America Spends The Most On Health Care, Yet Gets The Least

[2Parties]

No one has to pay for health insurance if they don't want it.

No business that serves public policy interest, such as an insurance business, can expect to escape regulation in the 21st century. No government that serves the public can expect to escape national health care, either single payer or two-payer or co-operatives. These matters are inevitable.

They may not escape regulation entirely but they will go where there is less. See American doctors and patients in Costa Rica demonstrating what an epic failure government involvement in health care is.

Then go to Costa Rica, sonny. But you won't have to. Watch and see.

If I eventually have to and I can afford it you bet I will. I'm not in the same situation as some American doctors or patients but there are obvious reasons most of them are going there for treatment and it ain't the weather.

 

[PatekPhilippe]

Guys, you are a hoot ~ you have nothing to support your elitism.

Yes we do...we have jobs, pay our taxes, take care of our own families and believe in personal responsibility.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Guys, you are a hoot ~ you have nothing to support your elitism.

Yes we do...we have jobs, pay our taxes, take care of our own families and believe in personal responsibility.

Same as me, but that does not support your position. But I do congratulate on trying to be self-sufficient, which is the goal of a healthy life.

 

[topspin]

What's wrong with being elitist.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Elitism, actually, topspin, is OK if one can think rationally and make decisions without bias: Yurt and Big Fitz can't do that.

 

[Oddball]

None of which demonstrates that medical care, or access to it, is rationed in the sense that there is a central authority deciding who gets care, how much they get and who doesn't.

Medical services in America (at least those still left in the free market sector) are no more centrally "rationed" than are T-bone steaks or flat screen televisions....Using economic jargon to try and argue that they are rationed is the height of disingenuous.

You're attempting to draw distinctions that don't exist. The cost of many health care procedures/commodities exceeds what a single person or family could reasonably afford to pay. Thus people pool their resources and, when someone needs to pay for a medical procedure, they draw from the communal well; the exact terms of how much and for what purposes they can draw resources are determined by the entity administering the pool. This is health insurance....

The distinction of what someone can "afford to pay" is made by the consumer, not the central authoritarian delivering the service.

One is centrally controlled rationing, the other is other is not.

The way insurance companies have been forced to operate (in-state monopolies, mandated coverage, etcetera) are not the free market...They've insulated the person purchasing the service from paying for it, subsequently throwing the normal market forces keeping prices in check out of whack....

In other words, insurance as a payment structure period is "not the free market." No kidding.

Yet pimps for socialized medicine keep whining and crying about how "the free market has failed us" when it is Medicare/Medicaid, in state quasi insurance monopolies, must-cover regulations and people who treat insurance as an entitlement that have upset the normal market disciplines, viz. pricing.

Golly...I wonder why that is?

 

[2Parties]

Yet pimps for socialized medicine keep whining and crying about how "the free market has failed us" when it is Medicare/Medicaid, in state quasi insurance monopolies, must-cover regulations and people who treat insurance as an entitlement that have upset the normal market disciplines, viz. pricing.

Golly...I wonder why that is?

Probably because they lack any type of ability to understand cause and effect.

See: Hoover and FDR destroy economy with make-work programs, new government spending, and new regulations. Years later the economy recovers. This recovery was because of FDR. (They have zero knowledge of the depression that wasn't so "Great" in 1920-21 because the government didn't drag that one out)...

See: Continued government spending in health care, continued increase in new regulations, new government health care programs. This has nothing to do with the increase cost of health care. The real reason is the free market.

 

[JakeStarkey]

No, the real reason is that unbridled capitalism is as dangerous to human liberty as unbridled communism.

 

[2Parties]

No, the real reason is that unbridled capitalism is as dangerous to human liberty as unbridled communism.

I know. We need a violent monopoly in there to make things "fair". We'll just ignore that the violent monopoly usually is having it's strings pulled by some corporation...

 

[Oddball]

The only "unbridled capitalism" that's dangerous to human liberty is the crony capitalism (read: mercantilism), that was practiced by the Robber Barons of the late 19th century, which progressive Fabians duplicitously hold up as "capitalism".

 

[JakeStarkey]

Thank you, Dude, for that comment. How does one then prevent another era of the robber barons?

 

[Greenbeard]

The distinction of what someone can "afford to pay" is made by the consumer, not the central authoritarian delivering the service.

You'll have to be more specific as to what systems (i.e. which nations) you're talking about.

Yet pimps for socialized medicine keep whining and crying about how "the free market has failed us" when it is Medicare/Medicaid, in state quasi insurance monopolies, must-cover regulations and people who treat insurance as an entitlement that have upset the normal market disciplines, viz. pricing.

I don't know of anyone in the U.S. who's advocating socialized medicine, which refers to the structure of the provider system, not the payment structure. But there will never be a strictly "free market" for health insurance (despite the fact that it's private) because health insurance is already a socialized payment structure.

 

[Oddball]

I'm not talking about any nations...I'm talking abut another purposefully inexact piece of rhetoric used by the central authoritarians: "affordability".

Nobody in America is proposing "socialized medicine", per se, as the term is too honest about the end game...They prefer "single payer", "universal coverage" and the laughably mendacious "public option".

The end game, however, remains the same.

 

[Greenbeard]

I'm not talking about any nations...I'm talking abut another purposefully inexact piece of rhetoric used by the central authoritarians: "affordability".

Almost all discussion of health care systems focuses on three dimensions: cost, quality, and access. Everything we can talk about regarding health care will likely fit under one or more of those categories. That's why they seem vague: they're headers containing everything else.

Nobody in America is proposing "socialized medicine", per se, as the term is too honest about the end game...They prefer "single payer", "universal coverage" and the laughably mendacious "public option".

All of those are different things.