Public Health, Didn't We Try That Once? How Did That One Work Out?

Updated and bumped*

You know I got to thinking, didn't we already try a public health option before?  Then I remembered a reference to the Public Health System -- PHS -- it lasted about 40 years or so.

Here is what they offered:

• "special free treatment"
  
• "lower class African Americans, who often could not afford health care, the chance to join"
• "Patients were to receive free physical examinations"
•  "free rides to and from the clinic"
•  "hot meals on examination days"
• "free treatment for minor ailments"

Oh, it started great, there was a dedicated staff, the care was quality, they received praise for their work, they also received special praise for their, "flair in framing," the message to the potential patients encouraging many to join who would normally have been reluctant.

They had control of the costs and the treatments, what tests were done, what treatments were issued and it worked all quite well for the PHS.

Then about 1972 a whistleblower contacted the Washington Star and The New York Times and all hell broke lose.

I am simply amazed that anyone would even consider allowing the government to run a health system or more specifically set standards and recommended cost contained treatments for conditions.  Even today when the government makes recommendations about medications and treatments most insurers and doctors use that as their guide and only cover or prescribe those treatments.  That is why experimental treatments or medications are not covered!

But what really amazes me is why any black person in America would be in favor of a Public Health System following the end result of the above listed Tuskegee Experiment!

If you weren't aware of this your friends probably weren't either, send it to them all, click the email icon below and send it to them.
DKK

Update 9/15/2009


With the cries of racism reaching a fever pitch directed at anyone who would dare question the President (see Ace this week or HotAir this week), much of it directed at Republican lawmakers you would think that this would really freak liberals out -- how can you trust a PHS that may one day end up in the hands of those racists (everyone of them)!!!

Not gonna happen!

I keep waiting for Scotty to get that transporter fixed so he can beam me out of this alternate universe where everything is upside down!
DKK


*Update 12/11/2009 (original post date 09/14/2009 17:45)


Baldilocks tries to explain the reason Why Black Americans Think That the Federal Government Is Our Friend.  

Whether it's the Emancipation or the desegregation of the Armed Forces or Brown v. Board or the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the federal government for the most part had seemed to be on the side of the black American as his constitutional rights were being oppressed by state or local governments.
What needs to be spelled, however is what the federal government did in the above-mentioned areas: it legally removed obstacles to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of Americans who are black.  And that it what it was supposed to do.
The present problem in my unlearned opinion is this: the federal government began overstepping its bounds during the Great Depression and did so most infamously in the late sixties via the Great Society programs
Doing more that getting local racists out of the way, the federal government sought to and succeeded in making itself the suppliers of life, liberty and, putatively, the happiness of many black Americans.  (Try telling a senior of any race that Social Security is sending the country to financial ruin. You'll get an earful about her "rights".) 
And even many black Americans who do not rely on the federal government still view the fed as our friend because of that history.
What's needed in order to change this perception is obvious: education--not a new education but the old one, one which contains an objective explanation of the role of government.
Simply put, the role of the American government is to remove obstacles to liberty of the People--even when that obstacle is American government itself.  Supplying all of one's needs is not government's role.  That's God's purview.