Universal Health Care: The lowest common denominator strikes again

I'd just like to take a moment to plug my roomie's post Four Reasons to Oppose Universal Health Care. Since most people won't click the link, I'll post some of her post here.

"1) You don't receive the best treatment available. A friend of mine who is Swedish (yes, they also have socialized health care) told me that several years ago, her little brother broke his arm. Since there were no doctors available to set it - they were all caring for other patients - he had to wait for three days. When they set it, the doctor who set it wasn't trained to set bones and did it incorrectly. It healed wrong, and had to be re-broken and reset several months later. People wait and wait for service, and they don't get what they need for months... as in the case of my friend's brother, or even for years.

2) People Take Advantage Of What's Given To Them (For Free)

...they go to the doctor for everything, whether it's a simple cold or the stomach flu. Why shouldn't they? It's free. All of the doctor visits, the over-the-counter drugs, it's free. It's the same thing everywhere: people who have free health care go to the doctor for everything. "

3) Doctors and Drug Companies Don't Offer Better Treatment or Find New Treatments

Doctors and nurses aren't paid to offer the best quality care, so they don't...It works similarly for drug companies: they're not paid to supply the best, more expensive drugs because they have a budget which won't and doesn't cover them. Doctors, research scientists and others affected don't want to spend valuable and unpaid time finding new solutions to old (or new) health problems.

4) The Provided Health Care DeterioratesDo you have bad health care now?

That's not going to change. If you can't afford good health care now, you're going to be waiting, probably a LONG time to receive health care with "free" health care. Those who can afford to take care of the problem will go somewhere where they have to pay however many thousands of dollars to fix the problem - and they'll get better."

Robin and I frequently have conversations about the "lowest common denominator" problem. What it works out to here is, "Since some people can only afford bad health care, let's make everyone have bad health care"

You can see the same thing in education where since they can't teach all the kids to be smart they get mad at the kids who are smart or dumb down the standards till you can't tell the difference.

I'm just baffled as to why people would have this much faith in our government that they want to trust them with our health care!