I'll disagree with your examples item by item:
The USPS: "ever increasing costs and ever diminishing service." Almost every service cost is increasing. The fact the USPS is also is irrelevant. Diminishing service? All I know is when I buy stuff via the internet, and have a choice of delivery, the USPS delivers a bit cheaper and much faster than UPS or FedEx ground. I always choose USPS when I can, strictly on a Benefit/Cost ratio, which is quite a bit better than the private delivery companies. Amtrak: My personal experience is positive. There's a hugely popular Amtrak commute run, the Capital Corridor, between Sacramento and the SF Bay Area. Quite heavily used and runs about once an hour for about 12 or so runs a day. That's in spite of sharing the tracks with freighters which often have higher priority. If other Amtrak runs are deficient, what do you expect when it's deliberately starved for money? Roads and auto transit are hugely subsidized. VA: No personal experience, but my father used it for his eventually fatal cancer. I don't recall him complaining. Again, deficiencies are caused at least in part by an administration that loved to talk about supporting the troops but failed to do so in reality.an administration that far more supported its private mercenary Army, Halliburton, through tens of billions of dollars of no-bid contracts. BTW, with respect to Tamiflu, that treats only symptoms, and not too well. No medicine attacks the flu virus, least of all H1N1. The whole Tamiflu stockpiling has been a huge boon for big Pharma. Don't act surprised now! FEMA: Early on it was effective. Then, the same administration that brought us one incompetent disaster after another brought us "Heckuva Job Brownie", whose expertise was Arabian horse farms or some such. This is the guy whose office sent him emailed fashion tips on rolling up his sleeves so he'd look hard-working while thousands were drowning. Let's see what a return to a competency-driven, rather than politics-driven, administrator can do. You failed to include the Social Security Administration in your alphabet list of government agencies. Maybe that's because over the decades it's been in service, and through the tens of trillions of dollars that's run through it, there haven't been huge scandals, frauds, and theft, and that in spite of it being run and headed up by relatively low-paid civil servants. No need for $50 Million compensation packages..just appoint competent people with some oversight. RF From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of William R.Bayne Sent: Friday, July 24, 2009 12:28 AM To: Ercoupe Social List Subject: Re: [ercoupe-flyin] RE: [ercoupe-tech] Model C or D Hi Ralph, On the one hand, you are right...the reason there is no more Socialist Party in the United states is that every plank of the Socialist platform of the early twentieth century is today established government policy. Everyone you ask will tell you they are "middle class" and none will admit to being Socialists. On the other hand...in Britain socialized health care is via the National Health Service. It's a national program. In the U.S., we had a National Postal Service that is now a private monopoly with ever increasing costs and ever diminishing service. We have Amtrack, which is not exactly a success story either. We have FEMA, the FAA and the IRS, none of whom seem a desirable administrative model for any "national health care". Our VA (Veterans Administration) is the closest thing the U.S. has to socialized medicine. You've probably heard of the crumbling facilities at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington that some of our returning wounded troops were being assigned until someone blew the whistle. Then there's the current "shortage" of psychiatric help for returning soldiers...we didn't think they would come back with problems? They have in every other war, even if the need was ignored then, too. Systems like this do not serve the people...they serve the system. I have VA coverage, and found out that my $25 co-pay for a monthly medication (30 pills) would buy 200 pills from Costco by mail order that I could split for over a year's supply. My VA physician was not licensed to practice in my state, could not write an "outside" prescription, and would not ask another physician who COULD to do so for me. I changed physicians. They still won't write me a prescription for 100 pills (better deal) of double dosage (so I could split them) like a private doctor will. So yes, the VA probably negotiates good prices from the pharmaceutical companies; but I don't get the benefit...the VA system does. Ask how many veterans have received the Shingles vaccine (that Medicare covers). If one comes down with the Swine Flu, the tape recording you get when calling to make an appointment tells victims to stay home. If they insist on an appointment, none will be available within the 48-72 hours that the antiviral Tamiflu is most effective; even though my tax dollars paid for "government" stockpiles of it. If I suffer complications and die as a result no one is personally accountable, criminally or financially. We do already know that current proposals to "insure everyone" do nothing to contain future increases in costs. They are the same old scheme that "covers" the uninsured by eliminating current services and raising current taxes. The number of uninsured children of legal residents that will come onto the rolls of the insured will be far fewer than the number of illegal aliens and their exploding families that will be given coverage. The bill for same will be paid by...(drum roll)...existing taxpayers. Why am I not surprised? I respectfully disagree that local police, fire, schools, roads, water and sewage systems are "socialized" in the manner that a national common denominator of tax support would produce. They are much more like the traditional agricultural "co-op" supported by local funding with local leadership and local accountability. I'm all for freedom of choice, but the choices that will likely emerge will not be honestly represented nor honest financially. Any fool can "contain" Medicare costs by lowering payments for services until no one in private practice will participate. Somehow I just don't happen to see that as "change" I can live with. Regards, WRB -- On Jul 24, 2009, at 00:42, Ralph Finch wrote: Hartmut doesn't have to imagine, he lives in a country with government organized health care. Hartmut, can you tell us how it is? And you lived in the USA for a few years, how do you compare it to here? It's a sincere question. Actually the USA has socialized police, fire, schools roads, water systems, sewages systems..the list goes on and on. And those are all government employees! The "socialized" medicine the neo-conservatives try to scare us with is not on the same order at all: it's simply letting the government act as an insurer along with all the for-profit, high-salary, private insurance companies. Why do the neo-cons want to deny freedom of choice? Ralph Finch From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of heavensounds Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 8:33 PM To: Techlist Ercoupe Subject: Re: [ercoupe-tech] Model C or D Harmut You are correct. That's yet one more example of the imbecility of government bureaucracies. Illogical regulations that make no sense whatsoever. Imagine when government starts controlling health care ! Eliacim
