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Re: Socialised Medicine (fwd) From: Bert Gold (bgold@itsa.ucsf.EDU) Sun Apr 14 11:34:56 1996 Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ] Next message: Bert Gold: "US Govahmint and Big Business: A Sinister Alliance Against Medicine" Previous message: mborn: "Re: Your chance to make a difference" J.K. Eiby wrote (in part): >I live in Australia and we have socialized medicine and, for the most part, it >seems to work fine. I have a Medicare card and whenever I want to see a doctor, >I go and see one and all I do is show my card. I pay 1.6% of my gross income >into the system every year, although if you earn below a certain amount >($20,000 >or something) you wind up paying nothing. However, I don't resent those who >don't pay because I have been in their position. In fact, I haven't been to the >doctor in 5 years and I still don't mind paying my 1.6% because I think the >system is a worthy one and deserves support. > >I think people should be concerned with medical care that actually works >instead >of sticking to an unworkable ideological position. I'm sorry if I don't want >the >poor and disadvantaged dying on the steps of hospitals while the rich get >pampered. That's not the kind of society I want to live in. > >Socialised medicine can work or at least it works a damn sight better than all >the other options. Those in America who oppose it should at least take the time >to find out how it works in those countries that do have it. > >Cheers, > >Joseph Eiby To which someone in talk.politics.medicine replied, I'm convinced that a single-payer system _could_ work in the US. It probably won't happen, though, for two principal reasons: 1 Many voters in the States seem to think that "single-payer" automatically means some massive government-run medical monolith. (It doesn't.) The advocates of single-payer type systems (politicians, health workers, researchers, etc.) apparently don't have the wit or the resources to explain - in user-friendly terms - precisely how universal compulsory insurance could work in the US - and how it DOESN'T represent the first step down the slippery slope of epidemic rabid communism. Perhaps this view is to a large extent the result of intensive campaigning by those groups with the most to lose through a single-payer arrangement, and the inept way that health reform has been "marketed" in the States. 2 Many voters in the States would disagree with Mr Eiby's comments. The very essence of a single-payer system (or any universal insurance scheme - variants of which exist in Europe) is that the healthy and reasonably well-off subsidize - through their premiums - the care of those who are not so healthy and not so well-off. That is why the universal insurance arrangements in Europe are for the most part compulsory. To many of my fellow citizens in the States, this concept - called "solidarity" or "mutual support" - is anathema. Next message: Bert Gold: "US Govahmint and Big Business: A Sinister Alliance Against Medicine" Previous message: mborn: "Re: Your chance to make a difference"

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