🚀 go-pugleaf

degennar@bmsrs.usc.edu (Ray) writes:
>1) Do you really want a health care program like Canada's?
>2) Do you really feel that the governmet is capable of effectively
>   adminstrating a health care program without raising the cost or
>   decreasing the quality of service?

Or, more practically, since we're not going to _get_ a health care
program like Canada's, how about the brass tacks?

3) Do we really think our government, which as proved itself totally
incompetent on anything it attempts to do for more than about five
years, can manage this system efficiently?

4) Do we really think that the government is actually going to reduce
the amount of paperwork?  Even when it throws off decades of habit and
manages to do so in a spastic burst, it all comes back.  And they're
adding yet another level of bureaucracy (groups) to the existing
system. 

5) Do we really want the government that is responsible for hellholes
like the VA hospitals in charge of our medical?

6) Do we really think that a government that is totally incompetent at
containing costs for anything (LBJ in 1965 - "Medicare costs even to
1990 will never be more than 8 billion a year." Actual cost of
Medicare in 1990 - $90+ billion) can contain costs?

7) Do we really want to penalize those who manage to get better
health care than the level of care the government is going to
afford? 

8) Do we really want to bring medical and pharmaceutical research to a
screeching halt?

9) Other countries are moving away from socialized medicine - why are we
so eager to be where they were?

10) Do we really want to deliver yet another blow to the economy?

11) And on the purely personal level, do you want yet another big
chunk taken out of your takehome pay (and another big chunk added to
your yearly taxes if you have better care than the government
provides?) to be wasted on bureaucracy?

12) Do we really want to reduce the number of medical practicioners?

13) Do we really want to lose the income we get from Canadians coming
across the border for care?

14) Do we really want to lose our choice of alternative treatment?

15) The "funding" Clinton has allocated for this is pure fantasy.  It
requires substantial cuts in existing entitlements.  Where's the money
going to come from?

16) Shouldn't we be a bit suspicious about letting government "solve"
another problem that it created?

Number 3 is probably the big one.  The US Govt. has been totally
incompetent at anything it has attempted except for a few rare
successes (mostly military and NASA) in the short run.  They've never
succeeded at doing anything as promised or anywhere close to the price
they claimed for more than a few years.  The people who brought us
Medicare are going to do Universal care right?



-- 
Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's
character before marriage, which is never advisable. -- Oscar Wilde