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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (1630)	4/10/2007 4:25:18 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 42652

" Here's a question to ask any presidential candidate from either political party: How do you plan to ration health care? If the answer is "I won't," then he or she doesn't understand health care. Or, more likely, they understand health care and aren't in any mood to talk straight about it." Or they are taking the term "ration" to mean explicit rationing with enforced limits. They might consider market operations to be distinct from what is normally called rationing, even if its rationing by price. People don't usually talk about imposing a system of rationing, when they mean allowing a free market in the good or service. OK. But modern health care has to be rationed. You can pick how you do it, but not whether. And you always get the "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" effect, regardless of method. And as usual, those who stand to benefit by gov't take-over are for it. But then again no major candidates are arguing for a 100% free market system or anything close to one, so the options Wheelan gave are more likely. Yes. Going back to strictly fee-for-service, with no insurance, would have advantages. In many cases, docs have simply added what they would normally charge to insurance reimbursements. At least the best have. And when things get serious, you can afford none other. But - "Life expectancy is not only lower in the U.S. than in all three of those countries, it's below average for all industrialized countries." does not logically imply "In short, the rest of the industrialized world does a better job of rationing health care than we do.", because life expectancy isn't solely determined by the quality of health care or health care rationing, and because longer life expectancy isn't the only result of better health care or health care rationing. I said roughly the same in another post. There are too many other factors affecting that number to attribute it entirely to the health care system.