🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <396bjq$ldg@mark.ucdavis.edu> ez018982@rocky.ucdavis.edu (Rudeboy) writes:

##[I said]
##Should, should, should. Doesn't your finger get tired with all
##that wagging?
#
#Oh, no.  Not at all.  When someone else is telling me that I *should* have
#to fund health care for everyone in California, I feel perfectly justified
#in responding with my own point of view.  Thanks for asking.

It's not just your point of view, it's calling everyone without
insurance a crooked deadbeat.

###And of course you should share risk!  That's what probabilities less than
###one are all about.
##
##And here's another "should." I think that you'd do better to simply,
##quietly realize that, like or it or not, we have a problem and try
##to solve it instead of trying to find somone to blame.
#
#Yes, here is another 'should.'  One which agrees with your statement about
#risk sharing at the
#top of this post, by the way.
#
#And yes, there is a problem with health care, and yes, we should indeed
#try to solve it.  Notice, however, that 'solving a problem' needn't be
#synonymous with 'scrap the entire system and start from scratch.'

Who said it was?
#
##Why not just try to work it out so people have insurance. Other countries
##can and do. It costs them less (as a percentage of gross national
##product) and they're healthier. Leave the shoulds out; stick with what makes
##actuarial and economic sense. The present system, by any objective measure,
##doesn't.
#
#Ah, yes.  And that explains why the medical care in the countries you
#decline to name (like Britain and Canada, for example) is so superior
#to ours. 

I think Germany is actually a much better example; the care there is
superior to here by most measures. Canada, despite horror stories 
spread by propagandists, is a better place for most people to get sick
in than the US. If you're rich or middle class in England you can opt out
of the NHS -- which still posts better public health numbers than the US.
Japan does *much* better. If you really think that the US has nothing
to learn from other countries about health care, you're not so much
Rude Boy as Ignorant Boy.

 We all know that centralization creates the most effictive
#encentive system, and that private industry is utterly incapable of
#coming up with new and better forms of medical treatment without
#government intervention.
#Give me a break.
#Humbly yours,
#Rudeboy

First of all, a vast amount of medical research is funded by the
government that's the target of your none-too-sharply-phrased sarcasm.
But quite beyond that, the problem isn't coming up with the medical 
treatment so much as coming up with equitable ways to pay for it.
Other countries have been able to do this more effectively than we,
providing better care for more people for a lower percentage of GNP.
I think that carefully reflecting on what can be learned from this
is a more productive exercise than expressing moral superiority for
people who have fallen through the cracks in our system.
  Eric Mankin