How Much Is Free Health Care Worth?
The true believers in socialized medicine in this country like to hold the British National Health Service up as a role model. Health care, they say, should be "universal" and "free." But what if the universal part applies to the quality of the health care? As in universally bad.
For nine years, Jerome Bartens had to cope with the handicap of being half deaf.
Ever since he was a toddler, the 11-year-old had been unable to hear anything on his right side and doctors said they were unable to help.
Then suddenly the reason for his problems became clear - when the end of a cotton bud popped out of his ear.
His family believe that he must have poked the bud in the ear at the age of two and the tip must have broken off the plastic stem.
The result was that he has always struggled at school, was constantly forced to turn up the volume of the television and music, and became used to everyone shouting at him.
But now he is waking up to a whole world of noise - while his father Carsten is demanding to know why medical experts failed to identify the problem for so long.
This boy was seen by doctors and hearing specialists for years. They never once saw a thing, despite the end of a cotton swab stuck in the boy's ear canal.
So, still think socialized medicine is a great idea? We now have another measure of how much "free" health care is worth.
Not much.
Medicine, World news | Gaius Monday, 28 January , 2008
By Yuri, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 12:32 am
IMHO socialized medicine is like democracy - terrible, but the best system humanity invented so far. Please do not insult my intelligence with hand-picked examples. I can dig you examples from this country’s unsocialized medicine that will make your hair stand on end.
I really just do not see how one can defend a situation where hospitals are bought up by large public companies and expected to turn a profit for the shareholders. This system can not possibly have best interest of patients as a goal. I personally think that making profit on people’s illnesses is immoral.
BTW, what people always conveniently forget to mention talking about Britain, is that they do have the private insurance system, and if one wishes, (s)he can purchase private insurance. But no-one over there is told that his or her cancer will not be treated because they do not have health insurance…
By Ennis, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 5:21 am
“IMHO socialized medicine is like democracy - terrible, but the best system humanity invented so far. Please do not insult my intelligence with hand-picked examples. I can dig you examples from this country’s unsocialized medicine that will make your hair stand on end.”
Those are nothing compared to the horror stories out of the all holy nationalized health care systems favored by idiots like you. Just some examples. Why did France have a third world death rate for a heatwave? They are supposed to be the valhalla of the all holy socialized medicine, after all. Why is it that the small city of Great Falls Montana have more neo natal ICU’s then the entire province of Alberta? The list goes on and on…
“I really just do not see how one can defend a situation where hospitals are bought up by large public companies and expected to turn a profit for the shareholders. This system can not possibly have best interest of patients as a goal. I personally think that making profit on people’s illnesses is immoral.”
YOU are a fool if you think the government has your best interests at heart. Nationalized health care is nationalized TRIAGE. They weigh the cost of treating you against how much you will put back into the system and if the cost is more then your contribution they refuse you care. I know, my ex died a painful, horrible death made more pain ful by being told exactly that. Too bad for him he thought just like you and was PROUD to have his holy nationalized health care. I did point out to him that the care he was refused by his holy nationalized health care would have been covered under my AMERICAN health insurance.
“BTW, what people always conveniently forget to mention talking about Britain, is that they do have the private insurance system, and if one wishes, (s)he can purchase private insurance. But no-one over there is told that his or her cancer will not be treated because they do not have health insurance…”
Yes, and everyone and anyone who can afford it buys that insurance so they can receive AMERICAN style medical treatment. Purchase it on top of the high taxes they pay to fund the holy NHS.
And, no, they don’t get told that. They get put on a waiting list to get ON the waiting list to get it treated.
By Yuri, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 9:56 am
Ennis,
“YOU are a fool if you think the government has your best interests at heart”
this is what always amuses me in you conservative blokes. You say “government is evil and does not work” and prove it by being grossly incompetent when running it. The last seven years has been one story of incompetence after another - on inteligence, Iraq, energy, FEMA, etc. If you do not believe that it works, why trying to run it?
Government can work well, and there is no shortage of competent educated people who want to serve the people of this nation for salaries below our new gilded age standards. People with belief system like that are pushed out of the private system, though, since they do not generate the “correct” profit margin. But they care about what they do.
As for higher taxes, I long for Eisenhower type Republicans, which were not afraid to have the top tax rate bracket at more than 90%. And I can argue that Ike’s years were some of the most glorious and productive years this country had seen during the last century (although I personally like FDR best
)
By Uncle Pinky, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 11:44 am
If you do not believe that it works, why trying to run it?
To minimize the damage. Direct pressure and tourniquets are not total fixes for blood loss, but they are better than bleeding out while waiting to get to the surgeon.
Please do not insult my intelligence with hand-picked examples. I can dig you examples from this country’s unsocialized medicine that will make your hair stand on end.
Are you new here? After the Animal Uprising, health care failure (both here and abroad) is a prime focus with the more egregious individual examples and trend studies highlighted. Plus, my hair does not stand on end easily. Am I jaded? Am I bald? The Shadow knows.
Ennis, please don’t shout. Sorry to hear about your dad and I understand your anger, but this Yuri uses smiley-cons and believes in government as the answer to all ills. Ergo, you are yelling at a child. That’s generally unproductive.
By Uncle Pinky, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 11:55 am
Something damnably strange is going on with my italics tags these days, and it appears to continue here.
Maybe if I’m good this year Santa Gaius will bring me a preview button.
By martian, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 1:00 pm
“We now have another measure of how much “free” health care is worth.”
In any society things are pretty much worth what you pay for them.
By Yuri, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 1:04 pm
“In any society things are pretty much worth what you pay for them.”
damn straight. make more tax cuts, this will improve your government
By martian, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 1:09 pm
Someone please explain to me how Yuri managed to make a connection between my statement about free things being worth what you pay for them and tax cuts? Is this free association at work? Tax cuts don’t make anything free - they aren’t even billed to do so by the, admittedly willing to stretch a bit, politicians.
Sometimes I really have to wonder what goes on inside the minds of liberals.
By Yuri, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 1:14 pm
“Yuri uses smiley-cons and believes in government as the answer to all ills”
I really hate it when people put words in my mouth. I didn’t say that the government is an answer to all ills, and I do not think that’s the case (I did grow up in the USSR after all).
But we were addressing a narrow subject here - healthcare.
so, coming back to it:
No-one here yet gave me an intellectually-satisfying answer on why a system where health care is dominated by companies that have their primary obligation to shareholders to produce profit is good for patients.
By Yuri, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 1:16 pm
martian, this is a really easy connection - the cervices that you get from the government are the services that you pay for in taxes. The smaller the taxes the smaller the revenues the slimmer the services.
Does it make sense?
By martian, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 1:40 pm
“cervises” - plural of cervix? Nah, Can’t be.
Yes, Yuri, I do get the point. What you don’t understand is that there are lots of “services” provided by the government that I am happily willing to do without - like government run health care. When taxes are cut, it doesn’t mean that the government gets to pay less for services, but it can and hopefully does mena that maybe the government can be forced to cut paying for all the extra crap and just pay for the “services” that are really the responsibility of government.
And anything “free” is still generally worth what you pay for it - as a former citizen of the USSR you should be painfully aware of that. As my favorite author once said, “TANSTAAFL - There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”.
By kidrob, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 5:11 pm
huh?
By Gaius, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 7:24 pm
I’m far behind on comments today. It has been a heavy day for them.
Ennis, please tone it down. Attack the argument.
Yuri, first off, I don’t “hand pick” examples - I blog about what pops up at the media outlets I monitor. Socialized medicine happens to be one of the things I post about rather often. Uncle Pinky pointed that out.
You’re very quick to judge others by your assumptions. You makes statements like “this is what always amuses me in you conservative blokes” then complain when others “put words into your mouth.”
Ever thought that through?
I believe (not trying to put words in Martian’s mouth, mind you) that his point is that government is not the solution in most cases. You think that “there is no shortage of competent educated people who want to serve the people of this nation for salaries below our new gilded age standards. People with belief system like that are pushed out of the private system, though, since they do not generate the “correct” profit margin. But they care about what they do.” Fine. But have you at all considered that those people you champion as selfless might be motivated by a desire for job security above all? Have you even contemplated the thought that they might actually be unfit for the corporate world because they are not competent in it? Have you ever wondered if what drives them is not self-sacrifice but self-aggrandizement - that is a need for power?
I believe - just me, not a monolithic “conservative” cog in the machine - that most government is basically incompetent by its very nature. There are a few functions they can do better - mostly by default - but I am not a fan of big government in general.
Because those civil servants tend to try to become civil masters rapidly. If you, as you say, came from the USSR, you should already know that.
You don’t trust the nameless, faceless bureaucrats that run health care now, but are willing to throw yourself to the tender mercies of the nameless, faceless bureaucrats that you assume operate to different standards.
I do not subscribe to that assumption. And what is lost under socialized medicine - likely forever - is the ability for you or I to choose which bureaucrat to trust.
By Yuri, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 8:41 pm
Gaius,
“You makes statements like “this is what always amuses me in you conservative blokes” then complain when others “put words into your mouth.”” - touche, my apologies.
hard to resist sometimes, and I get carried away…
I agree that some of the bureaucrats are just incompetent. But then again I have a lot of friends in the corporate system, and they complain about the incompetence there, too. Apparently if you’re a big company like Allstate, for example, it’s hard (and/or expensive) to fire a senior person, from what I heard about as hard as to fire a tenured professor.
So, bureaucrats have their egos, private sector has their profit margins, and I have to choose whom to trust… It is kinda tough, but I lived in Europe for a while and know first hand the French health care system, and I really trust it much more than the American (I still choose to live in the States, mind you). I do believe in good human intentions more than I believe in greed, so my choice would be the government.
Two parting shots( I just can’t shut up, can I):
You might want to consider your sources more carefully - The Daily Mail is filthy rag not worthy of scrutinizing (unless you are a Man in Black
)
As for bureaucrats becoming the civil masters, I really do not think that it’s the bureaucrats that one has to be afraid of. The way Bush administration quashed dissent, and their rhetoric of fear-mongering, on the other hand, felt very much like good old Soviet Union to me, honestly.
By Gaius, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 9:09 pm
No, Yuri, apparently, you can’t shut up.
“You might want to consider your sources more carefully - The Daily Mail is filthy rag not worthy of scrutinizing (unless you are a Man in Black )
As for bureaucrats becoming the civil masters, I really do not think that it’s the bureaucrats that one has to be afraid of. The way Bush administration quashed dissent, and their rhetoric of fear-mongering, on the other hand, felt very much like good old Soviet Union to me, honestly.”
That would be a give away. I see how a person from the USSR could confuse the Gulag and the psychiatric hospitals that dissidents were put into there with the vicious “quashing” of dissent by Bush which is….
Nonexistent.
Olberman is not in a hospital, the Dixie Chicks are not in the Gulag, nobody is in prison for their views or opinions here. The reporters are not breaking rocks in a prison yard. Dissenters who claim they are being stifled go on nationwide television to whine about how they are treated.
Yeah, Yuri. You know what you are talking about, alright.
On the internet, nobody knows if you are a dog. But sometimes they can tell you are a fraud.
By Yuri, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 9:50 pm
Gaius,
Fraud?!
My grandfather died in the Gulag. He was accused of treason, tortured and “confessed” to make the pain stop. My grandmother was put in Gulag, her only offense being “member of the traitor’s immediate family”. My father was banned from big cities for many years just for being their son. Don’t tell me I’m a fraud, I’ve seen things that you have obviously have no good understanding of.
Look, you may not like it, but the kind of rhetoric that I heard from this White House is very similar to what I heard in the USSR. The punishments are less severe in this country - although by Brezhnev’s times there were only a few people who went to psychiatric hospitals, mostly people were afraid of being demoted, loosing a fulfilling job, loosing money (kinda like Dixie Chicks) this type of thing, but it’s the fear that I recognized. These things happen slowly and gradually, if you want a great example, read Sinclair Lewis’es “It Can’t Happen Here”.
By Gaius, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 10:18 pm
Frankly, I have no idea why I am bothering here, but you do realize that Sinclair Lewis wrote fiction - and died of advanced alcoholism - don’t you?
By Yuri, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 10:29 pm
well, the alcoholism reference would be in line with Rove’ian “discredit the messenger, not the message”.
But you do realize that changes in the society can come slowly? And that most totalitarian societies didn’t start as such? How could they win popular support in the beginning if they did?
And I think this book gives a good example of how it could happen gradually (what’s the difference between fiction and philosophy, by the way? I thought one can put ideas into fictional books - most existentialists didn’t write papers, they wrote books of “fiction”. Not trying to compare Lewis and Kamu, just an example of bright thoughts put into books)
By Gaius, Tuesday, 29 January , 2008 @ 10:46 pm
You know, Karl never returns any of my messages. Sad, isn’t it?
Apparently, you think I am a rovebot, Yuri. Sorry to disillusion you. The observation on Lewis was simply a fact, not spin, not a rovian trick.
Leave the last part off. Lewis wrote fiction. As in made up.
Done wasting time, Yuri. Really not worth it.
No, I mean really.