Replying to a message of Steven Horn to JIM WELLER:

 JW>> I'm getting a headache. It's all too complicated. In Canada
 JW>> the employer remits 1.95% of his total payroll, I get a
 JW>> health card, I show it, I don't get a bill. Period. I pay
 JW>> for my own drugs and dental care until I'm 60 and then
 JW>> they get covered too. Nice and simple.

 SH> I read the American posts and I not only get a headache but
 SH> get nausea to boot.

Why?  If you assume - usually correctly - that the media and the politicians
are lying out their collective *sses whatever they say shouldn't bother you at
all.  In point of fact, people in this country are not dying in the streets for
lack of health care - drive-by shootings, hypothermia, starvation, yes, but not
for lack of health care.

The demand for health care is infinite and resources are limited.  In the US,
the limitation has historically been done by price and/or availability.  In
countries with socialized medicine it's done by bureaucratic fiat - which
includes waiting lines, but it's done.  In point of fact in the US, emergency
care is not denied to anybody because they can't pay for it - the fact that
so many people are not paying for it in some areas has caused several hospitals
to either close their emergency departments or close completely.

 SH>  Like you, I have a health care card
 SH> which has included pharmacare for some years now and my
 SH> group health and dental plans covered 80% of my dental and
 SH> drug costs before pharmacare clicked in.

I had that promised to me, too.  And by the US government.  Free medical and
dental care for life if I served at least 20 years active duty in the US military.
That free dental care went away in the 1970s and that free medical care went
away in the 1990s (I retired in 1983).  Y'see, providing all that free medical
care - and for a very limited population - is expen$ive, and congress has decided
it simply isn't going to pay for it (note that active duty members now have to pay
for the medical care their dependents receive, that used to be free too).  The same
is true for Medicare, which controls a much larger population; in December the
government announced that it would reduce its reimbursement rates for Medicare
patients (which is why providers have been -  usually quietly - dropping out of the
system, they can't recover their costs); note that hospitals *already* lose money on
Medicare patients and have been for years (but they'd lose more money if those beds
were empty) - and Medicare patients  make up about 60% of a general hospital's
inpatient population.

Another of the US government's dirty little secrets is that it has quietly
been closing
the military hospitals at active duty bases (and during a shooting war).  The AF
hospital at Offutt AFB closed in 2004 and reopened as a walk-in clinic; anything
more serious than a hangnail is referred to a local civilian hospital (and note that
Omaha's University of Nebraska Medical Center is nearly finished building a brand
new inpatient facility about one mile north of the former military hospital
- specifically
to handle those military patients formerly seen at the base hospital).

And some people want to put these crooks in charge of the whole medical system.

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