Looking for research on socialist healthcare (vanity)

MarineBrat

[GreenAccord]

The research resource I'd suggest is the US Constitution. It's a prima facie argument that our constitution has no provision allowing for nationalized health care. That should be a part of your argument, as well as plenty of anecdotal stories, with the economics and value as the underlying basis for the thesis.

[WhiteGuy]

Take a look into the VA or Medicare programs

[AdamSelene235]

The Cato Institute

[MD_Willington_1976]

Cuba...such wonderfull universal health care...[/BARF

Canada is bad, but not that bad...My father can't win the Lottery there, but he always lucks out when it comes to not having to wait for medical treatment back in Canada...

[JoeFromSidney]

I went to that site. The first item was about kidney patients and dialysis centers. This hit home with me. My first wife died 17 years ago, after 5 years on dialysis. It took me over a year following her death to get all the bills settled. Medicare was supposed to be paying the cost, but it's a bureaucratic nightmare.

[QQQQQ]

There are lots of articles on FR. Here are just a few searches that brought up a lot of them. Everything from examples of what happens under socialized medicine (UK and Canada) and some other assessments. If you go through this, you will have ample material.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=hillarycare

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=socializedmedicine

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=all;o=time;s=healthcare%20

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?s=socialized+medicine&ok=Search&q=quick&m=all&o=time&SX=42e7dce9b407cf314153aa0177e52ca35f273cb9

[38special]

Compare the wages of nurses working in socialist countries versus the wages of nurses working in capitalist countries.

I dated a Canadian nurse working in Texas years ago. She said nurses earn better wages working in the U.S. than in Canada.

[38special]

Compare the wages of nurses working in socialist countries versus the wages of nurses working in capitalist countries.

I dated a Canadian nurse working in Texas years ago. She said nurses earn better wages working in the U.S. than in Canada.

[neverdem]

I don't post health and medicine stories any more. I just link them because I was suspended after posting Doubts on Vitamin E, Aspirin for Prevention (The Women’s Health Study). Check the first two stories of this search. I tried to Google the NY Times' title In Blow to Canada's Health System, Quebec Law Is Voided. Besides the excerpt in their archive, this is the best I have found so far, Quebec Law Is Voided.

[Mack the knife]

"Healthcare should be freely available to all, regardless of cost"

There are two issues here, linked, but separate: the moral issue, and the practical experience.

First, there is the moral issue: the statement
"Everyone has a right to all the health care they 'need' regardless of their ability to pay" ...

is incomplete -- it doesn't say how these costs should be paid. The implication is that, if these costs are not paid for with donations from productive citizens, then force should be used to make up the difference.

So there must be an inevitable second part to the statement:

"...and difference should be extracted from all productive citizens, by force if necessary, without limit."

Socialists hate that part ... they don't want to admit that there is any force involved at all, or they try to obfuscate the use of force by saying ..."Taxes are the price we pay for civilization".

But, they are actually saying that the "need" of the poor unhealthy constitutes both a moral and legal claim on all productive citizens, without limit. If someone does not volunteer "their fair share", courts and policemen with guns should extort it from them. In other words, the productive must become slaves to the unproductive simply because of their need.

Placed that way, it doesn't pass the giggle test. If I don't have the right to go next door and steal money and assets from someone to pay for healthcare for myself or someone else, I can't authorize a govenment to do it for me. And don't tell me that religion authorizes this use of force -- in the parable of the "Good Samaratian", the "Good Samaratian" paid for the care of the victim himself -- he didn't go rob other travelers to get the funds.

Anyone who advocates the right to have govenment do this is a cowardly thug - a thug because they want someone with guns to extract the money, and a cowardly thug because they don't want to do it themselves, they want someone else to do the actual thuggery.

---

The second issue is that of practicality. I say they are linked because ... if something isn't moral ... it usually isn't practical either. The rest of these responses will cover that in spades.

If you want to understand what is wrong with an idea, take it to its logical conclusion. Basically, there are only three places that you can go to get the money to pay for those who can't pay: people who are paying for medical care (in the form of higher prices), people performing the care (in the form of lower compensation), and current taxpayers. For example:

***If you demand that physicians perform the services without adequate compensation ... they are bright people and will begin to refuse taking those patients; and/or, they will leave the profession. This is beginning to happen with doctors refusing Medicare patients. This has been going on for some time with Canadian nurses and physicians emigrating to the US.

*** If you raise prices on those going to the hospital too much to pay for those who don't pay ... people will go elsewhere for their medical care, and the hospitals will go bankrupt. As I remember, 7 ER rooms in Los Angeles recently closed because their costs exceeded their income. And there are numerous hospitals along the Mexican border that take care of illegals that are facing the same problem.

*** If you extract too much money from the taxpayers, at some point taxpayers will revolt, so the taxes will always underfund the services, and you will get a brain drain of providers to other countries, and you will get rationing by waiting. Welcome to Canada.

A while back Oregon decided to provide health care to their citizens, but quickly discovered they couldn't afford it. So they drew up a list of all medical procedures, ordered it by effectiveness and cost, and then drew a line - they paid for immunizations of children (low cost, effective), but would not pay for bone marrow transplants (high cost, not very effective). Popular with taxperys, but a lot of whining by those who desired services that were "below the line".

After all of that is said ... I am, however, reminded that Neal Boortz says that socialized healthcare for the US is inevitable. There are more voters who are afraid of health care costs than there are taxpayers who will have to foot the bill. And Medicare and Medicaid are progressively imploding the health care system.