Regarding Natasha Richardson,
From the AP:
"It's impossible for me to comment specifically about her case, but what I could say is ... driving to Mont Tremblant from the city (Montreal) is a 2 1/2-hour trip, and the closest trauma center is in the city. Our system isn't set up for traumas and doesn't match what's available in other Canadian cities, let alone in the States," said Tarek Razek, director of trauma services for the McGill University Health Centre, which represents six of Montreal's hospitals.
There you have it. Another famous victim of government run health care. There are thousands of not so famous victims every year. Many die while waiting for treatment (6 months for angioplasty is not uncommon), or at best face a sub standard level of care, dictated not by their doctor but by a government official, who's decisions can't be appealed.
There are certainly problems in our system, most related to cost and availability of insurance. Government reforms are needed, but the government does not need to take over the system. Require insurance portability, mandate that coverage be available for pre-existing conditions provided the patient had insurance from a previous carrier, and at rates identical to all members of that age group. That prevents people who lose their jobs from being locked out, or prevents people from being able to change jobs. That's a simple fix that would benefit many. But we do not need to follow the socialist model, and shouldn't think that there are no problems in that system also.
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Either you believe in the free market or you don't. Employer-sponsored health-insurance is one of the biggest scams perpetrated in this country. It is crazy on three levels:
1) Would you let your employer dictate your choices of housing, legal representation, cuisine? No? So why should your employer have anything to say about your choice of medical care? If you believe in the free market, employees should be compensated adequately to take care of their medical costs and should be free to pick their doctors/insurance/hospitals/etc.
2) Major medical insurance makes sense, but health insurance is silly. Insurance is a shared-risk tool used to distribute the cost of unlikely events. We buy homeowners and liability insurance to protect us from floods, fires, accidents. We do not buy lawn-mowing, car-repair, or house-cleaning insurance...these are common costs and we rely on free-market competition to keep their costs low and quality high. If we had third-party payers and managers for these, you can be certain they would cost more and work worse.
3) The employer-sponsored health-insurance racket actively works against free-market solutions: insurers squeeze providers and consumers as much as they can to maximize profits by minimizing cost and quality (exactly the opposite of what we want in health-care). Moreover because health-insurance is big business, it corrupts government...their well-paid lobbyists have managed to pass a law that doctors cannot charge an uninsured person the same rate he or she charges an insured person...so insurance becomes necessary as a health-discount program that adds no value but manipulates the markets to force everyone to buy it (not having health insurance is expensive because you cannot buy health-care at market rates).
So if you believe in free markets, you should be working to eliminate employer-sponsored health-insurance. Employers should pay their employees directly whatever they are putting towards employer-sponsored health-insurance and let consumers choose...that's how free markets work OR we should socialize health care. Either way, employer-sponsored health-insurance has got to go.
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