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

To: gg cox who wrote (6237)	3/3/2009 4:36:05 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 42652

Morse code. Cool. Re Taiwan, I nearly commented about Taiwan to Mary when I was discussing data entry by doctors. I believe it's Taiwan where patients get two minutes with the doctor. I was thinking about squeezing data entry time into that two minutes...

To: gg cox who wrote (6237)	3/3/2009 4:37:02 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 42652

That's funny. I think I saw that when it aired on Leno's show. It does say something about technology, though... When working on customer's systems I tend to work at a DOS prompt. Often, someone looking over my shoulder questions me about why I do this. The answer, of course, is I can do things 10x as fast as they can using Windows Explorer and pointing and clicking, dragging and dropping, etc. Computers are hugely more powerful than 10 years ago, 20 or 30, yet, most of that power is wasted on managing a GUI and useless gadgets like the latest Weather Bug or Virus Scanner.

To: gg cox who wrote (6237)	3/3/2009 4:52:37 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 42652

On the Taiwan adoption of American Medicare concepts -- I wasn't involved in health care in the 60s, so I can't say much about what Medicare was or wasn't back then. But I suspect that 10 years in, Medicare looked pretty good. It hadn't started producing massive deficits yet, the systems were brand-spanking new and looked impressive I'm sure, and the number of people who were reliant on it was likely relatively small. Social Security undoubtedly looked great to everyone in 1943. But who knew that these two programs, by 2009, would have produced a $50 TRILLION unfunded, unrecorded liability for our nation that obviously cannot ever be paid off? FDR, when he pushed SS through the Congress, made reference to the fact that if the system were not self-sufficient in "1980" it would have been a failure. Well, sure enough, 1980 came and SS had us underwater in debt. 30 years later, it is that much worse. These programs all start off looking great. But over the long haul -- 50, 60, 70 years, they collapse on themselves. Look at unemployment insurance at the time FDR signed it into law versus now. He envisioned a program which would be funded SOLELY out of taxes levied on employers to provide a little help for those who lost their jobs. Today, it becomes a way of life providing months, even years, of extended benefits for the unfortunate people who find themselves out of work. And in many, many cases, it is abused beyond belief. Look at the EITC, which was first put into the tax code as a little help for single parents who make little money. Today, it is a huge welfare bureaucracy. It is unfortunate, but programs such as these are pathologically unable to remain effective over the extended periods of time required of them. These programs are the single biggest threat to our country after the immediate threat of terrorism, IMO.