Israeli doctors rally for better pay, conditions (socialized medicine)

AP via Bloomberg Business Week ^ | August 1, 2011 | Associated Press

[Colonel Kangaroo]

JERUSALEM Hundreds of Israel's doctors are demonstrating in Jerusalem, stepping up their protest for higher wages and better hospital conditions. Last week, doctors marched to Jerusalem and pitched tents, echoing a grass-roots movement of tent camps that have sprung up nationwide with young people demanding affordable housing. Israel Medical Association chairman Dr. Leonid Eidelman has also gone on a hunger strike. At a rally near Israel's parliament Sunday, he called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intervene. Israel's medical system is socialized, and everyone has coverage. Doctors say they are overworked, understaffed and underpaid. As part of their protest Sunday, doctors closed outpatient clinics and delayed non-emergency surgeries.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

While socialism promises wonders on the demand side, the supply side suffers...Maybe President Obama and PM Netanyahu can find the elusive common ground in the realm of socialized medicine.

The small consolation is that Obamacare is not socialism to the Israeli extent, but that's the eventual future some of the left desire.

[DJ MacWoW]

James Madison

Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 3rd Congress, 1st Session, page 170 (1794-01-10)
The Annals summarize speeches in the third person, with the actual text of Madison’s quote as follows: “Mr. Madison wished to relieve the sufferers, but was afraid of establishing a dangerous precedent, which might hereafter be perverted to the countenance of purposes very different from those of charity. He acknowledged, for his own part, that he could not undertake to lay his finger on that article in the Federal Constitution which granted a right of Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” The expense in question was for French refugees from the Haitian Revolution.

[Buckeye McFrog]

The last time Israeli doctors went on strike the nation’s life expectancy actually went UP!

Has happened in a few other countries too.

Maybe there is a silver lining to Socialized Medicine?