Socialized Medicine Explained by Nobel Prize Winner Milton Freidman

About 4 months ago I vistited the emergency room at the local community hospital where one of the trauma units for the Bronx New York City is located. The hospital has a past reputation for long waits because of the heavy traffic of trauma patients being sent their from all over the Bronx. I had heard and seen many of the prediction of so called experts whom by the way, someone is paying their salalry, concerning what you present will be the result of government bureaucracy controlling health care. I walked into the emergency room because i was beginning to feel symptoms in my chest and arms that made me feel uncomfortable and within two hours I was comfortably laying in a bed after the battery of tests and analysis where done, hooked up to an IV, and awaiting results by a doctor. 5 years ago I entered the very same hospital moaning and groaning about a pain in my upper abdomen and shortness of breathh and 14 hours later, I left on my own after being forgotten in a stall in the emergency room. I personally do not put much credence in the predictions of those individuals regardless of their degrees or awards who have probably never spent more than 5 minutes waiting in an overcrowded emergency room. I look at the bottom line as experienced by self. Another experience with Obama's new health care reform; My friend of over 40 years was recently layed off of work after 35 years of working with the city. He was able to amass a bit of savings for his retirement. He is a diabetic with various multiple chronic conditions like heart trouble and hypertension. 5 years ago he would have had to spend up his savings to begin receiving any health care services. With Obama's new package and the health care bill passed last year, His unemployed status and low income made him eligible for benefits that the bill was intended to cover (the 45 million working poor that do not have health insurance). Today my friend is visiting the local hospital for care and prescriptions. Doctor visits are 20 dollars and prescriptions are 5 dollars each. He has no health insurance because his unemployment is too much to afford medicaid and not enough to afford private health insurance. In my experience and regardless of the predictions of the Nobel Prize Winner (Wonder who is paying him to report those findings), the plan is working. At least for us working poor.

My automatic reaction was, "Uh ooh... did he?" At any rate, among the challenges that the advocates of socialized medicine must hurdle is ensuring that its critics do not succeed in "throwing the baby" (providing health care) "together with the bath water" (bureaucracy and other attendant ills of a program undertaken by government and society). Of course, unnecessary bureaucracy, "bureaucratism" and other administrative ills should be addressed too, and solved.

In the British healthcare system everyone who need treatment will get it regardless of their ability to pay because it is funded out of general taxation and is free at the point of use. I'd rather be on a waiting list with the knowledge that I will get the medical treatment that I need without having to worry about the cost of the treatment than be told that I can't have the medicine or operation that I need because I can't pay for it up front and don't have medical insurance that will pay for it. this is the situation that millions of poor Americans find themselves in, no money and no medical insurance and only the inadequate medicaid to fall back on. It's these people that Obama's reforms is trying to help. Friedman should stick to economics and stay out of politics.