Victor wrote:
>I am by no means a communist or socialist, but this looks like
>propaganda-sriven tunnel vision to me. Comments follow.
I rarely find a genuine communist or socialist. Lots of waffling liberals,
but hardly any genuinely philosophic communists, or socialists. It's a shame.
Meantime, you did not answer a single point in my post.
You said:
VICTOR: "There were most certainly inequities with high party officials
living in
luxury and ordinary people living very humbly in crowded apartments. (By the
way what's the difference in life-style between a US senator and your
average Washington, DC resident?)"
HARRY: The Ukraine after the separation was landed with a dacha of a high
party official. The story appeared in the newspapers because they were
trying to get rid of it. They couldn't afford the $300,000 a year it cost
to maintain it.
Yep! There certainly were inequities.
But the USSR was a classless society - remember? The "to each" and "from
each" nonsense - remember? Meantime, Senators like other politicians all
over the world lead the good life as they "serve us".
VICTOR: "However, medical care was universally available and pensioners
could live without financial anxiety. This is not the case after a decade
of US-driven free enterprise in Russia. For another communist country,
Cuba, I read recently that the infant mortality rates are less than in the
USA."
HARRY: Every year a bunch of US cardiac specialists went to the Soviet
Union and for two weeks, they would work solidly in a Moscow hospital
doing, I suppose, triage as they took patients from the multitude to
operate and save lives. I remember one comment from a US doctor. He
couldn't believe that the Head of Cardiology at the Moscow hospital got a
salary of $7 a week - about the same as a bus driver. A sure way to attract
the best people into medicine.
I also wonder whether the millions of "officials" in the communist
hierarchy used that hospital - or perhaps they had an inequity somewhere,
fully over-staffed and without the problems the common folk suffered.
Vivid in my mind is a Ted Koppel television program in which a place
looking like an abattoir had a line of people awaiting abortions - there
was no anesthetic. One woman was having her 35th abortion. A high school
kid was having her fifth. Ugh!
Yes, medical care was universally available, all right.
And of course "pensioners could live without financial anxiety". I fear you
have "propaganda-driven tunnel vision" when you look a a country where
practically anyone not official was not long way from the edge of
starvation. Thank God for the free market, beg pardon - black market. That
kept the people fed - at a cost.
Our child mortality is certainly not the best in the world, though I expect
that if we measured only those outside the inner cities, it would be best.
The inner cities is where the greatest concentration of welfare state
services are. Yet, all we need to do to improve things is to decriminalized
drugs. That would remove half the inmates of our prisons, too.
However, in dictatorial countries such as Cuba, statistics such as child
mortality are more likely to come out of their public relations office than
the medical department.
You said:
VICTOR: "Good God! I'd far rather have a doctor who discussed football
results than
investments. I'd fear the latter's main preoccupation would be operating on
my wallet rather than healing me. In fact the US health care system is a mess.
HARRY: In a market system, if a doctor doesn't do something properly, his
wallet empties. We probably have the best doctors in the world. We should -
because they come here from all over the globe to enjoy our higher standard
of living. And they are not hired, or they are fired if they don't measure
up. (The AMA, which is not a market organization, may try to sweep things
under the rug, but that's another discussion.)
VICTOR: "Nine years ago in a study in the New England Journal of Medicine it
was pointed out that one private insurer (Massachusetts Blue Cross/Blue
Shield) with subscribers equal to about 10% of the population of Canada (2.6
million) needed more employees than all ten provincial health plans
combined! Presumably this army of free enterprise gnomes is needed to prove
that subscribers are not entitled to the treatments they thought they were."
HARRY: Perhaps, the Canadian system doesn't have the money to hire adequate
staff. However, not to worry. Canadians can purchase insurance policies to
let them hop across the border to get the care the Canadian system fails to
give. And they do just that.
But, apparently, you are critical of Massachusetts. Their patients need
more service than Canadian patients. Well, guess you'll just have to live
with it. These pampered Americans. You know how it is. Last two times I
went in for day surgery, as I left I was presented with a rose wrapped in
plastic. Such fol-de-rolls!
Studies of the satisfaction of US patients indicates that something like
90% of them are satisfied with what they get. Patients of doctors are more
satisfied than those of Health Maintenance Organizations - though the
difference is not significant.
I've been with my present HMO for about 36 years. It's a big one with some
5 million members. It's family cost has never been excessive, and now under
medicare it costs about $90 a month for the two of us.
Service? One Wednesday afternoon, I phoned my doctor there and got his
nurse. Told her I had a mysterious lump. She told me to come in tomorrow
morning. Thursday, my doctor looked at it, called Urology and was told
everyone was doing surgery. He got the department head to see me. When I
walked across there, he was waiting along with a surgeon just out the
operating room. They checked it out, then sent me to pre-op. This is where
you do tests, get X-Rays and other things, chat with the anesthesiologist
about what will happen, view films about my kind of operation. Finished
pre-op Friday morning.
Monday morning they were working on me so that afterwards I could get my
presentation rose.
I thought it was pretty competent - even if you think its a mess.
One of the best medical plans we've used was PSI (Physicians, Surgeons, Inc.).
This was a privately run group actually set up by the doctors. We actually
got house calls! That along with Blue Cross handled our medical needs well.
I was a member of it for 7 years in the Province of Ontario.
Harry
