answered point counterpoint Harry's questions? Meanwhile-------
Harry Pollard wrote:
Victor wrote:Yes he did Harry, he answered the two that he chose to answer.>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.
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.
The problem Harry is that you wish to set the rules of engagement
and they
are loaded in your favor. You have your anecdotes and all we
do is trade
anecdotes from our own experience. You are selling Georgism as
your
business and that shapes your point of view. Nothing wrong with
that but
you have not thus far dealt with the practicalities and you sound more
like
a common run of the mill neo libertarian conservative to me.
Or if it was in the time of George you would have been called a Moss-back
Liberal the kind that claimed the Cherokees were Georgists and broke
the contracts, destroyed our government, decided how much land each
of
us should have then opened what was left (most of it) to a huge land
rush
where the whites could stake out as much as they could before the day
was over, (certainly more than the 160 acres they gave us.) But
here is the problem. Nothing stands still, the terms constantly
shift and
Republicans today sound like Jackson and Democrats sound like Lincoln,
and as Klugman pointed out in today's NYTimes, Clinton has acted like
a supply side economist. How very liberal of him.
The point seems to be
that liberality means that one can move and that conservative means
that
one is stuck in the mud. Tough!
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".
But the crucial difference ala my lost post, is that they could
not pass their
wealth on to their children.
Where is Eva when we need her? Is this silence her "Marxist
revenge"?
HARRY: Every year a bunch of US cardiac specialists went to the SovietAh the old triage story. Perhaps you should talk to Paul Robeson or at
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.
least read his experience with the two medical systems. I had a teacher
who also had a good experience when she had a medical issue in Moscow.
And then there are all of those stories about Western Medicine from the
point of view of all of the other medical practices of the world. It seems
everyone wants to be on top. Missionaries every one of them. What a
bore! Meanwhile they can't deal with Chronic Fatigue except to deny its
existance and send you to the psychiatrist. You should have heard the
story about that building Sloan Kettering owns where everyone was coming
down with Chronic Fatique. They called them (bugga bugga) sick buildings
but denied the people were sick just the buildings. People have to work
you know, otherwise they are welfare cheats. (said in jest)
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.
Right and the only reason anyone excels is their salary? How
about curiosity
and the desire to accomplish things?
Did those Doctors have food, clothing
and shelter? How about laboratories and other research
facilities? They
were poor in US machines but the US has been terrible in preventive
health
as well. Something the Russians have shown
many Americans how to
do well.
Yes Harry the top paid profession in the US is the Medical profession
whether
their patient dies or lives. No wonder they are lobbying
against keeping a
government data base on success and failure in the hospital system.
"But she NEEDED that hysterectomy!"
I also wonder whether the millions of "officials" in the communistI don't know, they sure complained about the lost time spent in having to ride
hierarchy used that hospital - or perhaps they had an inequity somewhere,
fully over-staffed and without the problems the common folk suffered.
public tranportation. Our military doesn't use private hospitals either. Too
expensive and its cheaper for the country to pay menial salaries to Congress
and give them a cheap lunchroom in the capital. Yes Harry they are paid
peanuts by private industry standards as is the U.S. Chief Executive and
most other public servants and not-for-profit folks.
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!
Hey, should I tell you the story about the Rabbi's wife who had
to attack
the ER orderly because he refused to let her husband (having a heart
attack) see a Doctor before he produced his insurance card. The
little
5'2" 120 lb woman took on an orderly a foot taller and won.
Of course
we should think this is alright since it was the ER were the folks
are
not usually Rabbis but ghetto folks who don't have Doctors.
The highest
paid profession in the American Economy according to the Dept. of
Labor Stats.
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.
That is not what my next door neighbor who was a janitor in Moscow
says.
He worries that the American schools are not giving his grandchildren
as
good an education as in Moscow. I can hear it now, "well
then he should
just go home!" at the time, they didn't want him
back, he was Jewish and
had asked to leave which was unforgivable to the patriotic. Not
much
difference in my mind between the attitudes on both sides of the coin.
Our child mortality is certainly not the best in the world, though I expectWhat is the difference between welfare in Europe for the unemployed
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.
and welfare here? Quick! People here think any money paid to
anyone for any reason other than an exchange of goods is welfare.
So it is bad to pay a homeless person with non-treatable TB the
money for an apartment to get them out of the general population and
give them free health care because they didn't work for it. That is
what I call Free-dumb! Like the anti-abortion folks who are against
it for everyone but their own daughters. When they get non-treatable
TB on the subway from some homeless person they will advocate
putting them in jail! (sing to the tune of Amen, Free--dumb!
Free--dumb! Free-dumb! Free-dumb! Free-dumb!)
Yet, all we need to do to improve things is to decriminalizedWell Harry I have a confession. I have a bad wrist and the Doctors are
drugs. That would remove half the inmates of our prisons, too.
giving me a nerve drug that has as its side effects, depression,
hostility, dizziness, dryness of mouth, nausea and it makes your
teeth fall out. It delights me to tell you that I have all of the above. It
also makes you high since it plays around with your mind. So I
can understand why the British opening up China to Opium was a good
thing. Of course tomorrow, when I come down and am no longer on
the drug (hopefully and still have my teeth) I expect to feel differently
about legalized drugs, especially since my 16 year old daughter's
friends are in rehab.
However, in dictatorial countries such as Cuba, statistics such as childYou mean like the stats they gave us from the lead and zinc mining
mortality are more likely to come out of their public relations office than
the medical department.
fields while the mines were still running? That dust so thick that you
couldn't see across the street, coming off of the tailings, won't hurt you!
Come to think of it. That nerve drug and lead has similar side effects
without the high. Ask Caligula. Oh he's dead. Well ask one of those
ghetto children.
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.)
They are the highest paid profession in America. The
top is very good. But
I have experienced Doctors in HMOs who didn't want to see sick people.
They
felt abused by them.
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.
You are tapping on the achilles heel of the "free market".
Too bad that you
don't look at all of the waste in the Capitalist system. You
are well acquainted
with the flaws in its counterpart. Too bad that you can't see
both sides. Most
of us don't have the luxuary of ignoring one in favor of the other.
When one side
wins it makes them slovenly and piggish, like the US is becoming in
the
world at large. (read Helms speech to the UN from last week.)
But, apparently, you are critical of Massachusetts. Their patients needThey should. They are paid more as a profession than all of the company
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!
CEOs in America. More than nucleur scientists, astronomers looking for
earth destroying asteroids, teachers developing the next generation,
politicians and even -------yes lawyers. They should give you four roses.
Roses are cheap.
Studies of the satisfaction of US patients indicates that something likeWho ARE you talking too? Sounds like your description of Fidel's stats.
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 someAetna US Healthcare charges our fifties household $440 a month for two
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.
people. What is your plan? My daughter's Travelers $1000 deductable
is comparable with an 80% return on Doctor's bills. What is this about
you and medicare?
Service? One Wednesday afternoon, I phoned my doctor there and got hisI'm glad you're OK.
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.
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.
I suspect those days are gone with the wind.
Cheers,
Ray
