That I do not believe

Post #72,649 by ben_tilly 1/5/03 10:59:56 AM Reply	That I do not believe When I last checked (early 90's I admit) physicial salaries in the US and Canada were not that different by specialty. The biggest single difference was the balance of generalists to specialists. Yet Canada has universal health care and the US does not. In fact had Clinton followed the Canadian legislative model, we would right now have universal health care in large parts of the US. How? Very simple. Oregon and Vermont were both looking to implement universal healthcare. All that the US had to do was pass a federal bill saying that any state which got universal healthcare gets healthy transfer payments. Then let a few early adopters work out what works in the US, and the other states would fall into line. But no. Instead Hilary had to try to micromanage the whole lot by trying to mandate HMOs. :-( Cheers, Ben "Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it\ufffds probably a fly." - [link\|http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html\|Walter Mead]
Post #72,868 by bbronson 1/6/03 9:02:01 AM Reply	2 points re Oregon and Hillary Several years ago when Oregon was putting together their plan, I read that ranked all maladies and drew a line at about number 800. If you suffered from maladies 1 to 800, you were covered. If you suffered from maldies 801 to infinity, you were out of luck. That's rationing, and I have yet to see a proponent of universal coverage address the rationing that will occur. You only listed one of the 2 big problems with HillaryCare: mandated HMO system. The other was outlawing all medical care outside of the HillaryCare system. Another problem (I don't know if it's big or lesser) was quotas on the types of doctors ("We have too many ear, nose and throat specialists, so you'll be a proctologist. Next applicant?") Would you like the government telling you that, if you want to work in IT, you must be a VB programmer, and that it would be illegal for you to do SmallTalk consulting on the side? The big question is, if inflation is at ~3%, why are health insurance premiums going up ~25-50%? I don't think doctor salaries are the primary cause. Brian Bronson
Post #72,952 by ben_tilly 1/6/03 1:29:33 PM Reply	Question Have you actually looked at how universal care works outside of the US in any of the countries that have it? And by look I do not mean digest the usual ration of misrepresented horror stories that get repeated every so often. About your question. There are several answers. A lot of it is related to paperwork overhead. A lot of it is legal. The fundamental problem is that when it is your life and death at stake, you will generally pay anything you own for care. That is the potential demand that the healthcare system is attempting to expand into... Cheers, Ben "Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it\ufffds probably a fly." - [link\|http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html\|Walter Mead]

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