(08-13-2018, 01:40 PM)David Horn Wrote:(08-13-2018, 01:45 AM)Galen Wrote:(08-12-2018, 09:02 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: There are a lot of usual tropes there.
This has happened everywhere socialized medicine has been implemented. Here is an example from the Canada.
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It is not simply a problem with the Soviet Union.
Just in case you think Crowder is making this up here is a CBC story on the problem.
Arguing this case is a waste of time, when the issue really falls to excessive capacity, with excessive cost (the US, but still less than needed), or lower capacity with wait times (Canada and others) or outright denial of services and excessive costs (also the US, if you aren't insured). Personally, I'll wait for care that's not critical over those other options, though our Medicare system seems to keep costs in check and avoid the wait times by offering supplemental coverage to those willing and able to buy it.
Medicine is more costly in America because
(1) new physicians typically have huge student loans to pay off, which compels them to do specialization which allows bigger billings. Contrast Germany, where education is very cheap. Physicians charge less because supply and demand makes more physicians available.
(2) the tendency of medicine to fit the corporate model, complete with large bureaucratic staffs that cost big money.
(3) heavy reliance upon insurance companies to monitor the medical care, which implies a for-profit bureaucracy, and paperwork requirements for medical offices and physicians who end up paying for office staff, which is not cheap. Bureaucracies are never efficient.
(4) monopoly pricing of many medicines.
(5) lawsuits involving ambulance-chasing attorneys.
...Physicians overseas are not flocking from wealthy European countries to the USA. Such would be evidence of a better deal for American physicians.
A big fault is that one can be priced out of medicine, especially in mental health, and be priced into the grave.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.