truehawk wrote...

In the long run, yes (to the degree any particular disease can be
cured) but I won't belabor the point but you really should read
Ayn Rand's book on Capitalism.   The main point is that the best
people will NOT become doctors under a socialized system. Its
a "cost" that the socialists don't ever mention.

Yes, this is in the same category as the old myth about the oil
companies buying the rights to a super carborator (or other
engine gadget) that would get hundreds of miles to the gallon.

It is true that drug companies do make a lot of money from
chronically ill patients but I am not so cynical to believe that
they *know* a cure but withhold it from the market to make
more money. Moreover, do you think that a doctor could
get away with keeping his patients from learning of better
treatments now that the internet exists?   I know there are
doctors who milk medicaid or perform unnecessary heart
operations and etc, but I think they are in a very small
minority.  There are unscupulous auto mechanics too but its
not the profit motive that creates them. Every social group
has bad apples its not fair to disparage the whole group.

You'd better check that premise.  Its well known in economics
that if profits (and free market pricing) is removed then other
non-economic factors then decide who gets what at what cost.
What this means is the politically connected or bribery determine
who gets treatment while us Hoi Polloi have to grovel and kiss
the a.s of the gatekeepers to get treatment (and poor treatment
at that since all the best people won't work under such terms).
Socialist healthcare systems are notorious for ignoring problems
and denying treatments to lower costs.

Regards,
David

David, as far as I can see, some of the best people are the
microbiologists that love their work and do it for 50 to 100K a year.
Many of them are women. They do it because they love it, not to get
rich, They ARE the best people.
And then there was Bill Smith, who had 3 microscopes in his back lab
in his office when I was a kid and showed me how to do my first gram
stain. He was a doc before a lot of insurance, and he made house calls
and injected antibotic into my ears once to stop an infection, and
told my mom that I had a 1.2.3 infection.  He trained by the Army or
the Navy one or the other,  during the Korean war.   He was the best.
I have had several GPs who were wonderful doctors, not surgeons and
never going to be rich, but crackerjack diagnostisions, and while in
Washington state my old GP was campigning for Universal health care.
My excellent doctor, Kevin Holcomb actually specializes in emergency
medicine and trama, he'd be a doctor win loose or draw, also you mean
to tell me that all the Canadian and English and Danish doctors that
work for Universial health plans are 2ed rate?
And I have met some wonderful Russian doctors, In fact Russia has no
antibotic resistance problem to speak of, because they developed the
viruses that kill pathogens instead of concentrating on antibotics so
think that your assumption  that the "best people' would not go into
medicine is like saying that the "best people will no longer go into
music if all you have it litergical music ( but what about Bach?), and
the best people do not go into teaching,  and that the best people
will not become clergiman or monks or polieceman or fireman or
engineers.
And are the investment bankers who make millions a year and require
offshore producion as a prerequsit for an offering, are they the "best
people".

The best doctors I know of feel strangled and beggered now between PPO
guidelines on one hand and malpractice insurance requiremments on the
other hand.
AND the most profitable drugs on the PLANET are Pepcid and Zantac,
drugs for chronic stomach inflammation which is probably bacterial in
nature.
And I read Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged 40 years ago. I as a
teenager I thought that Anne Ryan was a White Russian with an ax to
grind, and a philosophy of recipical altruism to refute, however I
think that in general people were better fed, educated and taken care
of medically under the Communist regiem than under the Zars.  Soviet
science has been both wide ranging and productive, and seems more
inclined to follow the odd lead than our insurance and drug company
lockstep over here.  I know in the feild of rocket engineering, before
the fall of the Soviet Union,  we read the translations of their
articals with interest and much of the work was outstandingly clever.
Their economy made harsh toilet paper and cluncky shoes, and a big
mess of a reactor,  but beautiful iron birds, doctors, music, art, and
dance. Things that people are passionate about they still did well.
Becasue the best people are committed and passionate.
No I think that you might want check you defination list, if by best
people you mean the most money driven, then you are right, but you
would get an arguement from people like Patch Adams about weather
those are the best people.