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I would like to clarify some things to Jan Kuiper concerning the health care debate. I read with great interest Trudy Rubin's article last week on European health care. She brought some interesting things to light.
I am sure that people in certain countries are very pleased with their government health care system and these are systems that our government might want to look at. The beef that a lot of us have with the current bill being rammed down our throat is it is nothing like those mentioned by Rubin. It is a system modeled after the Canadian and British systems, which those citizens are not exactly enamored with.
Jan points out lower drug prices in Europe. The reason for this is a large majority of drugs are developed in the U.S. The typical cost of bringing a new drug to the market is $1 billion and takes 12 to 15 years to happen. This is all due to government regulations and red tape. Countries overseas have no such problem; they just wait for us to develop them and then sell them cheaper. The drug companies here have to charge more to recoup their investment. The socialized health care systems do not encourage this type of R&D.
Jan hit the nail on the head with remarks concerning the absence of lawsuits and the detrimental effects they create for our health care particularly in the cost department. Democrats don't want to talk about tort reform, which could lower cost considerably because the trial lawyer lobby is so far up their wazoo that it would have to be surgically removed.
The bottom line is our government is largely to blame for the high cost of health care due to its intrusion and myriad regulations and requirements. Our government has pretty much screwed up every program that is has implemented in the past 50 years - Social Security, welfare and the energy department, to name a few.
We are talking about an organization that took over the Mustang Ranch in Las Vegas because of tax issues and ran it for a few years. It lost money. If they can't make money with an establishment selling sex and liquor in Vegas, what can they possibly do right? I wouldn't trust our government with a lemonade stand in the middle of Death Valley.
This is why so many Americans don't want the government involved in our health care or at least in the form it wants now.
Ben Terrell
Gainesville