[Homestead] hooray it's only just beginning
clanSkeen
sgian at planetc.com
Fri Dec 24 11:09:48 EST 2004
> Sure there are worse things than dying like the way those kids will die
> and
> how they will feel leading up to death. However, there is no excuse for
> children not getting medical care while our tax dollars go to make some
> fat
> cats richer off Iraq.
It wouldn't matter how much money we didn't spend in Iraq; it doesn't
necessarily mean the availability of more funds for medical needs here.
Medical care such as we are talking about here is kept artificially scarce
specifically so that it can be kept artificially expensive. The very last
thing in the universe that anybody in the health care industry would want
would be, for example, an entire course of treatment for childhood leukemia
to cost $5000. Would health insurance companies want that? No way, if a
major disease could be treated for the price of a used car, no one would buy
health insurance. Or if they did, how many health insurance execs can pull
down six or seven figures selling policies with a payout of $5000? Same
with hospitals, drug companies, doctors, etc. If the real market
competitive price of the course of treatment of major disease were a few
thousand dollars [and I'm not all that much exaggerating reality there],
none of those people stand to make much money.
So medical cost have to be kept artificially very high and this is done by
making the medical services artificially scarce. Unless you agree to devote
a large part of your income to support us, we can fix it so you will die.
It's an effective threat. So important is the guild and monopoly on
medical services and its ability to fix prices that it is willing to drop
its stethoscope around its neck and let some children die in order to scare
other families into keeping up the tribute money. Until this feature of the
medical guild is corrected, taking all the money spent in Iraq and dumping
it on medical needs here would have no effect because there are mechanisms
in place to assure that the services stay scarce and thus stay lucrative.
James
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