Good point. I believe that Mike Hollinshead was the first to point
this out to me. I think that it will take a correlation of all of the
external factors with requisite comparisons before serious conclusions
can be drawn. Of course if you define the parameters you can
prove almost anything by virtue of what you leave out.
One of the
things that is often left out of the Com/Cap comparison between the
U.S. and the old Soviet Empire is the weather. They didn't suffer for
want of oil but it was a hell of a lot easier to get it out of almost any
of our fields than it is out of Siberia.
Agriculture is another point.
lf your growing season is short you need tremendous amounts of
land to compete with those who can plant many crops in a small
amount of land. And on and on.
My point is that in areas where
we are roughly equivalent like education, we have gotten our behinds
whipped.
The Arts are another area even though the official dogma
is that they were pampered, anyone who knows their refugees
finds the opposite is true although they are magnificently trained and
have far superior work experience since they did have work before
the collapse of the Soviet.
American graduates who paid for their
own education have an average full time employment of 2%. They
also lose out to the émigrés because of the superior work experience
that they bring to America. That makes the competitive advantage
overwhelming in their ability to be creative, improvise and invent
new models.
If you have no work experience, your creativity is
profoundly impaired as most of America's performing artists have
discovered. Those who have succeeded usually have European
experience to replace America's cultural poverty.
William Bradford Ward wrote:
> 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 couldn't let Harry's comment go unnoticed although I really am not interested in
>the communist/capitalist argument but do have problems with people who use irrelevant
>arguments to make their point.
>
> At a meeting of the American Heart Association one year a bunch of cardiovascular
>surgeons said that the reason that there had been a 30% drop in cardiovascular deaths
>in the previous ten years was that open heart surgery was up 30% in the same period.
>A biostatistician friend of mine got up after that and showed that beer consumption
>was up 30% in the same period and said that it was truly the increase in beer
>drinking.
>
> By the way, no one has ever been able to show any relationship between health
>services in the US [except for immunizations] and improvement in health [except for
>the health of health care workers].
>
> ---
> Bill Ward, MA, MPH, DrPH
> Research Director
> Arthritis Research Institute of America
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> On Wed, 26 Jan 2000 13:32:24 Harry Pollard wrote:
> >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
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
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