Well Hillary has now weighed in on socialized health care.  It seems that everyone including the Bush administration has a socialized recipe for improving our health care system.

I'm sorry, but I will never be sold on the idea that health care is best left in the hands of our government and politicans.  Here is a good article by Karl Rove on the subject.

http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010620

Free, Universal, Government Health Care!

Every Democratic candidate for President is offering universal, government-run, nationalized health care.  And every Democratic candidate claims their plan will offer the world's best health care to everyone in the United States and make it affordable.  Yeah, right....

Let's look at some other government success stories before we hand over our health to the government.  Where to start?  There is no lack of examples.  

• The Department of Defense gave us $600 hammers and coffee pots.  This is the model of cost controls you can expect.  Two years after the start of our nationalized health care aspirin will cost $85 each and be in short supply.
• The Department of Motor Vehicles provides unequaled customer service.  Expect the same level of personalized care when you enter a nationalized health care facility.
• The US Post Office gave us unparalleled cost shifting.  They deliver tons of junk mail to your door daily at reduced rates to corporate mass mailers while jacking up the first class postage stamps we use every 24 months.  The privileged few will be taken care of and we will get stuck with paying the bill and getting second-rate service.  
• The Social Security Administration manages the retirement for most Americans, barely achieves a 1% rate of return and has given all our retirement funds to congress to blow on pork-barrel projects.  
• The Transportation Safety Administration can't detect 63% of fake bombs carried through airport security checkpoints by their own agents.  
• The Department of Veteran's Affairs offers a perfect example of an existing government-run health care system.  Is this what you want for the whole nation?

  

Okay, to be fair, the DMV is not a federal agency.  But that simply proves the point that even state governments can't deliver goods and services effectively.  But the rest of these examples are even more miserable examples of sheer and utter indifference, incompetence and failure.  

Let's consider one of the military's prime care facilities.  Remember the stories about Walter Reed that broke in February this year?  Oh, wait, actually, the story broke in January 2005.  Except that Congress has been briefed about the deplorable conditions in 2004 and did nothing so as not to embarrass the Army.  Yes, this is the kind of health care you can expect from your government.  "Don't ask, don't tell" takes on a whole new meaning.  

The article in the Washington Post reported that a typical wounded troop "had to file 22 documents with 8 different commands, most of them off-post, to enter and exit the medical processing world."  Sixteen different information (computer) systems are used to process the forms and most of them don't speak to each other.  And soldiers often had to prove they were wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan as the center's medical records often could not provide this information.  

These abuses happen when the sitting government is supposed to be favorable to the military.  Imagine what it must be like when anti-war, loony leftists are running the government!  Now, try to recall the stories that come out of Veteran's Administration hospitals.  These stories tell yet more frightening stories!  Do you really expect Hillary Clinton, John Edwards or Barrack Obama can make national, universal government health care work any differently?  If so, you will need more than a couple of aspirin.

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He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.  (http://www.myspace.com/paleocon

Unless you have lived in Europe like I did for over 10 years, you would see the results of socialized health care.  People have a doctors appointment 6 months in advance.  If you need an operation, don't hold your breath because it will happen in one year because the government hopes you will die before that time, so they can save money.  I use the Veterans Administration Hospital for my health care and it is really bad.  Anything major, they have to contract an outside doctor and that might take 5 months to get an appointment because this is what happened to me.  And their dental health is so bad, their teeth makes the teeth of our poor look good.  

Think about this.  Socialized health care, will cause our medical schools to close down, cause no medical research to be conducted and most hospitals will be bankrupted.  No doctor will want to work on a base pay scale after they spent a large amount of money for their education and career.  While in Europe, I never did hear of anyone suing the health care system for malpractice because you can't sue the government.

kolana wrote:Unless you have lived in Europe like I did for over 10 years, you would see the results of socialized health care.  People have a doctors appointment 6 months in advance.  If you need an operation, don't hold your breath because it will happen in one year because the government hopes you will die before that time, so they can save money.  I use the Veterans Administration Hospital for my health care and it is really bad.  Anything major, they have to contract an outside doctor and that might take 5 months to get an appointment because this is what happened to me.  And their dental health is so bad, their teeth makes the teeth of our poor look good.  

Think about this.  Socialized health care, will cause our medical schools to close down, cause no medical research to be conducted and most hospitals will be bankrupted.  No doctor will want to work on a base pay scale after they spent a large amount of money for their education and career.  While in Europe, I never did hear of anyone suing the health care system for malpractice because you can't sue the government.

I and my family have been treated in a Soviet hospitals.  You do NOT want to be sick or injured in a socialized system.  I have SEEN socialized medicine first-hand.  My brother got sick in Germany several years ago and it was awful.  Not as bad as the USSR but the patient is NOT the primary concern in any socialized system.  

Good luck to us all if this becomes a reality in the USA.  Pray that you are healthy and stay that way and keep your will updated just in case.

kolana wrote:  Socialized health care, will cause our medical schools to close down, cause no medical research to be conducted and most hospitals will be bankrupted.  No doctor will want to work on a base pay scale after they spent a large amount of money for their education and career.  

Absolutely right.  But logical consequences to absurd legislation never occur to Democrats (and rarely occur to Republicans)

kolana wrote:While in Europe, I never did hear of anyone suing the health care system for malpractice because you can't sue the government.

Ahh, but here in the Late Great U.S.A., we can sue the government.  And I plan to do just that, as soon as my socialized healthcare kicks in.  I don't know what I'll be claiming (nor does it matter), but I will be asking for damages in the amount of (in my best Dr. Evil immitation) 100 BILLION Dollars.      


I figure the faster we totally bankrupt the United States Government, the sooner we can all go home & grab a beer.

Beer will be outlawed once socialized medicine is implemented.  So will meat, fat and carbohydrates.  We will consist on a diet of nutrasweet and blanched vegetables.

The idea of socialized health care terrifies me and more so as I age. IMO, socialized medicine places little value in the elderly and, unfortunately, as we age we tend to require more health care. It is difficult enough attempting to obtain care through an HMO which I am paying for myself. I've had to argue and make threats in order to get my elderly mother admitted to the hospital. I've had dicussions with many people on the issue and the primary thing that keeps coming through is the word FREE. Many people believe that socialized health care means free health care. They choose to ignore the argument concerning where the money is coming from or the quality of service as stated in many of the previous posts. Unfortunately, once the change has been made there will be no going back and many of these same people will be crying the loudest. Only the wealthy and the politicians will continue to receive quality health care. It's all so sad.

Dede wrote:The idea of socialized health care terrifies me and more so as I age. IMO, socialized medicine places little value in the elderly and, unfortunately, as we age we tend to require more health care.

It should terrify everyone from the moment we are born and that terror should increase in direct correlation to your age.  

Socialism places NO value on individuals.  Socialism exhalts the state or group over the individuals to compose the group.  

Dede wrote:It is difficult enough attempting to obtain care through an HMO which I am paying for myself. I've had to argue and make threats in order to get my elderly mother admitted to the hospital. I've had dicussions with many people on the issue and the primary thing that keeps coming through is the word FREE. Many people believe that socialized health care means free health care. They choose to ignore the argument concerning where the money is coming from or the quality of service as stated in many of the previous posts. Unfortunately, once the change has been made there will be no going back and many of these same people will be crying the loudest. Only the wealthy and the politicians will continue to receive quality health care. It's all so sad.

You have the legal right to take your HMO to court to address these abuses.  However, no one will have the right to take a government run health care organization to court.  You can only sue the government when the government says you can and you can bet that the 2nd clause of any national health care system will be that YOU CAN'T SUE THEM!

The government can't run a library, a school or a retirement fund.  Why in the world do we expect them to effectively manage health care for 300 million people?  What lunacy is this?  Where in the US Constitution does it authorize the federal government to provide health care for private citizens?