Harry Veeder wrote:
If you are opposed to a "free" health care system thean you must have
been opposed to the "free" interstate highway system.
Winston Churchill proposed a better analogy for universal free
healthcare. He said it is like the fire department. He said, as I recall:
* When a house is on fire, the fire department goes at once, without
stopping to ask if the owner is rich or poor.
* A fire is never voluntary; people do not want their house to burn
down. Disease also strikes at random and the victim does not want or
ask to be sick.
* It benefits the whole of society to put out fires and cure disease quickly.
I believe the U.K. adapted universal health care partly as a result
of their experiences in WWII.
Jeff Fink wrote:
If you think health care is expensive now, just wait till it's free.
It should be around 60% cheaper, based on results in all other first
world countries.
Mind you, healthcare costs are increasing worldwide, in Europe and in
Japan. Costs are ~60% less than the U.S. but they are still rising.
In Japan it is a major problem.
Fink wrote that the death rates in the U.K. for colon cancer are
higher because treatment is delayed, or rationed. First, this is
incorrect. For the population as a whole, mortality rates from most
diseases are lower in the U.K. than the U.S. Colon cancer rates are
about the same in both countries; 19 or 20 per 100,000 (see the two
links below). Mortality rates for colon cancer are declining in the
U.K. See Figs. 1.5 and 1.7 here:
http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/types/bowel/incidence/
U.S. rates, 19 per 100,000:
http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?cat=2&ind=585
Second, healthcare is rationed everywhere, most severely in the U.S.
It is "rationed" here by scarcity, rather than by plan. Many poor
people cannot afford to go to the doctor, so they often suffer or die
from treatable disease. Sometimes they go after the disease has
become very serious, and then they are bankrupted by the system,
which -- as I said -- may charge a patient his entire net worth in a
few days. Healthcare costs are the largest cause of middle-class bankruptcy.
- Jed
