At 09:06 PM 15/05/2000 -0700, Dan Koenig wrote:

>Come on, Mumps, get real. Did you really believe the stuff that you sent
>along?  (On a personal level,  I had two children in the United States
>born without complications and by normal delivery.  Both insurance plans
>I concurrently held (one of them Blue Cross) limited payment for
>childbirth so that I wound up with a substantial bill beyond what the
>two insurance policies (combined) covered.  By contrast, the only bill
>received for my Canadian-born children was for long distance phone calls
>and television rentals.

What?  You get *bills* for childbirth?  What sort of third-world country do
you live in?  What the hell is happening when the alleged richest country
in the world makes its citizens pay out money for childbirth?

>And on just what basis does Lemieux postulate ideological claptrap as
>fact, such as:
>"The most visible consequence of the socialized medicine in Canada is in
>the poor quality of services,  Health care has become more and more
>impersonal."

Yeah, like health care for the poor in the US is so personal... there was a
joke going around about US health care a while back.  It goes like this:

Person: "Doctor, this man is having a heart attack!"
Doctor: "Quick!  Check his wallet!"

But I don't think many of us realise here that you've got to pay out for
childbirth.  What happens when, for example, someone's brought in to a
hospital after a car accident?  Do they have to pay their bills for it
regardless of capacity to pay?  I mean, that's clearly what quasi-fascist
Mumps wants to see, but surely that's not what actually happens.

>Lemieux states ex cathedra that (universal) public health care isn't
>even just because it "is based on the idea that certain goods like
>health (and education? and food? where do you stop?) should be made
>available to all through coercive redistribution by the state.  If, on
>the contrary, we define justice in terms of liberty . . . ."

Yeah, that's just sooo un-free that poor people should be fed.  It's an
insult to my liberty that the poor get food from *my* taxes.  And health
care?  Why bother.  They're not contributing to society, otherwise they
wouldn't be poor!  They should be left to die or sell themselves into
slavery if they can't afford food.  I really can't stand Randites.  They're
uncompassionate self-centered little slimeballs.  The funny/tragic thing
is, if they got their way, after the first (of many) muggings or break ins
they were the recipient of, they'd be complaining, without being smart
enough to realise that our stats have linked crime to self-sufficiency and
quality of live for years.

Dan, I don't so much look forward to the break-up of Microsoft as I do to
forcing Windows to be released under the General Public License.

Alister


"If anarchists are capable of authoritarian attitudes ... I should
no more hail one as a comrade, sight unseen, than I would a state
trooper or used-car dealer.  The label is not a warranty."
         -- My Anarchism Problem by Bob Black --