🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <RLM.93Sep26104259@helen.surfcty.com> rlm@helen.surfcty.com (Robert L. McMillin) writes:
>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.


OK, speaking of lessons, I suggest you do a little research into the millions
of people on this planet who have been, or are currently happy as members
of "single payer" systems around the world.  "Us" Americans have a nasty
habit of forgetting that the rest of the world exists.  Talk to some
Canadians, some Germans, Scandinavians, Czechoslovakians, etc etc.  Might
surprise you.


>> 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.


I definitely agree with you here.  Kaiser seems to be one of the examples of
what happens to people when capitalism runs amok.  Sorry, but when Profit,
Profit, Profit is the driving force behind my medical "care", I don't get
that warm and fuzzy feeling.  What ever happened to the Hippocratic oath?


Phil Koenig
pjk@netcom.com