[From Mike Acree (2007.08.01.1535 PDT)]
I hadn’t been inclined to join the recent discussion on
single-payer healthcare systems, but I thought the following anecdote, if it
failed to convince (as it surely will), might at least entertain:
“There is something absurd in a system that asks a woman who is 108 years
old to wait another year and a half for a hearing aid. In essence they are
denying her the hearing aid. Certainly they are aware that her ability to wait
that long is highly doubtful. No socialized system of health care has been able
to get around the rationing issue. When consumption of health care is not
directly paid by the consumer the demand for health care will always exceed the
supply. And every nationalized system tries to ration in one way or another.”
(07/31/07)
Full story: http://tinyurl.com/3bjdz6.
(I have read articles both claiming and debunking the idea of wait
lists in the Canadian system; I’m not well enough informed to contribute
an independent judgment on that empirical issue.)
I have been extremely appreciative, incidentally, of Bill’s
contributions to the thread on statistical prediction. I presented a
paper last year myself, in fact, making very much the same points, and arguing
for a new conceptualization of both psychological and medical research.
Epidemiology, as the statistical science, would retain a place in medicine, but
only in the preliminary phases of research, which would otherwise be directed
to process and mechanism, rather than to amassing useless libraries of statistical
associations.
Mike