Hello Peter and all
Here's an audio with Ronald Reagan regarding "socialized" health care.
http://action.afa.net/videos/reagan/In part, he warned:
"One of the traditonal methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project..... Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it." - Ronald Reagan
As a Canadian, living in a country where we have socialized medicine, I cannot say it has been bad for me. I don't know what I would have done if I had been under a system like the US now has with premiums of $300 per month. For the most part, I was a single mom living on lousy wages that women get and there is no way I could have afforded $300 a month, not even $150 per month.
One reason the premiums are so high is because when people go to the doctor, the doctor charges the highest he can get, if the person has insurance. If the person is paying for it themselves, they often get a cheaper rate or are charge for less time. At least that is how I found it to be in dentistry, especially if you whined a bit about not having the money. Our dental visits are not covered.
One of the problems in Canada has been the higher taxes needed to pay for our medicare. To add to the cost, people go to their doctor at the drop of a hat. Even the media encourages people to see their doctor about every least little thing. Another problem is that some people don't want to take responsibility for their own health. As long as they can get prescriptions, why take supplements, for example. They may not have had the problem if they had taken supplements and learned a bit about how nutrition affects our health.
For example, I was a heavy smoker for almost 40 years. I am over 60 and I should be dead by now. I have had very little medical care in my life and even now I do not take even one pharmaceutical drug, prescription or otherwise. I don't have much wrong with me except difficulty breathing with the least bit of exertion. I also get congested easily because of COPD, even though I quit smoking 9 years ago. Apparently this is a big problem for people with COPD and they often end up with pneumonia because of it. When my congestion flares up, I use specific supplements and treat myself with certain natural products which I sell as well. Just taking 2000-3000 mgs of Vitamin C a day alone would keep a lot of people away from doctors and medicine. It is time people take responsibility for their own health as much as possible.
Our health care system did not start bursting at the seams, surgery-wise, until we began letting in a lot of new immigrants without equally increasing the infra-structure. Then we began seeing people having to wait weeks and months for surgery ...and even years for elective surgery. This was not the case in the 70s and the 80s before the influx of immigrants.
Costs are controlled under the Canadian health care system. Doctors earn less in fees than American doctors do, for example. The government is involved in keeping the cost of drugs down, especially for those who are eligible for free prescriptions. This keeps the system's costs down. But the truth is it is very expensive for the government to pay for all of this so we get to pay more taxes.
The drug companies love it, by the way, when the government pays for prescriptions because then more people take medicines than they would if they had to pay for it themselves.
What is interesting about what Ronald Reagan said is that once a large bill is passed they can add to it from time to time
with less difficulty. Something should be done about stopping government from continuing to pile more and more rules and laws on the people.
Helen