Panel Discussions on National Health Insurance: Prepared Statements of Panelists on the Subject of Problems and Issues in Health Care Organization, Delivery, and Financing, September 12, 1975

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Page 107 - There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
Page 107 - Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency.
Page 124 - Common thought and parlance tend to conceal or deny the fact that demand for all practical purposes is unlimited. The vulgar assumption is that there is a definable amount of medical care 'needed', and that if that 'need' was met, no more would be demanded. This is absurd. Every advance in medical .science creates new needs that did not exist until the means of meeting them came into existence, or at least into the realm of the possible.
Page 124 - Medical care under the National Health Service is rendered free to the consumer at the point of consumption — " p. 26 "Consequently supply and demand are not kept in balance by price. Since, therefore, resources are limited, both theoretically and in practice at any given time, or the demand is unlimited, supply has to be rationed by means other than price. The forms of rationing adopted deliberately or by default, and usually unrecognized certainly unproclaimed as such, are among the major irritant...
Page 124 - The vulgar assumption is that there is a definable amount of medical care 'needed', and that if that 'need' was met, no more would be demanded. This is absurd. Every advance in medical science creates new needs that did not exist until the means of meeting them came into existence, or at least into the realm of the possible. For every heart-lung machine or artificial kidney in operation there must be many times that number of cases to which the treatment would be applicable. Every time a discovery...
Page 126 - ... Generally, the waiting list can be viewed as a kind of iceberg: the significant part is that below the surface -- the patients who are not on the list at all, either because they are not accepted on the grounds that the list is too long already or because they take a look at the queue and go away.
Page 101 - The medicare and medicaid programs are in serious financial trouble. The two programs are also adversely affecting health care costs and financing for the general population.
Page 7 - did not believe it would be a bad thing for the British working class if Germany defeated us.
Page 87 - The effects of alcohol abuse on an individual's health are considerable. Liver disease, kidney disease, and cancer are all related to alcohol abuse. What will national health insurance do about smoking? There were more than 602 billion cigarettes sold in this country last year. The World Health Organization has said that the control of smoking could do more to improve health and prolong life than any other single action in the field of preventative medicine.
Page 125 - The public are encouraged to believe that rationing in medical care wei banlihed - being applied to medical care Is Immoral and repugnant. Consequently when they, and the medical profession too, come face to face In practice with the various forms of rationing to which the National Health Service must resort, the usual result is bewilderment, frustration and Irritation.

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