A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Weiser says:
=================
Too many sick people, too few underpaid doctors. The math is
inevitable.
===================

I'm going try to get a handle on the way doctors are remunerated in the
USA. If I paint with too broad a brush and make significant errors,
I'll be happy to corrected by you, Scott.

Is it fair to say that a significant number of Americans carry private
medical insurance? I'm going to assume they do.

Yup. But then again many don't.


In these private medical insurance cases, I'll further assume that the
doctor gets paid by submitting a bill to the insurance company.

True, but when the amount paid by insurance does not cover the costs, the
patient is responsible for the balance


Now, if these insurance companies are anything at all like other
insurance companies, they're not particularly fond of handing over
money. I'm going to assume that they scrutinize all the bills that get
submitted. Further, if they act as good agents for their shareholders,
they'll deny any costs that appear out of the ordinary. To keep life
simple, they very likely have a fee schedule: $X for setting a broken
collar bone, $Y for removing tonsils, etc etc.

True, in many cases. However, doctors can always negotiate their fees here.
Moreover, they can charge what they like, and the difference is paid by the
patient.


And exactly how is this different than Canada?

The free market sets the prices for both insurance compensation and doctor's
services. You can buy a comprehensive HMO policy that covers everything from
soup to nuts, but you're restricted to using the medical facilities of that
HMO. In those facilities, the care you receive is mandated by your contract.
The more you pay for insurance, the better your coverage. Plus, you can
always go outside the HMO system if you need care that's not covered by your
insurance plan.

Under socialized medicine, it's like one giant HMO for the entire country,
the only upside is that you don't have to pay a premium every month. Your
care is doled out to you in accordance with government mandates, not in
accordance with a contract between you and your medical provider. Thus, you
as an individual have no control whatsoever over the care you receive under
a socialized medicine system. You take what they give you, and if you don't
like it, tough.


You suggest that in Canada, there are "too few underpaid doctors".

That¹s the nature of government-run health programs, including, down here,
the Veteran's Administration medical program for our vets. Too few doctors
willing to work for low government wages in a cash-strapped program that
often cannot provide simple things like routine daily wound care and
personal hygiene. The VA is a perfect example of the pitfalls of
government-run health care programs.

You see, when government runs health care, the taxpayers are reluctant to
fund it because individual taxpayers want their own health looked after, but
they don't want to be taxed to pay for somebody else's health care, so they
persuade their representatives to cut funding for socialized health care
because they don't believe they will ever need it. For socialized medicine
(or socialized anything else) one element of human behavior is required that
simply does not exist in the large-scale societal dynamic: Altruism.

It's the same reason Libertarianism is a social failure.

Both systems make the erroneous presumption that more than a token number of
people are truly altruistic and are thus willing to give their money for the
benefit of someone they don't know *when required to do so by government.*

On the other hand, history shows us that people are indeed altruistic and
giving to those less fortunate in this country, but they refuse to do it
through the government, they prefer to donate directly to charitable
organizations.

The reason is two-fold: Most importantly, people don't like being *required*
to pay for someone else's bad health through the forcible extraction and
redistribution of income by the tax man. Second, people have a healthy
distrust of government-run operations, which are synonymous with waste,
fraud and inefficiency. They prefer to donate voluntarily to organizations,
which gives them some degree of control over the operation of the charity.
If the charity wastes money and doesn't provide valuable services that
comport with the wishes of the donors, the donors stop donating.

When government can redistribute your income by force and allocate it to
inefficient, wasteful, poorly-run government health programs (Like the BIA
health system), people have no control over how the money is spent or
whether it is being properly used to provide care...or if it's just being
siphoned off into some bureaucrats pocket.

You're trying to make some sort of economic case, I guess. Hmmmm, thus
we'd have to assume "too MANY underpaid doctors" in the USA. Clearly,
in the USA, the free market ought to find an equilibrium as more people
go into a very lucrative profession. But this is apparently not the
case. There appears to be a doctor shortage in the USA as well.

Only in rural areas where there is not as much demand. There are plenty of
doctors in heavily populated areas.


Well!!!! Isn't that peculiar!

Not really, if you understand the dynamic.


Of course it's not if one understands power. Bargaining power! It's the
oldest trick in the trade union guidebook: keep supply artificially
low. Hey, if it works for longshoremen, why not doctors?

Which is fine so long as the government isn't artificially limiting wages,
as it does in socialized medicine.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Weiser says:
==========================
Such people suffer for years both with debility and often in pain, with
their conditions continually deteriorating
=================

Could it be that you're describing people in the USA who cannot afford
medical coverage?

Exactly.

Hell, as you describe Canada, at least we've
acknowledged their illness and pain.

And then string them along with false hope, only to abandon them in the end
because they've become hopeless cases.

In the US, you are responsible for yourself, and you can't lay the blame off
on anyone else, like the government. That's personal responsibility and
that's the way things ought to be. The rule is: "Sometimes you die."

I'm guessing these people aren't
even statistics in the USA because they can't afford to see a doctor to
figure out what's bothering them in the first place.

Perhaps, but if they want help, they can get it.


Weiser says:
===============
But in socialized medicine, such
prophylactic treatment falls to the bottom of the waiting list, and
often
doesn't happen.
=============

Precisely the opposite is the case. Because EVERYONE is entitled to
treatment, everyone goes to see the doctors before conditions worsen.

Not if their condition is not sufficiently grave at first exam to move them
up on the list.

Thus, prophylactic care is administered to all who need it -- very
EARLY in the process.

Doubtful.


Weiser says:
=============
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.
==============

And, of course, that is your decision to make. Most other western
nations take the view that the health of their citizens is likely
(along with their education) their most valuable resource (of strategic
national import). Without a smart, healthy, populace, a nation can't
compete in economic (or military) battles.

And yet we have the best medical care system on the planet and thus the
greatest likelyhood that a sick person will be made well.

Valuing people as a resource does not infer that the government is required
to nanny them 24/7. The cool thing about humans is that we keep making more
of us.


Clear philosophical differences.

Not really. The US does not devalue its citizens because it does not choose
to provide government-run health care. It tries to find ways to make the
economy provide health care even to the indigent within the capitalist
system because as a nation we generally recognize that government run
programs are tremendously inefficient and generally poorly run, no matter
what nation they occur in.

The vast majority of workers (not non-producing indigents) in this country
enjoy the finest health care in the world and are thus quite healthy as
compared to many citizens in socialized medicine systems. That they have to
pay for their health care only serves to stimulate them to remain healthy
and take care of themselves.

Those in socialized medical care systems have no impetus to take care of
themselves because they don't have to pay to get care.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Wilko wrote:


Wilko

P.S. I'm still laughing because of the image of a bunch of fat, out of
shape middle aged men with shotguns, pistols and hunting rifles trying
to take on well trained troops with fully automatic weapons, grenade
lauchers, tanks, helicopter gunships and all kinds of sophisticated
weaponry bought with the tax that those old men paid.

Not only would the U.S. version of the secret police probably pick up
most of them before they could fire a shot,

Well, that's impossible because we do not have a "secret police" force and
we take great pains to ensure that even the local police do not have access
to what records might exist on who owns what arms. That's the point of the
2nd Amendment. There are more than 300 million guns in private ownership in
the US, and the government has pretty much no idea whatsoever where the bulk
of those guns are or who has them. That's not a flaw in our system, it's a
feature specifically intended by the Framers.

but half of them would
probably die of heart attacks if they had to run 100 yards to cover.

Maybe. But then again, if even 50 million fat men with guns manage to kill
only one soldier apiece (not difficult at all, particularly if you're
willing to die in the process) we win, because the other feature of our
government is that we deliberately limit our standing army to levels that
cannot threaten the liberty of the people.

And even the issue of the National Guard and state guard forces has been
carefully thought out by the Framers. They said, and rightfully so, that a
local militia force, under locally-elected officers, would be unlikely to
agree to march to another state to impose martial rule.

That's why National Guard commanders are not appointed by the federal
government, but are selected by the Guard units themselves, ratified by the
Governor.

In the unlikely event that a demogog attempts a coup in the US, it is almost
impossible to get the bulk of citizen-soldiers in the various guard units to
go along with orders from Washington to violate the Constitution and oppress
the local citizenry...because the guard troops ARE the local citizenry and
they will simply refuse such orders. Indeed, they are far more likely to
refuse such illegal orders from Washington and then organize with other
state guard units to attack local federal troop concentrations and invade
Washington to put down the tyrant.

Even supposing federal soldiers seized all National Guard arms prior to
declaring martial law nationwide, our federal army is not large enough to
control the population...deliberately so...and the National Guard can be
re-armed with weapons *from civilians* that would make them an effective
fighting force against usurping federal troops.

This is particularly true because a would-be tyrant cannot afford to simply
carpet-bomb the very cities and populations he's trying to take control of,
so the war becomes a guerilla war waged by grunts in the field, not
high-tech standoff munitions.



Nah, I don't see that citizen uprising with privately owned weapons
happen... ever! :-)

That's what makes you a slave...the slave mentality. That was proven by your
nation's collaboration with the Nazis in WWII. Unless you're willing to die
to protect your freedoms, you don't deserve your freedoms.

On the other hand, at need, I have sufficient arms to arm at least three
soldiers with effective military battle rifles, along with a basic
ammunition load for each, while still having plenty of precision, long-range
weapons for my own use. I guarantee you that even if I can't dash a hundred
yards in 10 seconds, I can hit a human-sized target at ranges out to one
thousand yards with at least an 80% probability. Soon, I'll be extending
that effective range to closer to 1500 yards for humans and 2000 yards for
materials, with a somewhat smaller hit probability but a much wider target
destruction capability that includes unarmored and lightly-armored vehicles
and other equipment.

Should I be called upon to defend the Constitution and the nation, I
guarantee to take out at least one enemy soldier before they even know I'm
there, and probably several more before they can take me, if in fact they
can. There are a lot of people just like me out there...enough to ensure
that any invasion or attempt to overthrow our government is doomed to
failure, even without the cooperation of the National Guard.

You are free to disbelieve me if you like, but I'd recommend that you avoid
serving in the UN forces should it decide to try to take over America, if
you wish to survive. Remember the advice of military experts about
underestimating your enemy.

I would like to fill you in on an interesting bit of unknown military
history.

Back in the mid-70s, commanders of the Special Forces decided to do some
training in the northern part of Florida, near Jacksonville. They decided to
stage a training mission that called for a large group of special forces
personnel to "invade" the area around the Okeefenokee Swamp. They invited
local residents to participate as OPFORs (Opposing Forces) to oppose the
beach landing and infiltration. The locals were supplied with M-16's and
MILES gear, but otherwise they provided all their own equipment and
transportation. All they were told was that a landing would be taking place
somewhere within a specified area of beach.

To make a long story short, the locals wiped out the SF troopies. Kicked
their asses right back into the ocean, to the massive embarrassment of the
brass. It made the papers all over Florida, and I heard about it in college
in Daytona Beach.

Since then, no military training exercise has ever used local civilians as
OPFORS.

So, discount the abilities of US citizens to defend their country at your
peril.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself John Kuthe wrote:

Scott Weiser wrote:

A Usenet persona calling itself Wilko wrote:
If the U.S. hadn't alienated so many of the other countries, maybe more
countries would want to be allied with it in its illegal and unjust wars.

We have never engaged in an illegal or unjust war.

And exactly where *are* the now infamous WMDs that that misinformed shrub
warned
U.S. omniously about, and used as a justification for ATTACKING another
soverign
nation?

Well, some of them were used on the Kurds in the late eighties, and I
imagine the rest of them are in Syria or are buried in the desert somewhere.
After all, he had 12 years to conceal them. I imagine we'll find them
eventually.

Besides, WMDs were not the only, nor even the most persuasive reason for
invading Iraq. If you don't know the other compelling reasons that fully
justified the invasion, it's because you're being willfully ignorant.


I've said all along, Dubya attacked Iraq for exactly two reasons:

1. OIL (Obviously)

Funny how with all that oil, we're not importing much, if any of it.

2. Because Dubya's daddy didn't do it right the first time!

Well, that is absolutely true. Any blame that attaches for casualties
suffered this time can be laid directly at Bush Sr.s door. He should have
wiped Saddam out when he had the chance. It's a pity we had to go back, but
the Asshole of Baghdad had 12 years and innumerable opportunities to comply
with the mandates of the cease fire. He didn't.

The fact that he refused to abide by the cease fire agreement is, in and of
itself, without any other support whatsoever, complete, full and absolute
justification for invading Iraq to depose Saddam. WMD's were just another
brick on the load.


John_Kuthe...


(Glub, please forgive me for 1. perpetuating this inane thread and 2. arguing
with Scott Weiser! ;-) )


I'm like heroin, you just can't resist me...
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

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.

in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 2/19/05 10:10 PM:

A Usenet persona calling itself Wilko wrote:


Wilko

P.S. I'm still laughing because of the image of a bunch of fat, out of
shape middle aged men with shotguns, pistols and hunting rifles trying
to take on well trained troops with fully automatic weapons, grenade
lauchers, tanks, helicopter gunships and all kinds of sophisticated
weaponry bought with the tax that those old men paid.

Not only would the U.S. version of the secret police probably pick up
most of them before they could fire a shot,

Well, that's impossible because we do not have a "secret police" force and
we take great pains to ensure that even the local police do not have access
to what records might exist on who owns what arms. That's the point of the
2nd Amendment. There are more than 300 million guns in private ownership in
the US, and the government has pretty much no idea whatsoever where the bulk
of those guns are or who has them. That's not a flaw in our system, it's a
feature specifically intended by the Framers.

LOL. Yeah, that's what the "Framers" had in mind. Hoods and angry
ex-husbands walking around with assault weapons that you can buy on street
corners.

On 18-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

No, Americans are free because they have the right to keep and bear arms,
not because of the Constitution.

They only have that right because of the constitution. Take that
away and their "right" goes with it. Rights are accorded by those
in power, whether by might or by vote.

Mike

On 18-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

After they've cleaned up their own mess, then we'll consider their requests.

Kyoto was driven by people who waste far less and produce far less CO2 than
Americans. As usual, you don't know what you're talking about.

Mike

just after Bush stole his first presidency.

Bush won the election by every recount so far - have you found a different
result? I would like to see it. I am not some blind follower of Bush but I'm
getting tired of this stupid "Bush stole the election" crap. What happened
in Florida was absurd, but the result has been verify many times.


"Dave Manby" wrote in message
...
I always loved coming into the states - especially through Miami Florida
just after Bush stole his first presidency.

You, a non American, are asked to fill in several forms with boxes to
fill. I always feel like asking if they want a tick cross or Chad and
who is going to count these and anyway they are a good reflection of the
intelligence of the CIA terrorism controls and other forms of attempted
control. Among the questions you are asked are
1 Are you a member of a terrorist organisation?
2 Are you addicted to Narcotics
3 Were you a member of the Nazi party between xxxx and xxxx.
The rest are just as inane.
Apparently the reason for asking you these questions is so that they can
do you for lying if you are caught!

It is no wonder the phrase dumb America has arisen!

Surely the answer to all this is to look at the cause of the terrorism
and attempt to answer the questions raised.

Palestine has for too long been ignored and it was not till many years
of terrorism that the rest of the world started looking at the plight of
the refugees in Gaza and the other OCCUPIED by Israel territories. Al
Quaeda has its own agenda and maybe looking at the reason why they have
picked on the west in general and the USA in particular would help solve
the threat for better than trying to impose Western ideals on reluctant
people. I would argue that this has created more terrorism than it has
prevented.


In message , Scott Weiser
writes
A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 16-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

The fact that Canada accepts more refugees than the US (but then,
most
countries are more open to help others than the US) has nothing to
do with terrorism.

Unfortunately, you are mistaken.

Proof? Refugees come from around the world. Terrorists tend to
be well funded and arrive carrying briefcases.

No, they come looking like refugees, and acting like refugees, so that
they
can move about freely and without scrutiny.


One can get to Toronto without any scrutiny,

You've never arrived in Toronto from anywhere, right? There
is such a thing as customs and immigration. Canada's border
is _not_ open.

It's more open that it ought to be.


and then it's a short car trip across the border to the US

Which only proves that the US can't control its borders.

Well, "will not" is more accurate. We can, we just choose not to. You
wouldn't like it at all if we chose to. Neither would Mexico. That,
however,
is precisely what I (along with many others) are suggesting we need to
do.
You won't like it if we do.

Don't blame anyone for your problems.

I'm not blaming anyone, I'm merely suggesting that if Canada doesn't do
its
part to prevent infiltration by terrorists, the US may have no choice but
to
close the border, which will wreck your economy.

The 9/11 terrorists
arrived in the US thru US ports of entry, not thru Canada.

And yet other terrorists arrive through Canada. Case in point: the
terrorist
with a vehicle full of explosives caught entering the US from Vancouver
at
Port Angeles just prior to the Millennium celebration who planned to blow
up
the Space Needle in Seattle. He was caught by an alert Border Patrol
agent.
Others have certainly slipped in from Canada as well.


--
Dave Manby
Details of the Coruh river and my book "Many Rivers To Run" at
http://www.dmanby.demon.co.uk

On 18-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

Could you please
post a reference to such a definition and also a reference that
clearly demonstrates that such definition is the only one that
is widely accepted by the scientific community.

Do you have an alternate theory?

You still didn't answer the request. But then, you can't.

Once again, it's because you don't know what you're talking about.

Which simply dismisses intelligent design while touting evolution without
explaining your version of evolution and without a rational analysis of my
question as to why sharks are still sharks 400 million years down the
evolutionary line.

You haven't identified what _my_ version of evolution is - in fact you
haven't identified what any version of evolution is and you haven't
demonstrated that _your_ version of "evolution" even exists in the
scientific community.

You understand nothing about evolution of any kind. You don't understand
sharks, either.

First of all, the only thing that remains constant in shark evolution is
gross morphological characteristics. In fact, over millions of years,
many shark species have died out and have been replaced by new species.
The fact is that DNA is changing all the time. We know that. However,
we know that most DNA plays no apparent role in morphology, so a mutation
is not always likely to result in a visible change. In fact, many
mutations produce no change at all. If you move beyond gross morphology,
sharks have changed a lot over time; Compare a great white to a whale
shark.

We know that DNA mutations occur in humans as well, and at a fairly quick
rate. In spite of that, there have been no morphological changes in
skeletal remains during the entire history of Homo Sapiens. No favourable
change means no lasting change.

Changes do not necessarily result in morphological differences. There is a
single species of iguana that swims - all others are dry land creatures. The
swimmer evolved as a result of a change in habitat from a change in ocean levels.
It lost its food supply and survived by learning how to swim and feed on the
bottom of the ocean. Only an expert can visually tell the difference between
the swimming and dry land species, since the morphology is much the same.

In the Amazon, there are flowering plants that produce a toxin used by the
Yanomami to hunt and fish (by putting the toxin on their spear and dart points).
There are two species - one that produces a strong toxin and one that produces
a weak one. There are _no_ morphological differences between the two.
Evolution isn't just about morphology.

As Rick has pointed out, Darwin did not observe constant change - he observed
statis. He observed that when an environment changes, an organism _may_ change
to match its new environment. This is due to DNA mutations or recombinations
that produce a favourable result in the new environment. Once that match
has established, there is not reason to change again and the organism retains
its current characteristics.

Mike