The medicine dished out by the Veterans Administration is of very low quality, from everything I read. I don't know. There is a VA nursing home in my hometown - my parents and their friends think well of it. As to the system overall, I don't know - but should we expect government health care to be of outstanding quality, in general? Private anything generally beats government.
Bush's Medicare prescription benefit was badly designed from the articles I've read, and I seem to remember something about it benefiting large drug companies and at the same time being useless for quite a few Medicare recipients. This is not something I know a lot about, so please feel free to jump in and explain it to me. I'm not of an age to have any experience with it. But I'm of the opinion that if the same benefit had originated under a Democratic administration the system would be very similar but the people criticizing it would be different.
RE. lawsuits in countries with socialized medical systems - apparently it's is a problem even there - though I'd think less of one because it's easier (and less risky if you don't have a good case) to sue here:
Dr. Eamonn Butler of Britain's Adam Smith Institute has a cautionary tale from across the pond both for those who oppose legal reform and those who would increase government's role in health care -- often the same folks.
Says Dr. Butler:
Socialized medicine has betrayed its original aims. Far from providing free care to all, it can't even provide them with free dignity any more -- as Britain's National Health Service shows.
Take Air Marshall Sir Patrick Dunn, the 90-year old World War II hero, who fell recently at home. His 92-year-old wife called the emergency number. But the paramedics who arrived left him on the floor begging for help, saying that 'regulations' forbade them lifting him.
Why? Because the NHS authorities don't want to face lawsuits from staff injuring themselves when lifting heavy patients. Sir Patrick, though, weighs less than 140 pounds. But under socialism, rules is rules.
Poor Lorraine Wolsenholme, an MS sufferer, weighs even less. But she's had to sit, eat -- even sleep -- in a wheelchair for the last 15 months because nurses are banned from lifting her into bed. She reasonably complains that she's being treated worse than an animal.
Quite right. Next time I'm sick, I'm not going to a state-run hospital. I'm going to the vetinary. Vets at least treat their patients as valued individuals, and treat them with some dignity. That's because their livelihood depends on it. But when people's livelihood depends on complying with bureaucratic rule-books, don't expect much in the way of service - or even animal levels of dignity.
-Blog Entry of Dr. Eamonn Butler, Adam Smith Institute, September 22, 2003, at adamsmithblog.org;
www.nationalcenter.org/LB34.html |
