Posted on 04/05/2009 2:31:37 PM PDT by Signalman
Imagine a modern, first-world country where there is such a shortage of dental care that patients are reduced to pulling their own rotting teeth. This country is the United Kingdomwhere ordinary citizens encounter primitive and barbaric dental care practices and experience nightmarish ordeals.
Youre probably wondering how can this be? Before we explain, please read one Scottish mans horrifying account of dental care in Scotland.
As you read the horrors that this Scottish citizen is going through, please remember that this is a national phenomenon he is describing. See for example this news account.
The United Kingdom provides public, socialized dental care. Socialized care creates shortages and reduces both quality and the rate of innovation.
One of the most basic principles of economics is that if you reduce the price of an item or service below its market price, a shortage of that item is created. In health care, we see this phenomenon in the emergency rooms of hospitals. It is commonplace for patients who are not paying for their care to show-up in emergency rooms with illnesses that do not require emergency medical attention and frequently do not require any medical attention at all. You can wait a long time in an emergency roomthere is a shortage of emergency room services.
In the United Kingdom, teeth are still routinely filled with poisonous mercury amalgams. To a citizen of the United Kingdom, innovations, like laser dentistry or one-step dental implants, would be possible only in a science fiction story.
As I read accounts of United Kingdom dental care, I felt compassion for those who go without basic necessities. Be it food, shelter, or medical care, there are still too many deprivations all over the world.
The economically illiterate believe these deprivations can be solved with more government involvement. As I read accounts of UK citizens queuing-up for substandard dental care, I remembered accounts of citizens in the former Soviet Union queuing-up for substandard food.
I thought of our own socialized educational system. We usually dont think of it as socializedinstead, we call it public education. But the same principles operate. We pay through the tax system and then, except if you are fortunate enough to have extra income to buy your child private education, youre forced to use the public school no matter how low the quality is.
Consider inner-city families whose public school doesnt even provide a basic level of safety for the children. Telling the parents that they should send their children to private schools is an inconceivable possibility.
Similarly, for poor or middle class United Kingdom citizens, private dental care is just not possible. The gentleman whose account you read earlier is clearly thoughtful and caring. I have exchanged views with him on his blog and on my own. Despite all of the suffering that he is experiencing, he still seems to believe that the failures of socialized care are due to to failures in implementation. He does not see that the failure of socialized care is due to a faulty concept.
This is not unlike the former Soviet Union, where the answer to their food problems was always a new five-year plan. It is not unlike the United States, where the answer for the failures of the public schools is always seen to be more money.
In this rush toward socialized services, many imagine that they will get top-notch care while paying less than they do right now. Nothing is further from the truth. For most, the price will go up in many waysnew taxes to fund a new healthcare bureaucracy, shortages of services, stagnation of innovation, and reduced quality of car
Americans won’t figure it out until it is too late. Your terminally ill family members are already dead.
I’ve often wondered how far the “productive” citizen theme would be carried out: Will children ill at birth be allowed to thrive as best they can? Or, will places like St. Jude’s close because it will be illegal to try to cure diseases if the patient will likely never be “productive?”
Will there be a maximum age to live? This leads to NO retirement because the citizen would not be productive. I’ve been thinking more and more about the movie “LOGAN’s RUN” - adults with expiration dates.
The new movie “Knowing” with nicholas cage is a thought provoker. Gives a total new thought about global warming- and it isn’t “W’s” fault!
The politicians and their families will retain their OWN health care plans.
They may vote for socialist health care, but only for the rest of us.
Yeah, I won’t look for Hillary standing in line at the Chappaqua free clinic.
Mitt Romney chortles as he inflicts socialized medicine (HillaryCARE=ROmneyCARE)
upon the Massachusetts citizens, without one of their votes (the ROMNEYway(TM)),
after spending years inviting illegal aliens to fill the Commonwealth from Pittsfield to Chatham.
Mitt Romney delivered HillaryCARE to the DNC for them and his socialist masters.
I worry about that as well. Was born 12 weeks early, 2 lb 14 ounces. I’m healthy and productive, but the prognosis 30 years ago was far grimmer, given the state of neonatal care then.
I understand not seeking drastic action, as in those children that would not live without extensive intervention and who will never truly live. There are times that parents need to let go.
However, I have often had to inform individuals that if their strict criteria were in place, I would not be here.
http://cassandra2004.blogspot.com/2009/02/ronald-reagan-1961-socialized-medicine.html
This is what was being discussed in 1961
This happens all the time in California by illegals taking advantage of the free medical care they get thru the program called "mediCAL".
I know a woman who takes one or both of her kids to the doctor about once a week. And the doctors always seem to find something wrong. One time she was afraid her son had cancer. One doctor had scared her by telling her it was a possibility. Another doctor was getting so annoyed by the frequency of her visits that he sent her to Stanford Childrens Hospital for her son to be evaluated. I took her there. There in the waiting room were kids and babies that HAD cancer. And her son was playing in the waiting room and looking at books while these truly sick kids and babies were sitting down quietly and obviously sick. Some had no hair. I could see right away that she was ashamed.
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