Re: a dumb query? pls humor me

On 8 Mar, Freddy Freeloader wrote:
judd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

...

I don't doubt that. No system is perfect. I've heard horror
stories from the US also. No doubt Canadians, Britons, etc. have
them also. Romania's system may very well suck.

My problem is people who make statements like "Our system is the
best because government is always inefficient", or "We have the best
system in the world", without actually looking at any data, or at
best relying on anecdotal evidence.

-Chris

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| Christopher Judd, Ph. D. judd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
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What many of us who are against socialized medicine are against is a
nanny state, as it has been proven over and over again that a nanny
state isn't a cure all for problems. All it does is raise taxes, and
create a monopoly that has no incentive to do things efficiently.


I agree with you in general about a "nanny state". I'm not sure
that a working national health care plan is necessarily a nanny state.
Private industry can also create the nanny state mentality. Try and
find a good diving board (esp. > 1meter) at a public park in NYS. The
reason that they're no longer there is because of the insurance
companies (and yes, high settlements awarded by juries play a part
in this).

I've worked at a government run healthcare facility, albeit in the
maintenance department, and I was in culture shock after working in
the private sector all my life. I couldn't believe the inefficiency
that was accepted as the norm and thus just winked at when it caused
major problems.

When an employee can sit in the library and read during the majority
of their work day, and critical maintenance that they are personally
responsible for such as cleaning out drip pans under refrigeration
coils in the meat coolers for the kitchen that supplies the meals for
all patients is neglected so long that pans with sides more than an
inch tall were dripping water over the sides of the pan because of
the mass of mold, slime and bacteria filling them, and the
maintenance records report that the work was done faithfully every
month for the past 5 years, while the supervisors laugh about it,
then the existing government run health system is thoroughly broken.


That type of nonsense shouldn't happen anywhere; I certainly
wouldn't tolerate it in any staff that I supervised.

You actually have to see the inside workings of the government
bureaucracy from the perspective of someone who has worked in the
private sector all their lives to realize just how badly broken the
current government system is. To say the entire health care system
ought to be a government sponsored monopoly is a truly frightening
idea to me.



I actually currently work in a government agency (NYS DOH labs),
after having worked in private industry and being self-employed. We
actually do things fairly efficiently in the labs, although there are
some unique problems in this area.

While government bureaucracies may in general be wasteful, medicare
is currently more efficient than any private plan. I'm not sure that
the "free market" guarantees the best results for products or services
which are not truly commodities, and I place health care in this
category.

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| Christopher Judd, Ph. D. judd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
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