Universal Healthcare and the Waistline Police

Scary stuff here, sadly there will be an amazing number of sheeple who will line up to sign up for this voluntary slavery.

Thanks for the links.

In most articles about government-controlled medicine, what happens to doctors is forgotten. Last night I returned from a short trip to meet with physicians in Poland. They went on strike last summer for 2 months until the government agreed to increase their pay to 3-times the "low pay for unskilled factory workers". Then the government reneged on the deal while running a media capmpaign disparaging the doctors for their selfishness, now making doctors unrespected completely in society. Because of government rules (probably designed to control costs), new doctors have to go on the dole for 2 months or more before they can get a job. Why? Because the hospitals don't get enough money from the government to hire them--but when someone is on the dole, the hospitals are forced to hire them to get them off the dole.

The docs in Poland work much fewer hours than those in the US. The benefits just aren't worth the sacrifices that a medical carreer in the United States has always required. And, now in the US, the benefits are likewise shrinking rapidly. There is a strong trend for doctors to work less hours in the US, in an effort to balance the decreasing benefits with some decreasing sacrifice. Doctors are cutting back RAPIDLY on hours worked, and some (such as me) now refuse to see patients because of health insurance and government ridiculousness. And I am only 43 years old. A quick way to decrease access to health care is to decrease the availability of those that provide the central components of it: doctors.