Therefore I say that the best way is that the young and fittest survive and the old and sick MUST DIE !!!!
If you can’t afford insurance or smoke or drink to drunkeness, then it’s YOUR RESPONSIBILITY
to change your lifestyle or PAY for the resulting medical treatment.

AND I also believe that if you get Cancer or get injured in a car accident,
well That’s Life! You either get well on YOUR OWN or you simply DIE !!!!

YOU ALL HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT TO A PERFECT LIFE !!!!
YOU DO HAVE A RIGHT to do whatever is NECESSARY to ensure YOUR OWN HEALTH
and to ensure that if you ever DO get sick or seriously injured that you
have SUFFICIENT FUNDS or insurance to PAY FOR YOUR CARE.

If you can’t afford it, then IT IS NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY NOR SHOULD IT BE
to pay for something that YOU didn’t DO!!! which is to BUY medical insurance
OR ensure that YOUR OWN INCOME is sufficiant to allow you to PAY
for catastrophic injury or disease!

I AM a Darwinist and and TRUE LIBERTARIAN and if you can’t survive
on YOUR OWN, then either rely on close family members/friends
or if you can’t, then make peace with your maker and accept
that LIFE IS NOT FAIR and you will have to die or TAKE
matters into your own hand…..

Why should —I— HAVE TO PAY for the STUPIDITY or BAD GENES
of ANOTHER? … Again, I feel it’s survival of the FITTEST….
If you’re NOT FIT…THEN YOU MUST or SHOULD DIE !!!!!!

Then, somehow, the behemoth grew, the federal government got deeply involved through sundry medicare this and medicaid that, insurance companies started seeing big $ on the horizon, HMO’s evolved, “medicine” started costing an arm and a leg, doctors started exploiting government programs with egregious charges and performing sundry unnecessary “tests” to justify and pay for expensive technological equipment…

…and the whole thing spiraled out of whack.

This is why socialized medicine is inevitable. Business didn’t care when it was a trivial cost; now it’s a big hunk of payroll costs, and they want out from under it. Especially businesses who have to compete with foreign companies that don’t have to pay it.

We had an opportunity to do things differently a few decades ago, and business would have supported those reforms. We didn’t do it. Now they just want out, and don’t care about how.

I love to eat fatty foods (yummy fois gras) and enjoy adult beverages and an occasional cigar. However, I will probably never sky dive, mountain climb or operate a motorcycle – but support everyone’s RIGHT to do so.

We have already seen efforts to ban many aspects of my lifestyle on the basis of its alleged costs to society. Universal healthcare will only exacerbate pressure to limit other lifestyle choices.

When I got sick with childhood illnesses, the doctor would come to our house and give me a soothing little shot in the behind. His presence and involvement in my “healthcare” (à la the principles of Hippocrates) was always encouraging.

The only time we used insurance was when my sister broke her arm.

Then, somehow, the behemoth grew, the federal government got deeply involved through sundry medicare this and medicaid that, insurance companies started seeing big $ on the horizon, HMO’s evolved, “medicine” started costing an arm and a leg, doctors started exploiting government programs with egregious charges and performing sundry unnecessary “tests” to justify and pay for expensive technological equipment…

…and the whole thing spiraled out of whack.

For some insight into the federal government insinuating itself even further into “healthcare” than it has already, I turn to the words of the inimitable P.J. O’Rourke…

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.

The current system is indeed a mess. A system with no government at all would probably find it impossible to socialize risk in a way that is socially acceptable.

Health care is an unusual commodity – because some of the most expensive health care is simply not optional – it is life or death. Thus the examples in the article (Lasik and cosmetic surgery) are irrelevant – those are almost always purely optional – luxury goods rather than necessities.

I fear an acceptable solution will require some government mandates to insure universal coverage. But it should be for true insurance – that which protects one against unexpected catastrophic costs – rather than routine care.

Of course, if we ignore the idea of universal coverage, but do all the other reforms, we leave many people (especially those of us already trapped in the current system) completely uninsured. A market where many people cannot purchase insurance to protect their savings is a market that discourages savings!

Also unmentioned in this debate is the pathetic state of automation in the medical industry. Hospitals and doctors are decades behind other industries in automation, even though they are buried in paperwork. Many patients die due to mistakes that could be avoided with automation of care. Care is delayed, and costs raised, by the lack of modern ways of transmitting medical records. Dealing with any insurance system that has anti-fraud provisions (i.e. even that which the free market would produce) requires lots of information exchange, and automation could greatly reduce this.

And yet, our much vaunted medical system uses scribbled prescriptions, hand written hospital orders and records, and employs many clerks to deal with payment and authorization issues.

/unhinged lefty