“Free” Health Care News
By Dave Hitt on Mar 31, 2008 in Nanny Nation
This just in from the wonderful world of socialized medicine.
The U.K. mandates that anyone who visits an emergency room must be treated within four hours. Sometimes the demand for “free” heath care is so great a hospital can’t meet that deadline. Fortunately, they’ve come up with a novel solution.
They leave the patients in the ambulance.
Outside.
For an hour. Or two. Or five.
Last year they did this with over 43,000 patients.
And of course, while the sick and injured were being kept in the ambulances, waiting and waiting and waiting, those ambulances were unavailable to anyone else who had called in an emergency.
Isn’t government heath care a great idea?
Communism is not viable for a number of reasons, but the fact that the USSR and China did it so badly isn’t a good enough one.
Similarly, there’s a lot to be said for nationalized health care, just not the way the UK has been done.
Free-market capitalism has done crap for, for instance, Brazil. Poor implementation should not be mistaken for a poor concept. Pure socialized medicine might be weak, but a mix of socialized and privatized medicine can help cover everybody’s bases without pulling the rug out from those whose bases are already covered.
Dan Pearson | Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
“but the fact that the USSR and China did it so badly isn’t a good enough one.”
“Free-market capitalism has done crap for, for instance, Brazil.”
good one. OH WAIT IT’S APRIL FIRST.
one thing i learned from that article is that apparently in the UK 911 is 999. i think that’s a better system, it’s easier to dial in high-pressure situations.
Ilya | Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
The US has not been able to practice or implement free-market ideas. The government has found a way to get into it somehow and muck it up every time.
Regulation are always used as an excuse for protecting someone. The problem is that that protection is sometimes the problem. Sometimes thing need to go bad so that something better will come out of it.
Now I am willing to experiment with socialized medicine if it were state run. Federally run socialized medicine would be unconstitutional and direct monies where they do not belong. State run medicine would give me the voter and citizen of that state more power on if and how it would be implemented.
Tom | Apr 5, 2008 | Reply
We don’t have a free market for health care in the US. Half the medical bills are paid for by the government, and most of the other half are paid for by insurance companies. In either case there is no incentive for the end user to shop for the best price/value.
I just released a podcast last night (http://www.davehitt.com/podcasts/) that discusses it, and a way to bring the free market back to health care. The title of the episode is “Healthy Savings.”
Most of the solutions proposed in the Quick Hitts podcast have absolutely no chance of really happening, but this one is all ready on it’s way, and just might make it through of Big Pharma and the medical establishment doesn’t succeed in derailing it.
Hittman | Apr 7, 2008 | Reply