gjk@talcott.UUCP (Greg Kuperberg) (01/21/85)
> There has been a recent discussion about how lawyers gouge their clients, > and society in general, for their own profit. I would suggest that there > is a group even worse: > > Doctors. The way it works is this: There is this very sick patient called the U.S. Government. So sick, in fact, that he pays for about half of all medical bills in the country. Obviously, this patient is also very wealthy. He reports an annual income of $800 billion dollars. About 10% of it is spent on doctors' bills. Now little folks like you and me, well, we have a hard time competing with ol' Uncle Sam. A minimal amount of micro-ec will tell you that doubling the demand for an item will drive the price way, way up. One might ask where our Uncle gets all this money. The answer is that it's sort of a protection racket. I once told Uncle Sam that I didn't wish to pay him to increase my own medical bills. And he replied that if I didn't pay, very bad things would happen to me in the near future. I guess that according to some, the solution to this dilemma is simple: "It's Reagan's fault." I'm not sure that this solution is very workable, but to each his own. --- Greg Kuperberg harvard!talcott!gjk "Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice." - Foghorn Leghorn