John Williams wrote: > Jon Louis Mann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > >> what we need is a single payer health system, so people can afford heath >> care >> and medications... >> > > And so that the quality goes down and no good new drugs and procedures > are developed. > Unlike our present system, of course. I was just listening to Science Friday discuss the problem that the new infection-fighting drugs we need are not in the pipeline because the for-profit drug companies can't make as much money from them as they can with Viagra, etc.
Any starting point for a discussion of health care must of necessity begin with the realization that health care is always, everywhere, and unavoidably *rationed*. There is simply no way to give everyone all of the health care they might want. So the real argument becomes one of how best to do the rationing. Every scheme will create a different pattern of winners and losers, and all of them will do some things better and some things worse. To the best of my knowledge, every system I know about (and I am not an expert on health care) is a mix of public and private providers. The U.S. system is on the side of the distribution that is more private than public, and does some things quite well, and other things quite poorly. There is a reason why on overall measures of health the U.S. ranking has been falling for decades now. We do heroic interventions for a favored few very well, but the simple things that help large numbers of people are where we tend to do poorly. Which may be one of the reasons that increasing numbers of Americans want a change. Regards, -- Kevin B. O'Brien TANSTAAFL [EMAIL PROTECTED] Linux User #333216 "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." - Thomas Jefferson _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
