🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Jun30.182416.20107@unixg.ubc.ca> buckland@ucs.ubc.ca (Tony Buckland) writes:

> I'm cross-posting to soc.culture.usa to let Americans know that
> there are other kinds of health care problems than they experience,
> and to invite their comments.  Hence a few background statements
> that would otherwise be unneccesary.
> 
[griping MD's stuff deleted]
>
> Well, then, the expectable result will be sick people left to
> suffer and/or die.  Not all of them, of course; the rich will
> always find care somewhere.  But we will experience a strange
> inversion of the American two-tier system of a large insured class
> who get what they need and a poorer uninsured class (the almost-poor
> who have to spend their lives worrying about whether tomorrow's
> illness will force them to choose between their house and their
> child, and the truly poor who get along on what charity provides
> in the hell of urban emergency rooms).  We will have a large
> insured class, including all the poor, who will get whatever the
> Government feels like paying for this year - which I somehow feel
> will always be less than the year before - and a substantial richer
> class who will get what they need because they can pay for it,
> likely at the horrifically high-priced American for-profit
> hospitals our best BC doctors will flee to.
> 
	I suspect that as the North American population graph looks more
and more like a pedestel, i.e., like this.

          <----# of males  ^   # of females ---->
                           |
                          age
                           |
              /--------------------------\
              |                          |
              |                          |
              \--------\        /--------/
                       |        |
                       |        |
                       |        |
                       |        |
                       \--------/

(gotta love ascii graphics)

Anyways, as the number of old people far outstrip the number of (working,
taxpaying) young, health care will be distributed in a rationing system.
(The taxpayer will be unable to cover health care for all people, 
many individuals will be unable to afford health care for themselves.) In
Canada, I think that this rationing will occurr on a triage (sp?) system, that
is, based on the patient's ability to live. In the United States, using my
impression of their social culture, I guess that it will be based on the
patient's ability to pay.

I think that the most recent step taken by the Provincial Government in
B.C. is a meandering step towards the triage system I envision. Mind you,
one has to remember that B.C. is notorious for misspending federal transfer
payments for Health Care. A little while ago I heard Senator Perrault (sp?)
remark that B.C. has some of the healthiest highways in Canada for all the
federal transfer payments that go to them. I would be (a little) surprised
to find that this (socialist) government wasn't just as guilty as the
(capitalist) one before it. (The bit from the Senator is not a direct quote
I can't remember exactly what he said, but that was more or less the gist
of it. I hope he doesn't sue.)