🚀 go-pugleaf

On 25 Sep 1993 17:29:35 GMT, robert1@sabu.EBay.Sun.COM (Bob S.- Contractor) said:

> This is the beauty of the single-payer system.  Unlike "managed
> competition" you get to pick your own doctor, your doctor only has to
> deal with one company to get paid.  It's simple, if offers the best
> choice in health care providers and it has the lowest overhead.

Single-payer?  And who might that payer be?  Perhaps a large
governmental agency, with a huge maw called the IRS that crushes money
out of people?

> The standard rhetoric trys to convince us that with single-payer you
> don't get to pick your doctor.  This is just plain wrong.  Currently
> with HMOs and "prefered providers" you don't get to pick but with
> single-payer you do.

Dream on.  If we've had one big history lesson of this century, it's
this: large bureaucratic structures don't work.  Single-payer would
turn out to be a fiscal nightmare; eventually, as with all the five-
year-plans that the Soviets never believed in, it would collapse of
its own weight.  And in the interim, we'd all get subjected to the
kind of restrictions prevalent in HMOs.  Maybe this wouldn't happen
right away, but soon, and for a long time.

> ====================================================================
> The largest HMO and probably the best has always let you pick your
> own doctor. Kaiser.

For what that's worth.  You can pick *a* doctor, but it's not worth
very much, because they're pretty much all the same -- unconcerned
drones who look at you like a side of meat.  I am out of Kaiser and
happy to have escaped.