Socialized Medicine.

[den]

I know I keep going on about this and I probably shouldn't. Today's visit cost me AU$130, and I got 50% of it back from Medicare.

The manboobectomy? Getting done in a public hospital. Cost to me: AU$0 (not counting the 1.5% tax I pay to Medicare.)

Comments

[dhlawrence.livejournal.com]

Socialized medicine - the worst health care system except for everything else we've tried.

[ccdesan.livejournal.com]

Well said. We still have a plutocratic medical system here. If you've got money (either directly or indirecty) you can get treatment. If you're poor or old, you're S.O.L.

[dhlawrence.livejournal.com]

Unless you're in a border state, in which case you come up to the place that pretty much invented it :P

[brucebergman.livejournal.com]

Socialized medicine certainly CAN be done just as well as a private insurance system, the question being WILL it be done as well...

The US survival rates for prostate cancer are IIRC 64,000% better in the US than England, and on almost every other index a private system has them beat all hollow.

All socialized systems ration care, depending on how much funding the government wants to (or can) put towards them. And if they decide to fund it well enough to match the private systems in place now, that will effectively break the economy.

Remember the Beatles "Taxman" lyric "That's one for you, nineteen for me"? 95% top tax rate, to fund all the Socialism. Which is why all the Beatles emigrated to the US, so they could keep some of their money.

Thanks to Obama, we're on the road to socialized medicine and a corresponding 95% top tax rate here, no matter how many lies about "Most people are getting a tax cut!" - the people who own the company you work at are the ones that will get hit with the taxes, and the more taxes means higher prices (galloping inflation) and less to pay employees with.

I don't want to hear a physician going "You have a terminal disease, and we could give you another 10 to 20 years - but the system won't pay for the drugs because you're going to die anyways. So go home and die already."

They could just as easily deny that Man-boobs can get Breast Cancer and let you slowly stew.