> zinnic gate.net> wrote innews:3335f088-8375-4218-983d-35ea62632671@z72g2000hsb.googlegroups.com:
>

>> If you were scrupulously honesrt you would say,- as some Canadians do.
>> That is, the minority that can afford to do so.
>> There is nothing in a Universal health care "regime" (as you call it)
>> that prevents one from taking out additional private health
>> insurance.schemes to cover minor ailments, Many UK patients (who can
>> afford)  take out private health .insurance

>
> Private health care is allowed in the UK, but not Canada. Anyone who
> treats patients privately gets fined. A Canadian Supreme Court decision
> two years ago ordered Quebec to abolish that policy:
>
> "The Supreme Court decision ruled that long waits for various medical
> procedures in the province had violated patients' "life and personal
> security, inviolability and freedom," and that prohibition of private
> health insurance was unconstitutional when the public health system did
> not deliver "reasonable services."
>
> The decision applied directly only to Quebec, but it has generated
> movement for private clinics and private insurance in several provinces
> where governments hope to forestall similar court decisions."
>
> Not sure what changes have been made.
>

medi>t extend to lso > ---http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/

>

>> but are delighted when
>> the "Gummint".steps in to cover ruinous expenses engendered by serious
>> disease and  the long term health care rquired by many in their
>> declining years.

>
> Of course. Every free-luncher is delighted whenever someone else picks
> up his tab.

>

>> As to the inefficiencies of health care provided by "Gummint", these
>> are exaggerated anecdotes served uo by  for-profit companies. Numerous
>> polls have established that the great majority of citizens 'subjected'
>> to Universal care are highly appreciative and strongly support this
>> government service. Sure it could be improved, but what service could
>> not?.

>
> It is impossible to exaggerate the inefficiencies, not to mention the
> disastrous consequences, of gummint meddling in the health care market.
> The exorbitant costs of health care in the US today are due entirely to
> interference in the market by gummint:
>
> * Licensing and other barriers to entry of providers into the market,
> thus restricting supply,
>
> * All manner of mandates, imposed both by the feds and the states, on
> what must be treated, who must be treated, and which treatments may or
> must be used, thus increasing demand while further constricting supply.
> About 10 years ago an insurance commissioner in my state, Deborah Senn,
> burdened with the delusion that everyone has a "right" to health care
> paid for by someone else, imposed a whole slate of "public interest"
> mandates on health insurance --- "community rating," coverage for
> childbirth at no extra cost, coverage for naturopaths and other
> quackery, etc. As a result, all but two insurance carriers left the
> state --- they allowed existing policies to expire and closed up shop.
> The two remaining carriers doubled their rates.
>
> The state legislature met in emergency session and repealed most of
> Senn's mandates. At the next election she was booted from office.
>
> But every state imposes some mishmash of regulations and mandates on
> providers and insurers, all of which drive up costs. The feds, through
> EMTALA, has turned every hospital emergency room into a free public
> clinic, the costs of which are passed on to --- guess who --- you and
> your insurer.
>
> * Federal tax laws have encouraged employers to compensate workers with
> ever more generous health insurance, rather than wage increases
> (employer-paid insurance premiums are not taxable to the worker). As a
> result, millions have become used to the idea that paying for their
> health care is someone else's responsibility. And because services are
> no longer being paid for by the persons receiving them, those customers
> have no incentive to comparison shop for providers, or temper their
> health care demands with frugality.
>
> *Federal regulation of drugs and medical devices has not only added
> astronomical costs to those heath care products, but has led to
> thousands of deaths. For example, beta-blockers, a revolutionary and
> amazingly safe treatment for hypertension at the time they were
> introduced, were kept off the US market for nearly 10 years while the
> FDA bureaucrats huffed and puffed and pushed their paperwork around. In
> the meantime about 100,000 people died who could have been saved with
> those drugs. A similar fate awaited thousands of heart patients who
> would have benefited from implantable pacemakers, while the FDA played
> its games with that device.
>
> Up until WWII everyone paid for their health care costs out of their
> pockets, and considered it no more burdensome or "unfair" than they do
> today when they pay their vet bill. Costs were low and providers
> plentiful and competitive. If people had insurance it was only "major
> medical" --- coverage for extraordinary expenses, and that was cheap
> too.
>
> Free lunches always end up costing someone double.
>

>> I guess you reject that what is good for your community is good for
>> you, and embrace  that only what is good for you is good for your
>> community. Or do you simply reject community?

>
> Nothing is "good for a community." Communities are not moral agents;
> they are collections of them. The only goods are the goods for those
> individuals, and they differ from individual to individual.