[geeks] healthcare was: nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro

[Nadine Miller]

Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> Mike Meredith wrote:
>> On Wed, 21 May 2008 17:28:15 -0400, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
>>> Socialized healthcare == RATIONED healthcare
>>
>> ROFL! Unless the US has infinite resources to allocate to healthcare,
>> it also has healthcare rationing. Open your wallet. See those bits
>> of paper with "$" written on them ? They're ration tickets. It may
>> or may not be a better rationing systems, but it's still a
>> rationing system.
>>
> 
> My point is, that you can have as much health care as you can afford and 
> the market can provide.  You get to be in charge, not some bureaucrat 
> who doesn't even have an MD.
> 
> If a bureaucrat believes that "machine X has no positive effect on brain 
> cancer" then that bureauracy doesn't allocate funds to buy one and, no 
> one can use it.
> 
>> If you do have to throw rocks at socialised healthcare, please make
>> sure they are really rocks and not boomerangs.
> 
> If socialized healthcare were so wonderful, people from other countries 
> would want to have it; so much so that the rich from other countries 
> would travel to said country to take advantage of it.
> 
> Instead, people from e.g. Canada travel to the USA in order to get 
> better healthcare than what is provided there.
> 
> Read up on "medical tourism" and reflect that all the countries people 
> travel to for major surgery are ones in which the free market, not 
> socialized medicine, is operating.
> 
> SOCIALISM NEVER WORKS.  That is just the way it is.
> 
> All the problems that the US healthcare system has, are a result of 
> having a split socialist/free-market system - remove the socialism and 
> things will get better.
> 
> Yes, I have lived in Canada and yes, I currently reside in the USA and 
> pay for my own healthcare out of pocket (self insured).

I completely agree with Patrick's assessment.  Having lived in Canada, 
and seen the complete idiocy of single payer medicine for people who 
have chronic and/or fast-moving diseases, it's a travesty.  High grade 
brain tumor and you have to wait 6 months to get a CAT scan?  Sex change 
operation bumped to the head of the queue because the bureacrat in 
charge of the "order" is gay when people with chronic urological 
problems that could be easily fixed by an operation stay pushed down?

First hand: a friend of mine who's epilepsy was induced by mis-diagnosis 
of a seizure, was treated with the typical cocktail of drugs for over a 
decade even after it was determined he was a good candidate for surgery 
to fix the epilepsy.  It wasn't until he nearly stomped a guy to death 
(broken collarbone and broken jaw) during a lucid seizure that my friend 
was put into the queue for surgery.

He had 3 petit mal seizures about a week after surgery, and has been 
seizure free since.  He now has a job, a driver's license, and a normal 
life.

And apparently some people in Canada have a clue; the courts have 
ordered the provinces in some case to pay the medical bills of folks 
who've had to resort to coming to the US for healthcare.

=Nadine=