Paul Hsieh is the owner of GeekPress that I visit on a regular basis – mostly short pointers to science / geeky tidbits of stuff and have posted some of the stuff he has found here.
He is also a practicing doctor and has been writing, as of late, on the ills of socialized medicine. He finishes his latest opinion piece on why medical rationing by the capitalist system is better than socialized system (government rationing by waiting):
Many who lived under socialism understood this well, as illustrated by an old joke from behind the Iron Curtain:
“Under capitalism, man exploits his fellow man; under socialism, it’s the other way around!”
If being exploited means being able to schedule an MRI appointment for myself in twenty-four hours with my iPad using the free WiFi at the local coffee shop while sipping on a latte, rather than waiting six months on a government waiting list, I’ll take the capitalist version of exploitation any day.
Capitalism has given us the highest living standard the world has ever known. Yes, it is a system of meritocracy where the best and brightest often win out materially; while there are inequities of the system, the fact is that the poor here in the US often have a higher standard of living as measured materially than the middle class of Europe.
Yet, there are those that prefer a socialized system where the inequities are leveled out; that is done, however, only at the cost of bringing down the high to the level of the low (and not the other way around). They’re ok with that, never willing to admit that socialism is only about attaining the lowest common denominator….
….except, for the politically well connected, as word continues to leak out that more and more waivers from Obamacare / socialized medicine are being given – 1, 040 as of this morning with the entire state of Maine just being granted one. Yet, the unions that fought so hard to put it into place are those running so hard to be among the first to be stricken from its downside cost for themselves.
Rule of Law? Not so much anymore; with the Obama Administration, we are moving almost as fast to the Rule of Man (i.e., who you know vs equality before the Law) as we are fiscally to bankruptcy.
