The selling of socialized medicine (c’mon, let’s use the term…I’m not afraid
of it) must be done intitially in two parts: A). Sell it to the population at
large & B). Sell it to big and small business.

1. Proponents of socialized medicine should start educating the masses about
the benefits of this system vis a vis the current system.
2. For every argument against, you must come up with two arguments for.
3. Don’t allow the debate to be polluted with dead terms like “communist”.
4. Explain any tax increase against the cost they pay in health insurance now
and the benefits they’ll get once a system is put in place.
5. If you can convince corporations and small businesses about the cost
benefits to them, they will gladly hop on the bandwagon. And once the
corporations want it, their puppets in Congress will gladly go along.
I work in a company that won’t hire a person they need to fill a slot not
because of his salary, but because of the benefits that would have to be
offered to him. Socialized medicine would take care of that little problem.

As for the insurance companies? Well, the buggy manufacturers were none too
pleased about the automobile a hundred years ago, not to mention the horse
shoe makers. That’s what’s called progress. As the 212th Rule of Aquisition
says, “Too fucking bad”.

National health insurance would be a disaster. We are in the current mess because of the
government, it’s rear end kissing attitude to insurance carriers & it’s increasing meddling
in the delivery of health care. Many physicians would treat some poor without charge or
volunteer supervision at teaching hospitals if they could only get paid in a timely fashion &
appropriate sums for treating the non-poor. How can we currently do that when managed/mangled
care forces us to do volume work at negative profit margins. In Mexico it is a requirement of
licensure.

As a matter of principle, I think EVERYONE should be given the right to
strike. I think Doctors should strike, where ever they get a chance to
strike. It will be to everyone’s benefit, in the long run. Besides, Doctors
are not about to let critical emergencies go untreated. There have been
instances of Doctors going on strike. It’s very, very, very rare, but it’s
happened. The few instances when Doctors did go on strike, guess what
happened? The mortality rate went down in that town, and the general
population became much healthier. The reason for that was that the sick
people moved out of town, and everyone else started taking extra good care of
their health, for obvious reasons. There are a lot of examples of Hospitals,
and Nursing homes, where Nurses, and Nurses’ Assistants were able to have an
enormous impact on improving the health care system, by simply organizing,
and striking. I don’t think that ANYBODY should be denied the option of
going on strike in order to highlight their grievances. It’s the American
way, and in extreme examples, it’s the only way that the bosses, or the
public will take any notice. I certainly do feel that Doctors should get
paid more than what they are getting paid now, their input into improving the
Nation’s health care system is important. I have 7 Uncles, all of them
Doctors. Their main complaints seem to be that they are overworked, and that
the insurance companies are jerking them around, telling them how to do their
jobs.

We should probably TRY market-based medicine before we decide it won’t
work. Much of the problems of today can be traced to the days of WWII when the
gov’t tied health insurance so completely to the workplace (for self-serving
reasons we can get into later).

This did a couple of things. First it effectively divorced the
consumer of medical care from the payor of medical care. The employer not the
employee is really the customer of the insurance company. Now the employer
wants cheaper medicial insurance and the insurance company, true to the
economics of the situation, are listening to them

Secondly, it (with the help of Mcare in the 60s and employer
collective bargaining decisions in the 70 and 80s) brought about the MASSIVE
subsidies we see today (HCFA stats show decrease in out of pocket medical
expenses (including OOP part of the insurance premium) has dropped from 50% in
the 60s to less than 20% currently.

Throw in the current dichotomy between what is essentially an acute
care payment and delivery system on a chronic care model and the rest is
history.