[Culturechat] Medicare, good or bad?

[Hal Taussig]

Vance:
It would be really enlightening if you would compare how medical care for 
the elderly in Switzerland compares with that in the U.S. Or more simply, 
just summarize how it works in der Scwheiz
Hal
At 08:11 AM 3/21/2004, Vance Roy wrote:
>I was a senior in medical school when Medicare came into existence. Most 
>of my teachers and those in private practice who helped us in clinical 
>medicine thought it was a socialist abomination. I remember one liberal 
>student who was castigated for his support of this law. He did graduate.
>
>Well, it turns out that Medicare made doctors a potful of money. I am 
>talking about honest docs who never committed any sort of fraud. All of a 
>sudden, they got money for taking care of patients they had never charged 
>before Medicare. A lot got rich. Some were/are crooks and got/get REALLY rich.
>
>Over my 25 years of practice, I made a nice living, but I never asked what 
>patient paid or how they paid. I never wanted to know because I wanted 
>nothing about that to color my thinking. It worked well. When I got paid 
>with chickens, eggs, or even blueberries (loved that guy), I knew that 
>they were not rolling in $$. I can now see that in the not so far future, 
>things may reverse. A two tier system will evolve. Those who can sign on 
>with the private sector will do just that. Me included if I still can do 
>this. A second tier will still be under the "old" system. How good will 
>that be? I do not know.
>
>Doctors today come out of ten or so years of training with 100K debts. I 
>was as slick as my shaved head when I finished my training, and my widowed 
>mother taught second grade. Today's docs want to pay the debt off, become 
>stable, have debt free families, and maybe live in retirement comfortably. 
>Is that wrong? They are not looking at big bucks, so they are happy to 
>take 9 to 5 jobs, lack the personal touch with people skills, and I am 
>scared to death that one of them will take care of me when (not if) I get sick.
>
>My dad told me when I was in the second grade, and the federal school 
>lunch program took over my school cafetiera , that the government did not 
>give out money without conditions. He was right, the food became terrible, 
>because the feds wrote the recipes.
>
>Now, don't get the idea that Gigli has gone liberal. Not even close. I 
>know some of those, and believe me, they can have feet of clay.
>
>Vance Roy
>gigli.saw@dplanet.ch
>http://homepage.mac.com/fredch
>
>"Never under estimate the ingenuity of the stupid."
>Anon.
>
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