In response to something on GD

[lapauvre]

Perhaps others have already addressed this subject better than I will.

If taxpayer dollars can be used to bolster up "private enterprise" airlines, corporate overseas advertising, railroads, utilities company screw ups, S&L criminals,not to mention the whining medical profession who soaks up ever damned dime it can from Medicare, then what's wrong with socialized medicine.

I mean, somewhere in our historical documents it says we should have a "right to life."

Although we are told that many wealthy Canadians cross the border to get American health care, because they can afford it, for most of the people in Canada, including the not so wealthy, they aren't coming here in truckloads seeking our wonderful medical practitioners. And if they do, it is because they can pay for their lives.

We resist the concept of "socialized medicine" while accepting like sheeple the idea that there must be I don't know how many middle-men, corporations, insurance companies, HMO's, etc.

Germany has socialized medicine. Universal health care. So does every other industrialized nation in the world. They cut out the middle man.

Are they suffering? Well, I haven't seen either an influx of Scandinavian or European medical professionals floating to our shores looking for freedom. As a matter of fact, I haven't seen any Cubans, on their improvised rafts coming to America for medical care.

And not too damned many Canadian doctors are floating on four wheels across the border and bringing their expertise to America.

During, at least, the war Russia foolishly entered into with Afghanistan, they have sent their spinal cord injuries to Cuba for treatment.

The difference is, in my humble opinion, that doctors in those countries which espouse universal medical care, are not greedy for wealth, but are doctors who care about human life.

Their countries are not concerned with the middle men, but with human life. In our country, the only industrialized country, we have to deal with two things in the forefront. The fear of "socialized" medicine" and our need to support middle men corporations who have to get their cut before medical care can be given. To me, this interferes with "a right to life." But that is only my opinion.

I am not in government, merely an observer, but also interested in semantics. Words DO mean something. They are symbols. They evoke knee jerk responses. "Socialism?" Oh, very bad response. "Capitalism," oh, very good response. Look at the reality.

If we cut out the middle man, if we managed to get Medical professionals to understand, or re-discover that saving the suffering and lives of human beings was more important than increasing their incomes every year, if we had a universal health care system, without that middle man, without the insurance companies demanding their extraordinary blackmail payments from all doctors because of the incompetence of the few, we could afford to cover all Americans, all mistakes made by doctors to compensate the injured, and still have money left over. And the incompetents who are repeatedly accused of injury and sued, would be regulated to be removed after three such injuries. I don't know if that is the case in other countries having universal, socialized, medicine. But it certainly ought to be here.
If the bad doctors were removed, the rates, even if they had to buy into private insurers would be much reduced.

Is that so bad?

One just has to rise above the word "socialized" and get around to universal health care to the citizens of the richest, most powerful nation in the world, and take heed that the insurance companies, the hmo's, the pharmaceutical companies, et al, are sucking from the public trough.

We already have socialized medicine because we have to pay off, with our tax dollars, the middle men. We have to subsidize the repeatedly incompetent MD's, who, like drunk drivers, should be kicked off the medical road after three offenses. But they move someplace else and continue their incompetence. They take their high insurance rates off their taxes. Competent MD's have to pay higher rates to that middle man, the insurance companies, because there is no regulation and no penalty for the incompetent doctors.

All of this because we are so frightened by the words "socialized medicine." All of this because we prefer to permit incompetents to continue to practice, because there is no three strikes, you're out, legislation.

All of this costs the taxpayers, and has costs taxpayers billions of dollars, more likely trillions.

If the freaking airlines are in the national interest; if the freaking S&L's are in the national interest; if overseas advertising for those who can well afford it is important enough to be subsidized by the American taxpayer: Can anybody consider that the lives of all human beings are threatened by this farcical choice of where tax dollars are spent.

I don't think it was written in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, that all profit making corporations, however greedy and mismanaged, that all doctors, however incompetent and murderous, were entitled to tax payer money. I don't think that it was written that money was more important than human life.

But, someplace, in my memory, there is a document that says Americans are entitled to the RIGHT to life. And someplace else, "Taxation without representation."

Why in the hell should taxpayers have to bail out these bastards, excuse the incompetent, serve the profit making insurance companies, and yet have the gall to be offended by trial lawyers?

I just don't get it. Don't be a knee jerker to semantics. Corporate socialism is no less socialistic than socialized medicine. And socialized medicine saves human lives. Which would you taxpayers rather fund, the insurance companies, the airlines, the railroads, the hmo's, the incompetent doctors, or human life.

Take your pick and live with it.

But I don't see any of the MD's from universal, (shiver) socialized countries coming over here and looking for mo'money. They actually have doctors. Not businessmen trying to top last years profits, or being blackmailed by insurance companies, who also want to top last years profits for their stockholders.

They are content with making a name for themselves and thus increasing their profits by being competent, respected practitioners. In socialized medicine countries, medical practitioners are still permitted by competence and the desire of the wealthy to make more money than lesser doctors. That is called "competition." Something we don't seem to understand in this country. Yet.

Although our knee jerk reactions to THAT word are quite a bit different.

[punpirate]

1. Some Canadian doctors are coming across the border...

... but, I think, mostly because they want to make more money. An example of one is the woman who became the company doctor where I worked, before the company folded.

But, to put it in shorter terms, the people with the most money to burn on politicians (insurers, AMA, etc.) are the ones who are denying Americans single-payer universal health insurance. Period.

Other countries (particularly France and Germany) do it quite well. We don't do it at all because we have too many citizens who believe in the "individual responsibility" BS fostered by the right and elect bad legislators who believe that people have to shift for themselves, without ever realizing that they are, ultimately, killing human potential in the process.

We spend far too much on military-related budgetary items, and have little left over for education and health. We are sacrificing our future for the political present.