🚀 go-pugleaf

J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Feb 2018 17:31:58 -0000 (UTC), John Levine
> <jo...@taugh.com> wrote:
> 
>> In article <PM000564F...@aca4281c.ipt.aol.com>,
>> jmfbahciv  <See....@aol.com> wrote:
>>> "Free" means that the recipients have an infinite resource which
>>> causes no restrainst in the consumption of that resource.
>> 
>> Nonetheless, all over Europe and even in Canada people get health care
>> for free, no payment at all at point of service, and they are
>> healthier than Americans and the overall cost is about 1/2 of ours.
> 
> Maybe the cost is 1/2 of ours because the populations they treat are
> healthier.
> 
> There is this unstated implication that "they are healthier because
> the medical treatment system is better".  The notion that "they are
> healthier because their lifestyle is different" never gets considered.
> People just assume that the average American's daily activities are
> identical to those of the average Frenchman or German or Englishman or
> Swede.  But I have never seen research that shows that this is the
> case.
> 
> Then there's the matter of whether the statistics are identical.
> People at this point generally say that "the UN defines blah blah
> blah", but does the average doctor give a crap about how the UN
> defines it when he is filling out reports?  He's more concerned with
> the insurance company and the malpractice lawyers, both of whom affect
> his life directly.
> 
> 

>From what I understand they do a lot more bicycling than Mericans do. A lot
of people bike to work or shopping. I think Germans are more into outdoor
stuff like hiking than we are. In the US,  guns are a significant cause of
injuries and death.

In my opinion economies of scale don't really apply to health care, since
it's a "craft" business, like education. A surgical team can only operate
on one patient at a time, whether health care is nationalized or private. I
haven't particularly noticed doctors and nurses sitting idle looking for
work. If the government really wants to improve medical care it would
subsidize medical and nursing schools to graduate more trained people.

-- 
Pete