurance was put into place. The federal
> government finances about 40 percent of the
> costs, provided the provinces set up a system
> satisfying federal norms. All provincial systems
> thus are very similar, and the Quebec case which
> we will examine is fairly typical.
>
> One immediate problem with public health care
> is with the funding. Those usually attracted to
> such a 'free' system are the poor and the
> sick -- those least able to pay. A political
> solution is to force everybody to enroll in the
> system, which amounts to redistributing income
> toward participants with higher health risks or
> lower income. This is why the Canadian system
> is universal and compulsory.
>
> Even if participation is compulsory in the sense
> that everyone has to pay a health insurance
> premium (through general or specific taxes),
> some individuals are willing to pay a second
> time to purchase private insurance and obtain
> private care. If you want to avoid this double
> system, you do as in Canada: You legislate a
> monopoly for the public health insurance
> system.
>
> This means that although complementary insurance
> (providing private or semi-private hospital rooms,
> ambulance services, etc.) is available on the
> market, sale of private insurance covering the
> basic insured services is forbidden by law. Even
> if a Canadian wants to purchase basic private
> insurance besides the public coverage, he cannot
> find a private company legally allowed to satisfy
> his demand.
>
> In this respect, the Canadian system is more
> socialized than in many other countries. In the
> United Kingdom, for instance, one can buy private
> health insurance even if government insurance
> is compulsory.
>
> In Canada, then, health care is basically a
> socialized industry. In the Province of Quebec,
> 79 percent of health expenditures are public.
> Private health expenditures go mainly for medicines,
> private or semiprivate hospital rooms, and dental
> services. The question is: How does such a system
> perform?
>
> The Costs of Free Care
>
> The first thing to realize is that free public
> medicine isn't really free. What the consumer
> doesn't pay, the taxpayer does, and with a
> vengeance. Public health expenditures in Quebec
> amount to 29 percent of the provincial government
> budget. One-fifth of the revenues comes from a
> wage tax of 3.22 percent charged to employers
> and the rest comes from general taxes at the
> provincial and federal levels. It costs $1,200
> per year in taxes for each Quebec citizen to
> have access to the public health system. This
> means that the average two-child family pays
> close to $5,000 per year for public health
> insurance. This is much more expensive than the
> most comprehensive private health insurance
> plan.
>
> Although participating doctors may not charge
> more than the rates reimbursed directly to
> them by the government, theoretically they may
> opt out of the system. But because private
> insurance for basic medical needs isn't
> available, there are few customers, and less
> than one percent of Quebec doctors work outside
> the public health system. The drafting of
> virtually all doctors into the public system
> is the first major consequence of legally
> forbidding private insurers from competing
> with public health insurance.
>
> The second consequence is that a real private
> hospital industry cannot develop. Without
> insurance coverage, hospital care costs too
> much for most people. In Quebec, there is
> only one private for-profit hospital (an old
> survivor from the time when the government
> would issue a permit to that kind of
> institution), but it has to work within the
> public health insurance system and with
> government-allocated budgets.
>
> The monopoly of basic health insurance has led
> to a single, homogeneous public system of
> health care delivery. In such a public
> monopoly, bureaucratic uniformity and lack
> of entrepreneurship add to the costs. The
> system is slow to adjust to changing demands
> and new technologies. FOr instance, day clinics
> and home care are underdeveloped as there exist
> basically only two types of general hospitals:
> the nonprofit local hospital and the university
> hospital.
>
> When Prices Are Zero
>
> Aside from the problems inherent in all monopolies,
> the fact that health services are free leads to
> familiar economic consequences. Basic economics
> tells us that if a commodity is offered at zero
> price, demand will increase, supply will drop,
> and a shortage will develop.
>
> During the first four years of hospitalization
> insurance in Quebec, government expenditures on
> this program doubled. Since the introduction of
> comprehensive public health insurance in 1970,
> public expenditures for medical services per
> capita have grown at an annual rate of 9.4 percent.
> According to one study, 60 percent of this increase
> represented a real increase in consumption. [1]
>
> There has been much talk of people abusing the
> system, such as using hospitals as nursing homes.
> But then, on what basis can we talk of abusing
> something that carries no price?
>
> As demand rises and expensive technology is
> introduced, health costs soar. But with taxes
> already at a breaking point, government has
> little recourse but to try to hold down costs.
> In Quebec, hospitals have been facing budget cuts
> both in operating expenses and in capital
> expenditures. Hospital equipment is often outdated,
> and the number of general hospital beds dropped by
> 21 percent from 1972 to 1980.
>
> Since labor is the main component of health costs,
> incomes of health workers and professionals have
> been brought under tight government controls. In
> Quebec, professional fees and target incomes are
> negotiated between doctors' associations and the
> Department of Health and Social Services. Although
> in theory most doctors still are independent
> professionals, the government has put a ceiling
> on certain categories of income: for instance,
> any fees earned by a general practitioner in excess
> of $164,108 (Canadian) a year are reimbursed at
> a rate of only 25 percent.
>
> Not surprisingly, income controls have had a
> negative impact on work incentives. From 1972 to
> 1978, for instance, general practitioners reduced
> by 11 percent the average time they spent with
> their patients. In 1977, the first year of the
> income ceiling, they reduced their average work
> year by two-and-half weeks. [2]
>
> Government controls also have caused misallocations
> of resources. While doctors are in short supply in
> remote regions, hospital beds are scarce mainly in
> urban centers. The gOVernment has reacted with
> more controls: Young doctors are penalized if they
> start their practice in an urban center. And the
> president of the Professional Corporation of
> Physicians has proposed drafting young medical
> school graduates to work in remote regions for a
> period of time.
>
> Nationalization of the health industry also has
> led to increased centralization and politicization.
> Work stoppages by nurses and hospital workers have
> occurred half a dozen times over the last 20 years,
> and this does not include a few one-day strikes by
> doctors. Ambulance services and dispatching have
> been centralized under government control. As this
> article was being written, ambulance drivers and
> paramedics were working in jeans, they had covered
> their vehicles with protest stickers, and they were
> dangerously disrupting operations. The reason: They
> want the government to finish nationalizing what
> remains under private control in their industry.
>
> When possible, doctors and nurses have voted with
> their feet. A personal anecdote will illustrate
> this. When my youngest son was bom in California
> in 1978, the obstetrician was from Ontario and
> the nurse came from Saskatchewan. The only
> American-born in the delivery room was the
> baby.
>
> When prices are zero, demand exceeds supply,
> and queues form. For many Canadians, hospital
> emergency rooms have become their primary
> doctor -- as is the case with Medicaid patients
> in the United States. Patients lie in temporary
> beds in emergency rooms, sometimes for days. At
> Sainté-Justine Hospital, a major Montreal
> pediatric hospital, children often wait many
> hours before they can see a doctor. Surgery
> candidates face long waiting lists -- it can
> take six months to have a cataract removed.
> Heart surgeons report patients dying while on
> their waiting lists. But then, it's free.
>
> Or is it? The busy executive, housewife, or
> laborer has more productive things to do besides
> waiting in a hospital queue. For these people,
> waiting time carries a much higher cost than
> it does to the unemployed single person. So,
> if public health insurance reduces the costs of
> health services for some of the poor, it increases
> the costs for many other people. It discriminates
> against the productive.
>
> The most visible consequence of socialized
> medicine in Canada is in the poor quality of
> services. Health care has become more and more
> impersonal. Patients often feel they are on an
> assembly line. Doctors and hospitals already have
> more patients than they can handle and no
> financial incentive to provide good service.
> Their customers are not the ones who write the
> checks anyway.
>
> No wonder, then, that medicine in Quebec
> consumes only 9 percent of gross domestic
> product (7 percent if we consider only public
> expenditures) compared to some 11 percent in
> the United States. This does not indicate that
> health services are delivered efficiently at
> low cost. It reflects the fact that prices and
> remunerations in this industry are arbitrarily
> fixed, that services are rationed, and that
> individuals are forbidden to spend their
> medical-care dollars as they wish.
>
> Is It Just?
>
> Supporters of public health insurance reply that
> for all its inefficiencies, their system at least
> is more just. But even this isn't true.
>
> Their conception of justice is based on the
> idea that certain goods like health (and
> education? and food? where do you stop?)
> should be made available to all through coercive
> redistribution by the state. If, on the contrary,
> we define justice in terms of liberty, then
> justice forbids coercing some (taxpayers,
> doctors, and nurses) into providing health
> services to others. Providing voluntarily for
> your neighbor in need may be morally good. Forcing
> your neighbor to help you is morally wrong.
>
> Even if access to health services is a desirable
> objective, it is by no means clear that a
> socialized system is the answer. Without market
> rationing, queues form. There are ways to jump
> the queue, but they are not equally available
> to everyone.
>
> In Quebec, you can be relatively sure not to
> wait six hours with your sick child in an
> emergency room if you know how to talk to the
> hospital director, or if one of your old
> classmates is a doctor, or if your children
> attend the same exclusive private school as
> your pediatrician's children. You may get good
> services if you deal with a medical clinic in
> the business district. And, of course, you
> will get excellent services if you fly to
> the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota or to some
> private hospital in Europe. The point is
> that these ways to jump the queue are pretty
> expensive for the typical lower-middle-class
> housewife, not to talk of the poor.
>
> An Enquiry Commission on Health and Social
> Services submitted a thick report in December
> 1987, after having met for 30 months and spent
> many millions of dollars. It complains that
> "important gaps persist in matters of health
> and welfare among different groups." [3] Now,
> isn't this statement quite incredible after
> two decades of monopolistic socialized health
> care? Doesn't it show that equalizing conditions
> is an impossible task, at least when there is
> some individual liberty left?
>
> One clear effect of a socialized health system
> is to increase the cost of getting above-average
> care (while the average is dropping). Some poor
> people, in fact, may obtain better care under
> socialized medicine. But many in the middle class
> will lose. It isn't clear where justice is to be
> found in such a redistribution.
>
> There are two ways to answer the question: "What
> is the proper amount of medical care in different
> cases?" We may let private initiative and voluntary
> relations provide solutions. Or we may let politics
> decide. Health care has to be rationed either by
> the market or by political and bureaucratic
> processes. The latter are no more just than the
> former. We often forget that people who have
> difficulty making money in the market are not
> necessarily better at jumping queues in a socialized
> system.
>
> There is no way to supply all medical services to
> everybody, for the cost would be astronomical. What
> do you do for a six-year-old Montreal gift with a
> rare form of leukemia who can be cured only in a
> Wisconsin hospital at a cost of $350,000  -- a real
> case? Paradoxically for a socialized health system,
> the family had to appeal to public charity, a more
> and more common occurrence. In the first two months,
> the family received more than $100,000 including a
> single anonymous donation of $40,000.
>
> This is only one instance of health services that
> could have been covered by private health insurance
> but are being denied by hardpressed public insurance.
> And the trend is getting worse. Imagine what will
> happen as the population ages.
>
> There are private solutions to health costs. Insurance
> is one. Even in 1964, when insurance mechanisms were
> much less developed than today, 43 percent of the
> Quebec population carried private health insurance,
> and half of them had complete coverage. Today, most
> Americans not covered by Medicare or Medicaid carry
> some form of private health insurance. Private charity
> is another solution, so efficient that it has not been
> entirely replaced by the Canadian socialized system.
>
> Can Trends Be Changed?
>
> People in Quebec have grown so accustomed to socialized
> medicine that talks of privatization usually are limited
> to subcontracting hospital laundry or cafeteria
> services. The idea of subcontracting hospital
> management as a whole is deemed radical (although
> it is done on a limited scale elsewhere in Canada).
> There have been suggestions of allowing health
> maintenance organizations (HMOs) in Quebec, but the
> model would be that of Ontario, where HMOs are totally
> financed and controlled by the public health insurance
> system. The government of Quebec has repeatedly come
> out against for-profit HMOs.
>
> Socialized medicine has had a telling effect on the
> public mind. In Quebec, 62 percent of the population
> now think that people should pay nothing to see a
> doctor; 82 percent want hospital care to remain free.
> People have come to believe that it is normal for the
> state to take care of their health.
>
> Opponents of private health care do not necessarily
> quarrel with the efficiency of competition and private
> enterprise. They morally oppose the idea that some
> individuals may use money to purchase better health
> care. They prefer that everybody has less, provided
> it is equal. The Gazette, one of Montreal's English
> newspapers, ran an editorial arguing that gearing
> the quality of health care to the ability to pay
> "is morally and socially unacceptable." [4]
>
> The idea that health care should be equally distributed
> is part of a wider egalitarian culture. Health is seen
> as one of the goods of life that need to be socialized.
> The Quebec Enquiry Commission on Health and Social
> Services was quite clear on this:
>
>     The Commission believes that the reduction of
>     these inequalities and more generally the
>     achievement of fairness in the fields of health
>     and welfare must be one of the first goals of
>     the system and direct all its interventions.
>     It is clear that the health and social services
>     system is  not the only one concerned. This concern
>     applies as strongly to labor, the environment,
>     education and income security. [5]
>
> A Few Lessons
>
> Several lessons can be drawn from the Canadian
> experience with socialized medicine.
>
> First of all, socialized medicine, although of poor
> quality, is very expensive. Public health
> expenditures consume close to 7 percent of the
> Canadian gross domestic product, and account for
> much of the difference between the levels of public
> expenditure in Canada (47 percent of gross domestic
> product) and in the U.S. (37 percent of gross
> domestic product). So if you do not want a large
> public sector, do not nationalize health.
>
> A second lesson is the danger of political compromise.
> One social policy tends to lead to another. Take, for
> example, the introduction of publicly funded hospital
> insurance in Canada. It encouraged doctors to send
> their patients to hospitals because it was cheaper
> to be treated there. The political solution was to
> nationalize the rest of the industry. Distortions
> from one government intervention often lead to more
> intervention.
>
> A third lesson deals with the impact of egalitarianism.
> Socialized medicine is both a consequence and a great
> contributor to the idea that economic conditions should
> be equalized by coercion. If proponents of public health
> insurance are not challenged on this ground, they will
> win this war and many others. Showing that human
> inequality is both unavoidable and, within the context
> of equal formal rights, desirable, is a long-run project.
> But then, as Saint-Exupery wrote, "Il est vain, si
> l'on plante un chine, d'espérer s'abriter bientôt sous
> Son feuillage." [6]
>
>    1. Report of the Enquiry Commission on Health
>       and Social Services, Government of Quebec,
>       1988, pp. 148, 339.
>    2. Gerard Belanger, "Les depenses de sante par
>       rapport a l'economie du Quebec," Le Medecin
>       du Quebec, December 1981, p. 37.
>    3. Report of the Enquiry Commission on Health
>       and Social Services, p. 446 (our translation).
>    4. "No Second Class Patients," editorial of The
>        Gazette, May 21, 1988.
>    5. Report of the Enquiry Commission on Health
>       and Social Services, p. 446 (our translation).
>    6. 'It is a vain hope, when planting an oak tree,
>       to hope to soon take shelter under it."
>
> Socialized Medicine
> by Dan Smoot
>
> In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor
> of Germany, instituted the first modern program
> of socialized medicine. It was called compulsory
> national health insurance.
>
> Bismarck hated Communism. His motive in
> introducing socialized medicine in Germany was
> to buy the loyalty of the German masses as a
> means of keeping them from becoming Communists.
> Bismarck adopted "nationalistic socialism to
> end international socialism"--to use his own
> words. To use other words: Bismarck was the
> first leader of a great nation to fight
> Communism by adopting Communism.
>
> The German citizens paid more for their national
> compulsory health insurance than they had paid
> for private insurance before Bismarck came
> along -- and they got less in return.
>
> Bismarck's scheme failed miserably to provide better
> medical care for the people of Germany; but it did
> become an important feature of the German militaristic
> state; it helped pave the way for Hitler a generation
> later; and it furnished a pattern with which practically
> every other nation in the West - -including
> America -- has experienced.
>
> British Experience
>
> England first started experimenting with socialized
> medicine in 1911. The experiments were a failure, as
> they always have been everywhere.
>
> But government never retrenches. When government seizes
> power and money from the people in order to promote
> their welfare and then makes matters worse for them,
> government always argues that it didn't have enough
> power and money to do enough promoting.
>
> In England, for example, when Lloyd George's rather
> moderate experiment in the Bismarckian type of national
> health insurance was abandoned, the nation went all
> the way into communized medicine.
>
> The National Health Program which became the law of
> England in July 1948 is modeled on the Soviet system
> created by Lenin.
>
> In less than two years, there were more than half a
> million people on the waiting lists for hospitalization,
> while some 40,000 hospital beds were out of service
> because of a nurse shortage. The hospital shortage
> in Britain has become so acute that many mentally
> deficient and helpless, aged people are unable to
> secure institutional care, The only effective means
> of easing the shortage is to deny hospital admission
> to the old and chronically ill who cannot be
> discharged once they are admitted.
>
> In industrial centers, some British doctors have as
> many as 4,000 registered patients each. Such doctors
> can give each patient only three minutes per
> call -- three minutes overall, for consultation,
> diagnosis, prescription, filling out official forms,
> and maintaining proper records for governmental
> inspectors.
>
> Twelve percent of all British taxes go into the
> national health program. Thus the wretchedly inadequate
> 'free' medical services in Britain actually cost the
> average Englishman considerably more than an American
> pays for the most expensive private health insurance
> and hospitalization plan.
>
> Over and above what the British themselves have put
> into socialized medicine, one must consider also the
> billions of dollars which America has pumped into the
> British economy as loans and outright gifts. And
> still the thing is a failure. Why?
>
> Whenever government enters a field of private activity,
> that field becomes a political battleground. Whenever
> you mix politics with medicine, doctoring becomes a
> political instead of a medical activity.
>
> "Something for Nothing"
>
> But the primary reasons for the inevitable failure of
> socialized medicine can be found in the patients
> themselves. When people are forced to pay for something,
> whether they want it or not, they are inclined to use
> as much of it as they can in an effort to get their
> money's worth.
>
> There are endless stories about Englishmen who trade
> their government-issued eyeglasses, wigs, and even
> false teeth, for beer. There are housewives who trade
> government-issued medicine for perfume and cigarettes.
> And there are some who pick up extra money by selling
> the gold fillings out of their teeth -- getting them
> replaced by government dentists and then selling them
> again.
>
> Malingerers are people who pretend to be sick in order
> to get sick-pay, Social Security benefits, free
> hospitalization, or a rest at government expense.
> Hypochondriacs are people who think they are sick,
> but aren't. There are countless thousands of such
> people. No system has even been devised for definitely
> identifying them, for weeding out the unnecessary or
> unreasonable or dishonest demands made upon the medical
> care services -- no system, that is, except the one
> existing in a free society where a person must pay his
> own doctor bill or is controlled by provisions of an
> insurance policy which he himself has bought.
>
> No compulsory health insurance program has found a
> means to discourage racketeers or petty complainers
> who make useless trips to the doctor and monopolize
> professional time that should be spent on people
> really needing care.
>
> _____________________________________________
> NetZero - Defenders of the Free World
> Click here for FREE Internet Access and Email
> http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html