Universal health care not a panacea
Recently you published a letter from a lady in Elgin in support of universal health care. Her opening sentence is that every industrialized nation but the U.S. has a system that provided health care for all its citizens. While that may be true, that is not why we should or should not have government health care.
She goes on to say that it is the insurance companies that decide who does or does not get treated, which is not accurate.
Perhaps one might consider this. Why is it that there are folks from all those industrialized nations coming to the U.S. for treatment? I have a family member who is a doctor in New Zealand. One of her most recent e-mails indicated she was performing surgery on patients who have been scheduled for two years.
Perhaps one might look at the U.K. and learn that the government ran out of money at the end of the third quarter so no heart surgeries were performed in the last quarter of the year.
I have a dear friend who practiced in the U.K. for a while. He indicated he sees three times as many patients per day than his counterpart in the U.K. Why?
They have no incentive to see patients. They actually have an incentive to do the opposite as many of them actually make more money doing private pay patients in the evening.
While the insurance companies may have input to health care, they do not prevent patients from being treated. Instead they may limit what they choose to pay for that treatment. I would much prefer that kind of system than having a government bureaucrat deciding whether I can be treated or must go untreated.
Folks should not get delusional about government health care. There is nothing our government can run better than private industry. One of the main problems in our health care system is a result of our government intrusion.
Maybe the lady from Elgin should also mention that the U.S. is the only country in the world that requires their health care system to treat patients that are in this country illegally. She might want to look into moving to Australia or many other countries outside the U.S. and she will find that they require a certain net worth before they will allow people in.
They do not want folks coming in to their country to go on their welfare system. Try going to Australia if you are over 65. Nope, they do not want the elderly folks coming there draining their health care system.
Our society would be better off not passing universal health care, but rather passing laws that do not force our doctors and hospitals to treat those who are in this country illegally. The reason our premiums are so high is the working people are not only paying for their health care, but also for others who cannot pay and do not belong here.
If you think our system is expensive now, just wait. Universal health care will cost trillions more dollars and be much poorer for the average person than it is today.
Dennis Miller
Lake in the Hills