Cynthia NIxon and Cuomo

Somebody over at the Washington Examiner is having a good laugh watching the fracas between liberals Cynthia Nixon and Cuomo over in New York. Over at the Washington Examiner, they are conservative, so they could care less who wins. I browsed Nixon's platform, and disagree with allowing public sector strikes and with universal health care. Universal health care is good in principle, IF it is nationwide and IF managed and rolled out in an intelligent manner. A single state would likely make a botch of things and attract all the sick and invalid from neighboring states like a magnet. In the end, debt would destroy the program. Businesses and individuals flee the state in search of lower taxes. No one really wants to pay for other people's health care, if they perceive no benefit to themselves.

Only a massive entity like the U.S. Federal government has the clout to implement rules and bully providers, such as doctors and hospitals, into delivering efficient, cost-effective service. The reason health care costs so much is that 90% is waste and fraud. Everyone is motivated by profit, wanting to make money off other people's pain. The U.S. government can come in and educate a million doctors and nurses and technicians, paying for their education, room and board, and giving them a subsistence stipend to get through all of their training, and then they will have the clout to really set prices any which way they want to. A doctor should earn about $40 an hour and see no more than seven patients per day. Today's reality is far different from that.

Probably, the best the government can do, given today's political divisions between Democrat and Republican, is to demand efficiency among providers. Less useless tests that cost so much. Faster visits, less time in the waiting room. More doctors - much more. That is why we really need to just train doctors for free, so that they graduate without any debt at all. Money should not be a barrier to medical school. Hospitals should probably be run by the Federal government, and hospital stays should cost a lot less than they do. Many hospitals seem to price-gouge patients. Patients should be charged true cost, nothing more, and emphasis needs to be placed on economy. There should be no shareholders to a hospital. Now, I suppose this is what the Republicans think of as Socialism, but you know, the police department is run by the government, too. I suppose that if the Republicans had their way, even the PD would be privatized, as indeed, used to be the case in certain towns in the pioneering West. Now those towns eventually converted over to the "socialist model" of law enforcement, on a voluntary basis I might add. Wonder why that was?

Also, people should be allowed to buy prescription drugs from Canada, which has adequate safeguards and protections for consumers. It is not right that Americans pay more for medicine than any other people on the earth. It is not right that the pharma companies are making a huge profit off the pain of Americans. That whole industry seems filled with fraud, corruption and profiteering off the misery of others.

I do not support public-sector unions or the ability for them to strike. I think that if you work in public service, a higher standard of conduct applies. It's not just a job, it's a vocation, and just walking off the job to pressure the community for higher wages is really bad form. Loyal, dedicated employees are needed as teachers, firefighters and police. Unions and strikes may be O.K. in the private sector, but in the public sector, there is a higher moral standard, because service to the community is the motive, not just profit.