John Stossel - Sick in America - Part 1 (of 6)

Okay. And without taxes, who pays for the most obvious needs such as roads, water supply, sewage, schools?

When you use aggression (taxation) as your means, you sabotage your ends. Aggression creates conflict, not harmony. When all of the taxes are collected, all of the people will scream and fight over how it is spent. Everyone has different ideas of what to do with the money. I say let the people who earned the money decide how to spend it. That is a peaceful solution. I like peace.

By allowing the people to keep the fruits of their labor, we will be able to use our wealth much more efficiently than a central bureaucracy can ever dream of. I know that you are trying to do good by redistributing the wealth of your nation, but you are in fact contributing to the very problem that you seek to solve. The developed world is becoming impoverished by an ever-increasing tax burden. Why? Because governments don't create wealth, they consume it. Let's keep it to a minimum.

Yes, I am opposed to taxation. I must also emphasize that there is no such thing as a social contract. A contract is a binding agreement between 2 or more people. The "social contract" that you are thinking of is made without the consent of all affected people. Someone is getting their rights scrapped. That may be democratic, but it's hardly civilized.

I believe what you are describing is the act of opting out of the social contract that is part of a democratic society.

I presume you are opposed to all taxation.

Because all of the money to pay for all of your doctors and medicines is taken from your neighbors in advance and spent by a committee. Your only choice is to take what has been stolen or suffer without care.

Please explain to me how the Canadian system I have described involves any sort of 'reluctance to exercise freedom of choice.'

If you are being told who, where, and when to go for treatment by a gatekeeper/insurer, I agree your choice has been taken away. As I understand it, there is a multitude of 'pre-existing conditions' that can exclude insurance coverage, leaving you in the cold.

In Canada that does not exist. You can choose your GP and he may refer you to any specialist.
There are no pre-existing conditions that could result in non-treatment.

I understand if you are reluctant to exercise freedom of choice regarding your health, but please allow the rest of us to keep this crucial right. The right to choose is our greatest power--it allows the downtrodden to climb out of poverty. Why do you think so many people have struggled so hard to come here?

The U.S. was once a beacon of freedom and it can be again.

If you know anything about the FDA and AMA then you know that the U.S. does not have a free market in medicine. And over 50% of all healthcare dollars spent are spent by the government (medicare/medicaid) with the rest being controlled by corporate insurance. People have very little choice in this system, and the free market is all about choice.

The free market applied to healthcare exists now, and only serves to deny those unable to pay. Reducing costs will help some but have little effect for most. We are talking about often extremely expensive treatment.

Healthcare innovation does not depend on profit for motivation. Believe it or not, there are still many altruisticly inclined people in medicine.

I believe it was Salk who refused to patent the polio vaccine.

"When you're ill, you shouldn't have to worry about some profit-motivated gatekeeper."

I agree. That is why I advocate the free market. In a free market, profits can only be earned by satisfying customers. In today's market, profit is earned too often by coercion. But, if you eliminate profit entirely, there will be little incentive to innovate.

I re-watched this first sixth of the Stossel 'report' and will re-watch the others.

The woman in this epsidode clearly was under so much financial stress that it could easily have made her illness worse.

When you're ill, you shouldn't have to worry about some profit-motivated gatekeeper.

Not hard to imagine those ER's being overloaded by people just playing by the rules.

In Canada, almost every neighborhood has small drop-in clinics to handle non-urgent concerns for those who may not have a GP or can't get an appointment as quick as they need.

Small user-pay fees have been considered to reduce over-use, but have not been brought in because it is believed it would result in delaying treatment for small concerns that then become larger, more costly concerns.

Not exactly. Every hospital has an "emergency" room. That is the place that poor people like to go because there is a law that says the hospital must treat patients even if they can't pay--you just have to wait a few hours. These rooms are expensive to run, so every other service in the hospital becomes overpriced to compensate. We need more pay-as-you-go clinics to handle routine procedures.