Dave wrote:
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 09:51:18 -0400, "Vito" said:


The costs are staggering only because all medical care in the US is a rip
off.


Shouldn't be any surprise, but calling the high costs a "rip off" is just
plain simple-minded.

I call bull****. More to follow I'm sure...

The costs are staggering because for some 60 years this
country has adopted a series of policies that remove the usual market
incentives from this sector of the economy.

AH the mantra...the market knows best...the market knows best...
You poor suckers. You've been sold to the insurance companies and
you're so blinded by all this free-market horse**** propaganda that you
Americans get pounded over the head with from the day you're born that
you can't see it.


First, by making medical
expenses tax deductible we insured that doctors and hospitals would have a
built-in subsidy not available to most other providers of services.

It's not a service Dave, it's called "health care" We're not talking
about flogging burritos here.


Then
during WWII we exempted employer-provided health coverage from wage
controls. There followed a rapid expansion of this form of compensation and
period when unions negotiated more and more coverage at less and less cost
to the employee--eventually removing from the employee most of the cost of
buying this service by increasing coverage and reducing deductibles.
Coverage for salaried employees, of course, followed the union-negotiated
coverage.

I was waiting for it, and you delivered! Those goddamn unions eh Dave?
We should just line all those *******s up against a wall and...Oh wait
a minute, didn't we fight against some Austrian corporal who did just
that? Hmmm...

Then we added government paid health coverage for the poor--again
with virtually no economic incentives to prevent overuse.

"Overuse"? What have you been smoking there bub? Who the hell wants to
go to the doctor? SICK PEOPLE DO Dave. Jeezus

Now we've added a
further subsidy for prescription drugs. And to make matters worse, many
countries have price controls on prescription drugs, which requires US users
to bear a disproportionate part of the cost of developing new drugs.

Do you really think that the US is the only place in the world where
research is conducted into the development of new drugs? Ah I forget,
you're American, and America is the centre of the friggin' Universe
isn't it?

The effect of all these subsidies and controls is just what you'd expect.
The decision to seek medical care has little or no cost to vast numbers of
people,

That's a good thing Dave, but then you're so blinded by ideology that
you can't see it. People shouldn't lose their homes or savings or their
lives because they can't pay cash for medical care. Quite frankly your
system is inhumane.

so you get overuse

simplistic flawed conclusion from faulty premises

resulting at vast sums of money being thrown to
doctors, hospitals and employees of both.

which of course would be the normal course of events considering that
health care is a people intensive enterprise


People will go see a doctor for a
hang-nail because it doesn't cost them anything. There was an article not
long ago recounting how the major activity for many Florida retirees is
going from one doctor to another to the point where the doctor's office is a
major center for socializing.

Okay, my mistake. I shouldn't have responded at all. You've been
drinking haven't you.

And of course when you have vast sums of money being thrown at a single
service the cost of that service rises.

The only way these costs are going to be limited is by giving the patient
some incentive to limit use.

OR we could just ask tax-whiners such as yourself to stop whinging

And in the current environment I don't see that
happening at any time soon. With the baby boomer generation reaching
retirement age the demand for more medical freebees paid for by the other
taxpayers will only increase. So we can look forward to a continued
environment in which most of the Mercedes and Rollses in the parking lot
have MD plates on them.

So you resent the fact that someone who spent perhaps a dozen years in
University and many many dollars learning an art and a science that
saves people's lives, gets remunerated at a level commensurate with
their skills.

Go sail your boat whinge-boy and bitch about how hard done by you are.