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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HPilot who wrote (464918)	3/19/2009 10:33:33 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574004

No one would call the Romans socialists, yet they provided health care for their soldiers, not sure about the vets. In fact they were so advanced in medicine the west did not catch back up till the late 18th or 19th century. Good point. Part of what RW doesn't understand about this subject (and there is an awful lot) is that bureaucracy comes with larger scope. Automatically. It is very hard to fight it. So, while I've stated that I would support the establishment of a nationwide network of clinics to provide maybe 10-20 million free patient visits a year to the homeless and indigent (at a cost of a few billions), that in no way constitutes "socialized medicine". What makes "socialized medicine" unworkable, for the most part, is the bureaucracy, and poor judgment that comes with one. I could manage 250 such clinics with efficiency and provide excellent service. But if you escalate the scope to something that would care for a sizable majority of Americans, the system immediately becomes unworkable. If you give that organization the power to negotiate with drug companies, you get something like the post I made earlier pertaining to the Brits cutting off the use of certain life-saving drugs for cancer patients. You get people waiting in line for months to get a damned CT scan. Scope is everything. Keep it small, agile, and deal with problems where you see them, and you can help people. But when you develop a bloated system like Medicare and give it powers it shouldn't have (like negotiating with the drug companies) and you destroy its functionality. Even VA with its limited scope has been criticized. Imagine a larger organization!