This time it comes from an especially telling source - Claude
Castonguay, Quebec's former health minister. Castonguay is "known as
the father of the Quebec public health care system that was copied by
the rest of Canada".

We keep hearing from socialized medicine's apologists that it
represents a significant cost savings from private care. Well, now it
is being acknowledged that the Quebec health care system is in
financial crisis and that "public health care costs in Canada are
growing at twice the rate of the economy" - or in other words
spiraling out of control.

So what is being recommended? "A report issued last week recommends
that Quebec move toward a mixed-delivery system that includes more
private care." More private care?

The admission is clear, though the report denies it: socialized
medicine doesn't work.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id...

The full report, including a 38 pp summary, can be found here:

http://www.financementsante.gouv.qc.ca/en/rapport/index.asp

Fred Weiss

On Feb 29, 7:44 pm, Fred Weiss papertig.com> wrote:

On Feb 29, 7:22 pm, Ed earthlink.net> wrote:

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:44:46 -0800, Fred Weiss wrote:

YES, most of the world, your system does not work. No it doesn't!!! No it
does nowwwwwwT!!! NO NO NO!!!

Our costs are not going up at all. We pay the lowest prices for drugs in
the world and, even without the need for an additional layer of cost via
insurance corporations, we can afford most things out of pocket. None of
us, including hospitals and doctors, need anything like Medicaid to keep
our entire society afloat.

On Feb 29, 10:22 pm, Ed earthlink.net> wrote:

The costs of socialized medicine - if by that you mean the *financial*
costs - is the least of its problems, although I have noted the
attempt by its apologists to vastly understate it (especially in
regard to its inevitable and disastrous increasing costs, which this
report acknowledges).

The most significant (economic) problem in my view - and yet the one
least mentioned even by its opponents - is that (as with all state
managed and controlled programs) it will lead to stagnation in
medicine (and that's at best).

On Mar 1, 8:21 am, ZerkonX X.net> wrote:

Are you referring to Canada? Read the report.

Sure, through price controls and thus by strangling the profits of the
corporations who discover them The result of that is reduced R&D and
thus fewer new medicines, especially breakthrough medicines - or you
rely on the last few bastions of profitable medicine, esp. the US.

It's a basic law of economics that price controls produce shortages.
Its most insidious long term effect in medicine will be the loss of
incentive to discover new treatments.

It will essentially freeze medicine at its current state - at best.
Medicine will be like the Cubans who are still driving around in
1950's cars. But just as eventually those cars will fall apart and be
unable to repair, so inevitably medicine itself will decline.

As I have said previously, "wait-care" will quickly devolve into
"death-care". That is already starting to happen. Hence the necessity,
now even recognized by its proponents, to keep private medicine alive
and thriving.

On Mar 1, 8:21 am, ZerkonX X.net> wrote:

For some people, you *really, really* have to put up sarcasm alerts.
There are none so blind....

-tg

On Sat, 01 Mar 2008 05:48:19 -0800, Fred Weiss wrote:

No and sorry yes that was pretty ambiguous. I was referring to US health
care...
http://www.ahrq.gov/news/costsfact.htm

Half of this R&D is paid for by the Taxpayers. How this fits into any
form of 'free market' is beyond sense.

On Mar 2, 8:07 am, ZerkonX X.net> wrote:

Then my post wasn't specifically responsive to you.

My apologies.

The current mess in US health care - which as you say correctly is not
a free market- is a whole other subject.

Fred Weiss

Fred Weiss wrote: