President Lyndon B. Johnson raised the costs of medical care for the American people when he initiated the great society and introduced Medicare and Medicaid.



Prior to this physicians charged one fee for office visits. It didn't matter what tests you had performed, they were all included for the one flat fee.

Medicare and Medicaid changed all that. The government made the physician charge by what procedure was performed and what supplies were used. This immediately caused medical care prices to rise.

This was the beginning of socialized medicine in the United States of America.

The latest supper fiasco is the new CMS 1500 Medicare form.

The federal government knew it had to convert to different forms about 11 years ago. They did nothing for 11 years. They waited until the last minute to change the computer programs and Medicare forms.

Here's what the inept federal government did.

They designed the form completely wrong according to good design practices. Typing lines in the wrong place. Numbers that go in box A on one part of the form go in box B on another part of the form. Numbers that go in box B on one part of the form go in box A on other parts of the form. The form can cause enormous amounts of errors.

They sent out the wrong specifications to printers who then printed millions of wrong forms. These forms will be rejected when submitted to Medicare or other insurance companies. So what did the government do next? They didn't know who had the wrong forms so they instructed everyone to use the forms they had and when rejected they would know they had the wrong form. Brilliant idea!!

Who pays the printer for printing the wrong forms. No one. Just grin and bear another government mistake.

The HIPPA laws mandated the change to be April 1, 2007. The government wasn't prepared so they changed it to May 23 2007, Then because of the printing mess, they changed it to June 1, 2007. Then it is changed to July 1, 2007.

Only the federal government can change mandated dates.

In conclusion, If the federal government nationalizes our health care systems my question is

? How many times will they change the date for your heart operation?. Probably until after your dead.

If you think I am kidding or obnoxious or wrong, checkout the healthcare systems in England, Canada or any other nationalized healthcare system.

Great Britain's health care system was created in1948. It's first year operating costs were 52 million pounds higher than estimated. That's over 100 million US dollars in 1948 equal to about 50 billion in today's dollars. That's for a much smaller country than the United States.

There are many articles about the poor quality of England's socialized medicine. The quality was inferior based on physician shortages, medicine shortages and long waits for needed surgery. Market based competition was begun in 1989 after 41 years of terrible medical care.

Some of the headlines of the latest articles of of Great Britain's Medical Care:

UK lags behind on cancer drug access.

Specialist stroke care ?lottery?

Cancer patients told life-prolonging treatment too expensive.

5000 elderly killed each year for lack of care beds.

British Health Care Rationed.

Life saving cancer drugs held from patients.

British body rejects EPO drugs for cancer patients.

2000 British doctors out of work.

National Health Service faces rising bill for negligence claims.

British boy to go to India for operation.

Figures show more patients waiting for operations.

Drug regulator to withdraw approval of Alzheimer's treatment.

U. K. Liberal Democrats Raise Taxes to pay for Health Care.

Smokers and obese banned from UK hospitals.

NHS fund bias against men may cost 2,500 lives per year.

Tumor patients hit by NHS shortages.

Heart patients die on waiting lists.

Study finds British hospitals are still smelly, cold and poorly maintained.

Discrimination Rampant in British Health Care.

Other European Countries:

Switzerland hospitals on the verge of a breakdown.

Sweden edges toward free-market medicine.

Netherlands socioeconomic inequalities similar to UK and Scandinavian countries.

Canada:

PET scans not covered.

Physician turns away patients for being 55+.

Patients shouldn't wait for more than 8 weeks for cardiac defibrillator.

Canada inches towards private medicine.

Hip and knee surgery wait times should be not more than 6 months.

Surgery backlog hits 5,500 at kids hospital.

Access to specialists difficult.

Plus many more.

You make your own decision. Do you really want the socialized medicine that Hillary wants?