[quote=sdgrrl]For every fact in that segment a fact can be found against it. Just one part of it regarded their “fact” that with socialized care medical technology would come to a stand still. France has socialized medicine, the Swiss have socialized medicine and they have discovered nothing since that all went in to effect?
Just because there s socialized medicine doesn’t mean we won’t have privately funded research.
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True, I doubt that innovation will stop completely, but I do think that in socialized medicine, there will be less innovation than in a profit driven model. The drug companies are a good example of this. You asked why others pay less for drugs than the U.S.? The main reason why is because we are paying for it. The other countries put a price cap on the drug prices and so the drug companies pass the cost down to us. Hardly sounds fair. Install price controls in the U.S. and you will find a chilling effect on drug companies. When it costs a billion dollars to get a drug to market, and the countries don’t want to pay for it, what company will go into debt for that? They will just go out of business or will just find another avenue of potential profit.
So interesting question, while France and other socialized healthcare countries are doing some medical innovation, what country is the leader in medical innovation in the entire world?
The United States of America. Why? Because the pursuit of profit forces companies to innovate and become efficient.
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Also, Canada does not have socialized dental care that is a fact.
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That’s nice to know! The dental stories in the Stossel piece referred to the British healthcare system.
Well of course they do! They certainly don’t have to deal with the size of our population, illegal immigration. Why would anyone say free money is bad? When they can basically write a blank check, who’s going to say it’s a bad system? It’s only when the system starts going through stresses (which is becoming apparent now), that people start questioning things.
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Sadly, Stossel never talked about lowering cost I only heard him say that profit based medicine is a good thing.
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When has the government ever lowered costs? I posted this up earlier, but it seems to require another mention here. Here is proof poitive that profit based medicine is better than a government system.
[img_assist|nid=11577|title=Medicare Chart|desc=Costs of Medicare vs. Private|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=54]
Stossel has posted many reports before on how businesses and competition has lowered costs so I’m not surprised he didn’t mention it. The report itself was not an end all be all about all the healthcare issues, but instead was focused on rationing and innovation.
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Another fact. The US will not be have socialized medicine. Democrats just want a public option. Opponents say that employers will drop their workers causing an evenual socialized society. You think that if this happens at alarming speed that perhaps Insurance companies might drop their premiums a bit?[/quote]
I don’t know if you’ve been looking at what’s been going on in Massachusetts but they are a perfect example of what the democrats want. Interestingly enough it was instituted by a republican, Mitt Romney. Most employers have dumped their employees into the public insurance pool and the amount of people in that insurance pool has skyrocketed so badly they have started removing people from that pool, and made them ineligible for benefits.
There are just so many examples of government run systems and how they perform fiscally. Medicare and the VA system are good examples of what to expect in a government system. They are not run particularly well. While there are certainly some successes, they are by any account bankrupt and ration care.
If you think that introducing a public option will not have worse effects than just forcing insurance companies to lower their rates, you are in for a rude awakening. No business can compete with the government. The government does not have to pay taxes, it does not have to be fiscally responsible, and it can spend pretty much however it wants. There’s just no way to compete with that. What is more likely is that insurance will choose not to provide those insurance services and that business to lower their costs will force employees to use the public option.
And that’s reality.
Still it’s nice that you’re actually arguing the facts instead of calling people names.