[Preechr]

Wait... Who said that?

Yes, Baseball avatars confuse me.... Baseball itself confuses me...

We have no right to adequate or any other healthcare. It's all fun and games to want something, but at some point you have to figure up the bill. The demand for health services is rising like the tide, yet all socialized medicine can promise is that it will cut prices to the consumers, which will have the net effect of decreasing the supply AND the quality, both of which will only increase the demand more.

Why do I say that it will decrease the supply? Easy: Decreasing prices means paying doctors less for their services. We are already paying the price for over-regulating the medical industry at the same time we've made doctors and institutions the #1 target of lawsuits... so of course the next thing we should do is REALLY fuck em and start paying them less to do their jobs. That's the ticket!

There's another side to Blanco's complaint about the lack of prevention in modern medical treatment. It's getting harder and harder to find a General Practice Family Doctor these days. Everybody coming out of Med-School wants to be a specialist in some micro-cosm of general health. Why? It's easier to avoid a malpractice lawsuit that way. Of course, the cost to the consumer goes up exponentially while the quality of service plummets, as nobody's looking at the big picture anymore... but that's why we need government to intervene, right?

Newsflash: Government created the problem, once again, and is set on making it worse and worse until we finally assent to let it try a solution, whatever that entails, since government is the only entity out there claiming to have an answer.

Number One: Government programs do not solve problems. Government programs throw tons of money and bureacracy at problems, which only invites corruption (waste, fraud and abuse, not just bribery) into any system designated to have a problem. We have enough corruption in the health industry thanks to what government management we already have, thank you.

Want an example? Public Education. The more money and bureacracy the government has thrown into government provided education, the farther into the toilet it has gone. Unless you can provide some other reason, the statistics are right there and I'm calling the relationship causal.

Number Two: It is government solutions that got us to where we are right now, which by common understanding is apparently a health-care CRISIS. There simply is no real plan for functional socialized medicine, only a promise of it and all the wonders it will bring. If you press it's proponents, the best you will come up with is mumblings about new, powerful buracracies and re-thinkings of the entire system. Who is it that is going to re-think the entire system? Congress? Some newly hired government functionaries? What are the credentials of the people that will be re-thinking and re-designing America's healthcare system?

Sure, experts will be consulted. I wonder if we have such amazing thinkers around right now that can be tapped for their amazing ideas when it comes to re-thinking things, what are they currently working on? Are they refusing to re-think anything until government institutes a single payor system? If so, maybe it's safe to assume these amazing re-thinkers are generally more passionate about single payor systems of healthcare than they are about adequate and affordable healthcare. I don't hear many real doctors refusing to practice until socialized medicine becomes a reality. Most of what I do hear from doctors is resignation that this is our future, like it or not, but there are people to make better and research to do right now.

Number Three: What I do see happening is that Medicaid and Medicare allowables are constantly being cut back. While more and more people are joining those systems, less and less money is being spent per person. Please, look very closely at the quality of care "allowed" to Medicaid and Medicare recipients before you decide you want to enroll. Right now, government is only covering those that are to old or too poor to do it for themselves, and the entire system is on the verge of collapse. That's the dirty secret behind this or any other experiment of socialism: the is so much waste involved that these systems must always expand until they finally and inevitably fail.

The new Massachussetts plan, as much socialized healthcare as any other (though not single payor,) is a fine example. Everybody in the state is now required to carry some form of health insurance. Great! Everybody is covered! Even those that did not consider the expense a necessity. That's the key. Insurance companies and the state found common ground. There are those that really don't need health insurance at any moment in time. They don't need or forsee the need healthcare services they can't pay or won't be able to pay when the time comes. Bureacrats never fail at failing to look down the road... they always seem to only see one slice in time and assume everything will always be just like that. Statistics always indicate, to them, a static world.

So, Massachussetts is now flush with health insurance dollars, since they've added coverage from those that haven't been using health services. What if they do? Having health insurance coverage makes health services decidedly cheaper, right? Well, why not try it out, then? Massachussetts has only bought itself a little more time, and that's all any form of socialized healthcare will ever do. They will expand it and expand it until it eventually blows up in all our faces, just like Medicaid and Medicare. Just like Social Security and SSDI. Just like any of the countless social welfare programs that never seem to do what they promised, yet always require more and more investment, as if the glory days were just around the corner when the proper amount of money has been applied, while the benefits always.... Always! ...fall.

Any of you is free to name a similar socialistic experiment that has shown to be an exeption to this rule. Knock yourselves out. You won't find one.

This all boils down to you people WANT something to be, and you are smart enough to know that many, many people are smarter than you. While you may be to dumb to figure out how to make something you want actually fit in your pocket, SURELY there must be people out there that can figure it out. Politicians are in the business of being smarter than you, and they are always going on about how much they care about you. I suppose it's only the best logical conclusion that these are the people you are after. They've even helped you understand that what you thought was a want was actually a dire need that you and all Americans have! My God you must have been dumber than you thought, or maybe they were smarter, for you to have missed that!

You want the best healthcare in the world, and you want it to be free. We have an expression down here in the dirty South: Want in one hand and shit in the other, then see which one fills up the quickest. If people in general have to pay full price for the medical services they want to have, they will want to have less of them. Maybe, just maybe, they will suffer through a few illnesses without pills and therapies to hide the symptoms, and maybe they will start taking a bit better care of themselves all by themselves. Statistics show that every one of us that is an American is hugely fat and already diabetic whether or not we know it yet, and couldn't run around the block without suffering a heart-attack or stroke. This is, of course, due to the lack of universal single payor health insurance, I'm sure.

If you are really that worried about those that might "slip through the cracks" were health insurance to just GO AWAY ALTOGETHER, please remember that #1 people willl always slip through cracks, #2 very real people are already slipping through the gaping cracks in the current socialized healthcare systems we have in this country and others, and #3 nobody can currently be refused healthcare regardless of insurance coverage in this country, cracks to slip through or not.

None of you give one flying fuck about people that may or may not slip through some cracks that may or may not exist. That is only a mask you use to hide your lust for wanting something for nothing at the expense of what you think is only those that have more money than you but in reality is everybody including yourself. There you go believing what politicians tell you again! If you wanted to be healthier, you'd be living that way already. It's far cheaper than living the way you do, which would allow you to save money for when random problems might pop up despite all the care you've taken for your body.

Blah.