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Sun Aug 2 20:21:50 BST 2009

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From: "Schulz, John" <pjschu at bpthosp.org>
To: trauma-list at trauma.org
Sent: Sunday, August 2, 2009 2:30:19 PM
Subject: Re: discussion of various federal stimulus measures

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Yee of so little faith
Yet manage to place Ah (too) so much fate in the private sector

Governments are like any other bodies
They need to be given clear goals, verifiable end parameters and mechanism to monitor and improve their performance

Hospitals have improved over the years, medicine, Education, the military... even

Private business

Government is no different

Believing otherwise

Is mostly preconceptions and ideology based

Than anything else

Government and government agencies have definitively professionalized over the years
And no reason that they cannot continue to improve

Just like medicine is going to improve

I would not toss out all the (governmental) horror stories
They are worth the capitalism horror stories (Junk bond, S & L, Subprime, Oil cartels, Love canal

Reading the evidence should not depend so much on your own gut and government hating reflex 

Look outside your borders
You will find smart (and bad) government programs

To learn and emulate (or avoid)

Society and socialism can no more be thrown with the babies bath water than capitalism and individualism can be elevate to the almighty level of an almighty religion

It behooves upon us to be more open to efficiency of scale
And cut equal or greater trust to the collective effort of our governments
Than we extend to our free enterprise

The key is not the system (socialist or capitalist)
But the refinement in it's application (improvement mechanism, benchmarking, etc.)

Like the sempiternel question :
His FD based EMS is better than Third service, private or hospital base system?

Just realizing that the question is mis-posed
And that they are no great gains in trying to answer it definitively

As it should rather be more in the line of :
What is the best way to deliver Prehospital Care?
Regardless of the institutional structure

Once we have determined this

Than 
In the end
It is not important who the "winning" system is

Charles

Ron,
It is so sadly obvious that we cannot trust our rulers in Washington to
effectively 'fix' anything; least of all healthcare.

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discussion of various federal stimulus measures