"CalifBill" wrote in message
m...
"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
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"strabo" wrote in message
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snip
As soon as government got into the insurance business prices went up
and quality went down.
According to the Goldwater Institute, health care prices went up in
parallel to the prevalence of private insurance. And the big spike
corresponds to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. Look at the graph on
this page:
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/Ab...w.aspx?id=2317
You need alternative forms of medicine.
I don't care what you say, I am NOT going to start seeing your witch
doctor. d8-)
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Ed Huntress
HMO's were a big cause. People went to the doctor for more stuff. Kid
has a cold, go to the hospital. etc. Plus the rest of the world pretty
much rips off our medical research and gets the use without paying for the
research. Plus go to the emergency room and they run a large battery of
tests just so they can defend themselves in malpractice suits. Plus the
paperwork required by insurance and government regulations adds a huge
burden.
Yeah, but the trick is to put numbers on those pieces and to see which
one(s) really matter. It's a little like earmarks in the federal budget:
they get us ****ed off, and they encourage some bad behavior on the part of
Congress. But in terms of relative costs, they're a drop in the bucket:
earmarks amount to 6% of total discretionary spending, or less than 1/4 of
the INTEREST, alone, on the national debt.
So it's hard to keep these things in perspective. Health care is a lot
harder to pick apart than some other spending, but the ones that are the
really big items surprise most people.
I'll leave aside for the moment what those items are. It would be like
giving away the end to a movie. g
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Ed Huntress