BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - Bill Moyers on environment, politics and Christian fundamentalists

in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 2/19/05 3:14 PM:

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Weisr says:
===============
In the US, if your doctor is too busy to see you, you can go find one
that
isn't so busy, anywhere in the US
================

Similarly, in Canada, if my doctor is too busy, I am free to go to
another. Very often, when I have a minor OWie, I simply go to the
clinic in the nearest shopping mall and "some" doctor or another sees
to the malady.

Weiser says:
=================
It works fine until the system becomes overloaded with non-critical
cases. When that happens, people get prioritized and waitlisted, and
not infrequently die while waiting for the list
===========================

You misunderstand the process. If you are about to die, you are clearly
not a "non-critical" case. Thus you are moved to the head of the line.
People do not die waiting. People may get ****ed-off waiting for
elective procedures when emergency cases get higher priority. But,
would you have it any other way? You can't buy yourself to the front of
the line. Your medcal condition determines where you are in the line.
Seems logical and fair to me.

They die not because they are critical, they die because they *become*
critical, and unsalvagable, because they cannot obtain treatment for
illnesses that would prevent further declines in health, leading to
debilitation and/or death, because "critical" cases come first.

One anecdote I read was the heart patient awaiting surgery in England who
wrote to the Queen to beg for help because she was two years down the
surgery list. The Queen commiserated with her and suggested that if she
actually had a heart attack, she would move up on the list.

Such people suffer for years both with debility and often in pain, with
their conditions continually deteriorating until, while not critical enough
to jump the queue, they eventually succumb to irreversible medical problems
that might have been prevented, or significantly slowed if they had received
prophylactic treatment early on. But in socialized medicine, such
prophylactic treatment falls to the bottom of the waiting list, and often
doesn't happen.

Basically, the system waits till you've become critically ill to treat you,
and then you have a much higher risk of dying because the disease's course
is irreversible.

Weiser says:
===================
given a false high priority through political influence or other
forms of corruption.
=======================

Look, I'm not going to blow smoke up your ass and tell you that never
happens. It very occasionally does. And when it does, the public
outrage is palpable.

As it should be. Then again, it's a matter of being hoist on your own
petard. You folks created the socialized medicine system and you accepted it
because you think you shouldn't have to pay for your own medical care...that
someone else (everyone else) should be responsible for your illnesses, so
you suffer the consequences, which is fine by me.

Can you post one verifiable reference to a patient in Canada who died
waiting? Good luck finding one. But the way you are talking, you should be
able to find hundreds! You really don't know what you are talking about, why
not just admit that?

My point is that down here in the US, we believe in personal responsibility.
Your medical problems are your medical problems and are not the problem of
taxpayers. Does that mean that poor people may die because they cannot
afford emergency treatment? Sometimes, but not often, because our federal
government subsidizes (there's that nasty word again) hospitals to provide
emergency medical care to the indigent and poor.

Why do you do that? I thought you believe in "personal responsibility" and
"personal responsibility" means that if you don't have enough money to pay
for medical care, then you should die.

I also wonder why you have public schools, that doesn't seem to fit with
your definition of personal responsibility either. My goodness, that's
billions and billions of dollars going to subsidize poor families who can't
take responsibility for sending their kids to private schools.