Wednesday, August 29, 2007

If we have universal healthcare, the terrorists win

I recently received an angry e-mail from a reader who was sure I'm a supporter of universal health coverage. He was right, but what struck me was his suggestion that this makes me a terrorist-hugging jihadist. I suspected the genius didn't come up with this brilliant notion on his own, and sure enough, a quick Google search turned up the likely culprit. It was no surprise...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can fox news go any lower than that?

Anonymous said...

Be careful what you ask! Of course they can go lower than this. They're Fox News. ;)

Doug said...

Good grief. That's all I can say without potty-mouthing up Darren's blog. Good grief.

Anonymous said...

To quote somebody who's name's escaping me, "I think I just threw up in my mouth a little."

These people are too disgusting to be believed.

Unknown said...

More shooting the messenger? What happened to discussing the idea?

The larger points I heard (and I listened to only a minute or so) were:

The US imports about a fourth of its doctors.

Britain imports about half.

Demand for medical personnel could rise (substantially?) when we go to some form of universal coverage. We currently have severe shortages in some fields - specialists.

How do we meet the demand for health care workers? Side issue - under a gov't-run program, would doctor pay be set, comparable to civil service? How will that affect the shortage?

Britain had a problem, they imported doctors, they didn't fit the (incorrect) stereotype for jihadists - poor, disaffected, lower class. Weaknesses in the system were described.

We're going down the same path - heavier reliance on non-US medical workers. Do we need to change our hiring/screening process? Or just accept nothing bad will happen so our current procedures are okay?

As I said, fair questions that deserve a decent discussion.

Doug said...

Paul, the idea is that Universal Health Care is somehow empowering terrorists. So what - we continue down the ruinous path of HMO's refusing basic health needs just because ICE is too lazy to do their job and run real background checks on these import rent-a-doctors? Or how about this? WHY does Universal Health Care not rely on white doctors? How many kids are in medical school in the US to do it not for the big fat money, but to help people? How about a program similar to the Pro-Bono requirements of lawyers in big money firms - where they provide x hours of medical care a year in an emergency room or some such thing.