Med students need to step up and quit trying to chase some sort of 7 figure salary. 100 Primaries promoting good health for their patients is more effective than 100 CT surgeons waiting to slice them open for a 5-figure pay day.

Granted med school needs to somehow be cheaper. If the government wants to help, subsidize tuition!

People (patients) need to lay off the WebMD, and trust their physicians. If I do a thorough work up on your kid after he hits his head while jumping on the bed, be happy about it. Don’t demand a Rx. Or a CT. Or an MRI. THAT is what drives up the cost of health insurance. There just isn’t enough time in a shift for me to sit there and argue with you. You somehow became smarter than me since you know how to check WebMD.

Lawyers need to calm down. So doctor’s don’t have to practice defensive medicine just to sleep at night. Yes, there are some really incompetent doctors out there, but they will be uninsurable or have their license revoked. Doctors are human. We make mistakes that are statistically insignificant.

Which goes back to people/patients. Sometimes you can see someone thinking, “I hope my doc makes some minor error, so that I can sue him! Chaching!!!”

It’s pie in the sky stuff, but that’s what will fix healthcare. If everyone is gimme gimme gimme, what is left????? Keep putting MORE $ into the pot, cuz everyone has their hands out. Doctors, lawyers, patients, insurance companies, medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, the government…

Funny how most of you will call NHI a bureaucracy when the current for-profit system we have now dictates just about everything you can and can’t do to get yourself treated, in addition to picking the physicians you can or can’t see.

“It’s not that liberals are ignorant; it’s that they know so much that just isn’t so.”

1. The reason why Britain has a National Health Service is b/c of World War II, when rationing of all goods and services was required by the country. The system remained after the war b/c of bureaucracy it created. It is now the 3rd largest employer in the world, behind the Red Army of China and India’s National Railways.

2. Infant mortality rates are often cited as a reason socialized medicine and a single-payer system is supposed to be better than what we have here. But according to Dr. Linda Halderman, a policy adviser in the California State Senate, these comparisons are BOGUS.

As she points out, in the U.S., low birth-weight babies are still babies. In Canada, Germany and Austria, a premature baby weighing less than 500 grams is not considered a living child and is not counted in such statistics. They’re considered “unsalvageable” and therefore never alive.

Norway boasts one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world — until you factor in weight at birth, and then its rate is no better than in the U.S.

In other countries babies that survive less than 24 hours are also excluded and are classified as “stillborn.” In the U.S. any infant that shows any sign of life for any length of time is considered a live birth.

A child born in Hong Kong or Japan that lives less than a day is reported as a “miscarriage” and not counted. In Switzerland and other parts of Europe, a baby is not counted as a baby if it is less than 30 centimeters in length.

Who’s going to foot the bill for tuition?

Don’t get me wrong. I do like the idea of universal health care. I just do not see any practical means to establish that in America. I see an ideal method and noble cause. But the methods so far are not anywhere near practical. If you want to talk about ideals, sure. But reality is also about practicality.

As for the call for a NHI, it will never work. My reason is simple. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Giving one organization the power of determining the nation’s health care will result in the abuse and corruption of the ideals, sweat and blood of those involved. Its only a matter of time.

But I will have to admit that the current system needs to change. I do not know how, but I do know it isn’t in NHI.