Ohhhh!!! Yeah... that'll do it alright.
Posted on 07/03/2007 5:01:31 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez said Tuesday his government will nationalize Venezuela's privately owned hospitals and clinics if they fail to reduce health care costs.
"If the owners of the private clinics don't want to obey the laws, then the private clinics will be nationalized," Chavez said in a nationally televised speech. "They will become part of the public health service."
Venezuela has a two-tiered health system in which wealthier, insured patients often can afford prompter, better treatment at private hospitals.
"This is the evil of capitalism," Chavez said of the health care costs at private clinics. "We have to regulate this progressively, transforming the savage capitalist market into a market of solidarity."
The chief of one private clinic said Tuesday that such operations earn a minimal profit because revenue goes to covering costs and modernizing equipment.
"In our case, profits were only 5 percent of total revenue, and the profits at most of the clinics are roughly the same," Clinicas Caracas director Dr. Alexis Bello said in a telephone interview. "It's not a very profitable business."
Bello said the directors of major private clinics and government officials have been discussing regulations aimed at controlling costs, which he encouraged as an alternative to nationalization.
Chavez has expanded the public health system, building new clinics and refurbishing hospitals, but many public hospitals lack basic medical supplies and sufficient personnel. The Venezuelan leader has also sent thousands of Cuban and Venezuelan doctors to live in poor neighborhoods, where they provide free care.
Following his re-election to a six-year presidential term in December, Chavez embarked on a nationalization drive to impose state control over "strategic" industries in Venezuela.
Chavez has nationalized the South American nation's largest telecommunications firm, electricity companies and the oil industry.
Ohhhh!!! Yeah... that'll do it alright.
Hillary’s watching this closely.
Uh, No Chavez, it’s the failure of government run hospitals to provide modern technology and treatment to it’s patients. But so typical of dictator types, it’s easier to take private property and businesses than change your inferior public programs.....BOYCOTT CITGO!!!
This pendejo is living on borrowed time.
This pendejo is living on borrowed time
Like Castro? I hate to be sarcastic but do you believe that Venezuelans have the c...s to take this monster out?
I wish they did...
I wonder if Hugo has thought about getting into the Democrat race for ‘08. He’s clamped down on the opposition’s broadcast, and nows he’s talking about taking over the hospitals. He might be trouble for Hillary. Maybe she could move to the left.
Free care for all! Yeah!
People like Chavez are incapable of learning anything from real world experience. The American Left is like Chavez, who they consider to be one of their idols.
Michael Moore, American idiot, is very happy.
A moron thug has found his country to ruin.
Venezuela privatized and was moving up economically through the 90s, Chaves will turn back the clock and run this country into the ground. Sad-
My god, if this wasn’t so sad for all the people that will die due to poor health care, it’d be hilarious. Yea... basically, what that will do is make *all* the people miserable. Pretty much make sure that any remaining intelligentsia leaves the country which is soon to become a complete hell hole.
Chavez is almost as bad as Hillary.
In other news...Hillary Clinton today vowed to give everyone single payer national health care if she is elected.
She hasn’t yet mentioned if she plans to take over broadcast TV and radio.
He will take over hospitals, and then the lefties will praise him for his health care system!
Read any Chavez thread in the DUck room and you will know how much they love Hugo. They can rationalize everything he does.
90% of them would vote for him without question.
They need something that would not seem too obvious yet stir passion and crate strife and violence. Hmmmm. Maybe they could, I don't know .... OH yeah, soccer games...err....football...eerrr...whatever! Yeah, that's it.
If Hillary is elected and pushes through national health care we may wind up with terrorists for Doctors like they have in England!
All our American Doctors will move to Japan.
Sulla would be proud.
Easy. Get rid of the doctors (they will flee when their pay gets set to that of a street sweeper - we all must be equal...). Have the sick people wait days, months, and years for simply procedures. Done.
Why just lower the cost? Why doesn’t he make it free?
Then Venezuela will be paradise /s
Should we tighten the borders to prevent all those Venezuelan doctors from sneaking in?
The only doctors left are the doctors who can't do anything else. Would you want someone in the bottom 10% of his graduating class exploring your insides?
I don't think SO!!!
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