You asked if there was “any nation in the world” where the government didn’t have policy over the training, etc of doctors?

Well, not sure of the exact answer to that, but the good ole Soviet Union gives an excellent counter-example to the follies of government-controlled doctoral training:

The Soviet government trained more doctors than any country in the world, but if you looked at the health stats of the country, it was a miserable failure:

Lifespans were 10-20 years less than western countries
Infant mortality was double
By the late 1980′s, over 80 million people had chronic illnesses.

Does this mean that every country that has a full-communal/socialist healthcare system will have the same results?

no.

In fact, some might have it quite good. But the lesson here is clear.

When you leave health to politicians, the danger of failure is much too high for the health and well-being of the people.

One generation, one country, may get great care, only to have the next be decimated like the people in the Soviet Union were.

You are absolutely correct when you state the western nations have far better health care than the US. The US is also one of the most-regulated health care systems in the world.

It appears you haven’t done much research on the history of the subject.

In the 1940′s, the average working family could afford health care – now, it’s almost unafforable.

In 1945, life expectancy for BOTH men and women – the US was #1 in the world.

This has now dropped into the 20′s.

America’s hospitals and doctors were the finest in the world.

There were thousands of private charities that provided health care to the poor.

Now, almost all of this is gone. Why? as the article made clear, the government got involved.

Costs are extremely high because the government makes it nearly impossible for any competition to exist. They PROMOTE the existence of the big corporation draining us for everything we have, by preventing any small businesses from getting into the marketplace through massive regulations, costs, and the like.

This is one of the most basic concepts of economics.

High competition lowers prices and raises quality. Low competition does the opposite.

We’ve already seen what the government does to:

our education, once vaunted, now awful
our healthcare – once good and affordable, now impossible.
the war on poverty – we’re worse off than ever
the war on drugs – drugs are escalating
our foreign policy – wars never seem to end

When we separate health care from government, we’ll dissolve the government-created demand for needless, high-priced medical insurance.

We will enjoy higher quality, cost-conscious health care.

We’ll take $1 trillion every year from overpriced medical spending – and put it back in the pockets of working Americans. And that is just what working people need.

The big question is this: Why would anyone trust the US government to care for us in the most important aspects of our life? Education, peace, prosperity, health?

They’ve proven to us time and time again, that when we give them great power, they’ll just abuse it.

“For decades, the healthcare system in the U.S. was the envy of the whole world”

as this article claims. All other ‘western nations’ have a far better system of health care than the USA has ever had or ever will have.

And contrary to another claim by this article, “The solution to all today’s medical problems is to get government out of health care” is NOT the answer. The answer is to stop running the healthcare system on a for-profit basis, where 75% of billions allegedly spent on health care is mostly tied up in adminsitrative costs, which means high salaries, benefits, pensions and maintaining expensive office bldgs for political cronies to sit and play in for 8 hrs a day, while millions go homeless and without health care. Ever notice that the government has nothing to do with training of doctors and other healthcare professionals? while allowing private schools to churn out many who are not fit to care for the public for the right price?

Is there any other nation in the world where a government in power has no official policy whatsoever regarding the selection, education, training, practicing and dicipline of doctors and other healthcare professions, technicians and workers that are the only ones allowed to care for the health of the entire nation?

you cannot tell me that the costs and knowledge of medicine was even dreamed of when this document was written

Interesting point of view – that we should just let the government break the law because something important has come up…..even when there is a process for changing the law, called AMENDMENTS!

there’s a few issues here:

1. it’s already demonstrated that federal government involvement has RAISED health care costs and lowered quality. that’s obvious

2. the law. it’s unfortunate, that in these times of government violating the law at every chance possible, that some people still want further violations.

Like everything else, money or the acquisition of additional wealth is what drives our government and politicians in these times. The government regulates healthcare to appease certain individuals at the time that in most cases, is trying to increase the funds or revenue for others. And sure the government writes new regulations concerning this drug or that sterility issue in the guise of helping the people which in turn increases cost but its all in the pursuit of raising others awareness of the potential of complications and to increase revenues. Everything comes down to costs both in terms of monetary and human life.

The point, though, is that if the federal government simply followed the law; if it followed the tenth amendment, there never would have been all this federal involvement in the health care business.

Without all that federal government meddling in our health, prices would still be low, and the quality would most likely still be the best in the world.

The reason the tenth amendment exists is because the founders realized that politicians would always try to get their fingers in every pot available. But, they knew full well that politicians are just that – politicians.

They aren’t health care experts. The aren’t education experts. They aren’t economic experts, and on and on.

This is the primary reason to keep the politicians out of our most important affairs – they always screw it all up.

Some would claims that currently, there are NO really good healthcare systems in the world. Maybe the French have it best, maybe they don’t – that’s obviously subjective.

The French system does have two strong advantages over the failing British system:

1. It actually encourages the growth of privately owned hospitals much more than the british.

2. It also encourages some level of competition between the state and the private hospitals.

That being said, it could be argued that the reason that France’s is best is because it offers some of the most free enterprise in the world. Is that a fact? Not sure, but it is possible.

Rich as France is, it won’t be too many more years before she can no longer sustain extremely high unemployment caused by massive government control over every part of society. Government spending in France eats up over 55% of the French economy.

In many ways, France is in the same boat as many American corporate giants, like General Motors, Ford, and the like. When these companies were doing well, unions and the government forced them to pay more and more in wages and benefits.

But, eventually, these companies lost marketshare due to competition and lower prices. Now, they have a completely unsustainable overhead, and will probably never return to profitability. France, with its endless government spending, is heading along the same path, and there we’ll again see the failure of socialized medicine.

When it’s all said and done, though, we’re not here to compare America’s health care with that of France, or China, or England, or anywhere else. We’re talking about how American healthcare is, how it was, and how it should be.

Doctorrazz

Your input is appreciated, but it’s clear that you only base your viewpoints on current events and completely ignore history.

You are absolutely correct when you refer to the fact that the WHO refers to the French system as the best in the world. No one is disupting that the WHO considers them the best.

But, you make a claim which is completely unsubstantiated when you state that:

Also the cost explosion is not caused primarily by the government. Rather it is caused by lack of cost controls

If you just took a short, casual look at the history of health care in America, you’d see that BEFORE government involvement and BEFORE any type of cost controls, cost directives and government spending, prices were extremely low and quality was the best in the world – hands down.

This is a pretty simple equation, and it’s surprising that you’re not able to get that.