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Every prescription that is filled creates the need for the next one to be filled.

Yeah, there are some serious ethical dilemmas coming up in the next ten or twenty years. We're about at the point where we can keep just about anyone alive for another ten minutes if we spend enough money. The sicker they get, the more expensive it becomes to keep them alive... but we can do it. It just costs a lot of money.

There is no reason to believe that health care expenditures could not someday consume every dollar earned in the economy. We could tax every working adult 100% of their earnings, throw it at keeping ever-sicker, ever-older adults alive another month or two... and still not really be done.

That's not really going to happen, of course, because it's a ridiculous result. People won't work anymore if they get taxed 100%. We have to feed those people, and we have to feed children, so we can't really spend all the money on the world on health care.

Which means that either some people are going to voluntarily choose to die, or there will be some really nasty picking-and-choosing going on to decide who will be forced to die.

We already have some of that in deciding who will get scarce transplant organs, and who will stay on the list... perhaps to die. But we are someday going to have that issue with everyone, because there is not one of us who, toward the end, could not be given another year to live for 5, 10, 25 million dollars in various "procedures."

Who will get those procedures? Who won't? Will the people who need them have the courage, and the selflessness necessary to get the Hell out of the way voluntarily, or will they insist on putting the onus for killing them on their children? It will come to that. We're almost there now.

What is worse is over the last 5 years there has been a serious attempt, backed by the big drug companies, to prevent access to herbs, vitamins... even regular dietary supplements. Attempts to make it necessary to have a doctor prescribe vitamins!!!

Once they get that the layman's options are sunk. It will all be government controlled. It is already happening in Europe.

Actually doctors will be one of the groups to suffer the worse. There is no way that will be free market (or any semblance of it as it is now) because the money will be going to pay for the regulated drugs and supplements. Doctors will no longer have any incentive to open a practice because it will be a government agency.

Look at the rest of the world. Name the large medical discoveries or techniques discovered or pioneered in England, France, Scandinavia, etc. Times up. We all know it is a fraction of what is discovered in the USA. The brilliant medical minds come to the US where they can earn a good living.... just look at Canada.

My parents (retired) were just up in Canada in their motor home for 6 months. My mom who used to lean towards a liberal democratic type stance was shocked. She said they drove for days, and except in the larger cities there is no doctors practices, few hospitals or emergency health care facilities, not even dentist offices.

She said "if that is what socialized health care is... I don't want it." "In most places we could not see where to go for medical treatment of emergency or any other kind." At their ages I guess they notice that sort of thing, but from talking to them both said the thought of the USA ending up like that concerned them.

Which means that either some people are going to voluntarily choose to die, or there will be some really nasty picking-and-choosing going on to decide who will be forced to die.

In one form or another, that's been going on for as long as Professional Health Care has existed. Have you ever cared for a terminally ill loved one? The TV version is where the doctors tell the patient that there's nothing that can be done, that it's time to get one's affairs in order and go home to die, under the loving care of Mucus Welby, MD. The end of the house call was the end of that scenario. The reality is that the doctor simply stops seeing the patient. No more appointments. Then, a social worker shows up with a business card for the local hospice care facility. From that point on, the chances of even getting the patient past the emergency room doors of a hospital are practically nil. Health insurance very conveniently pays for hospice care.

If we ever get to Soylent Green and "Deathing Centers" like the one Edward G. Robinson checked into in the movie (his last film btw, he knew he was terminally ill during filming), it will be the doing of the Anointed do-gooders. It won't be via some geometrical Malthusian max point where healthcare supply can't keep up with demand. Everybody who has ever waved that boogeyman in any free market economic argument has been wrong.