From: "Robert G Lewis" 


"Gary Britt"  wrote in message
news:43bc3a1c{at}w3.nls.net...
>I didn't say I agreed with all the socialized healthcare you cite.
> Healthcare would be in a LOT better situation today if we hadn't screwed
> up
> so badly about 50 years ago when we began to adopt a private insurance
> "third party payer" model that separated the consumer of the
healthcare
> services from price effects and choices.  The insurance model did NOT have
> to be based upon third party payer and could have been based solely in a
> reimbursement kind of situation, but at the time we didn't realize how
> drastically and critically removing the consumer of healthcare from price
> decisions and effects through third party payer insurance systems would
> cause healthcare costs to skyrocket.
>
> I'm not in favor of free ambulance rides for anything except true
> emergency
> service, such as heart attacks, accidents, strokes, that kind of thing.
> Again that are certain levels of services that must be achieved BEFORE you
> can rationally state you have ANY GOVERNMENT at all.
>
> I believe the minimum needed to achieve the existence of government are
> common defense, police, fire, and EMERGENCY care.
>
> Everything else beyond that is elective and begins your sliding scale
> (perhaps), but there is no government of any form before you achieve these
> basics.
>
> Gary
>>

You might want to think on that a little Gary. The Fire and Emergency care
are more recent additions to government and definitely do not date back to
the founding of the United States. I'm sure you are not trying to imply
that the US was below the level one could rationally state was a government
for most of our history.

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