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exton
Forum Elder
Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 4218
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 Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 11:08 pm Post subject: |
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| CryxicKiller wrote: | | The system is far more brutal than you portray it. You do live in the US, right? Hehe.... |
Yes, but then, i live in massachusetts. I guess we just have a more civilized way of life than the rest of the nation. |
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Lester
Forum Elder
Joined: 08 Dec 2006
Posts: 4650
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| Posted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 7:10 am Post subject: Re: Why do you disagree with universal free health care? |
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| Lester wrote: | | cornopean wrote: | | Lester wrote: |
2. So why trust private companies to spend our money for us if it's so inefficient? They don't gain profit if we get better treatment. |
for the same reason we trust private companies to give us fast food, phone service, nice computers, etc.
Just the other day, we were in Arbys. We sat down without our french fries having been told they would be brot out to us. they never came. when we reminded them, they gave us a supersized fry and a apple turnover. That is service. you aint going to get that from the Federal govt. |
But Arby's gets more money the more you go to them, insurance companies get less money the more you go to them, besides, what is the equivalent to supersizing your fries and giving you an appleturnover in medicine? Oh I'm just gonna supersize your triple bypass and through in a liver transplant... |
This one. |
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cornopean
Forum Elder
Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 3576
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| Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:14 pm Post subject: Re: Why do you disagree with universal free health care? |
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| Lester wrote: | | But Arby's gets more money the more you go to them, insurance companies get less money the more you go to them, |
but private companies want you to do business with them. Insurance companies have to offer you a good product or you will take your money elsewhere. The govt has no incentive to either innovate or offer you better service. The govt has no competition. and if the govt provides health care, there will be no competition and hence no innovation or improvement.
| Quote: | | besides, what is the equivalent to supersizing your fries and giving you an apple turnover in medicine? |
if a pregnant woman goes to a doctor's office and the doctor offers all sorts of extras in order to win the lady's business.
nowadays, noone cares about this b/c they aren't spending their own money.
| Quote: | | Oh I'm just gonna supersize your triple bypass and throw in a liver transplant... |
 I suppose while he is burrowing around in there he could offer to bore out your gall bladder or install some sort of slow release contraceptive. |
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Lester
Forum Elder
Joined: 08 Dec 2006
Posts: 4650
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| Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 10:16 am Post subject: Re: Why do you disagree with universal free health care? |
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| cornopean wrote: | | Lester wrote: | | But Arby's gets more money the more you go to them, insurance companies get less money the more you go to them, |
but private companies want you to do business with them. Insurance companies have to offer you a good product or you will take your money elsewhere. The govt has no incentive to either innovate or offer you better service. The govt has no competition. and if the govt provides health care, there will be no competition and hence no innovation or improvement. |
Insurance companies *don't* have to offer you a good product, because you don't exchange your money for a good product straight away, most of the time, when you have cause to complain about an insurance company, it has already sucked a considerable amount of money from you.
You can argue a lack of innovation as a side effect of less competition, thats a different subject, but you can't say that there would be no improvement. Government services improve all the time.
| Quote: | | Quote: | | besides, what is the equivalent to supersizing your fries and giving you an apple turnover in medicine? |
if a pregnant woman goes to a doctor's office and the doctor offers all sorts of extras in order to win the lady's business.
nowadays, noone cares about this b/c they aren't spending their own money. |
Uh-uh, that the equivalent of you buying a happy meal because it comes with a toy, I'm asking, if they give you bad service, how are they then supposed to upgrade it? Where is the customer satisfaction?
| Quote: | | Quote: | | Oh I'm just gonna supersize your triple bypass and throw in a liver transplant... |
I suppose while he is burrowing around in there he could offer to bore out your gall bladder or install some sort of slow release contraceptive. |
Can you get slow release contraceptives!? Cause that would be worth the surgery. =) |
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cornopean
Forum Elder
Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 3576
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| Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 3:29 pm Post subject: Re: Why do you disagree with universal free health care? |
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| Lester wrote: | Insurance companies *don't* have to offer you a good product, because you don't exchange your money for a good product straight away, most of the time, when you have cause to complain about an insurance company, it has already sucked a considerable amount of money from you.
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sorry....but I lost track of where this discussion came from and where it is going. are you proposing some policy change here? I lost sight of the forest b/c of the trees here. sorry.
my initial comment is simply that for an insurance company to stay in business it has to offer a product that people want and it has to be a better product than what the other guys are offering. this is just a general principle that applies to all entrepreneurs.
| Quote: |
You can argue a lack of innovation as a side effect of less competition, thats a different subject, but you can't say that there would be no improvement. Government services improve all the time. |
govt services have no incentive to improve other than the fact that sometimes a huge scandal prompts some temporary improvement.
again...the principle is that when you have third party payments (which all govt spending is) then you get notoriously inefficient and wasteful spending.
Here is Milton Freidman;
"There are four ways in which you can spend money.
You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.
Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.
Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!
Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else [sometimes referred to as third party payments]. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government."
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman
| Quote: | | Uh-uh, that the equivalent of you buying a happy meal because it comes with a toy, I'm asking, if they give you bad service, how are they then supposed to upgrade it? Where is the customer satisfaction? |
they could give back half or all of your next premium or send you round trip airfare to Hawaii. |
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joeyjock
Forum Elder
Joined: 24 Dec 2006
Posts: 2113
Location: Fort Lauderdale
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| Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 3:32 pm Post subject: |
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| why Would anybody disagree with Universal Healthcare? |
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cornopean
Forum Elder
Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 3576
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| Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 3:34 pm Post subject: |
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| joeyjock wrote: | | why Would anybody disagree with Universal Healthcare? |
because the quality of our health care would decrease and our taxes would double. |
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Raibeart
Veteran
Joined: 12 Mar 2007
Posts: 533
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| Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 3:59 pm Post subject: |
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In his critique of a bizarre argument from BusinessWeek, Kevin Drum reminds me of the wit and wisdom of the late James Tobin. First, the bizarre claim from BusinessWeek:
For years, everyone from politicians on both sides of the aisle to corporate execs to your Aunt Tilly have justifiably bemoaned American health care - the out-of-control costs, the vast inefficiencies, the lack of access, and the often inexplicable blunders. But the very real problems with the health-care system mask a simple fact: Without it the nation's labor market would be in a deep coma. Since 2001, 1.7 million new jobs have been added in the health-care sector, which includes related industries such as pharmaceuticals and health insurance. Meanwhile, the number of private-sector jobs outside of health care is no higher than it was five years ago … What they're waking up to is the true underpinnings of the much vaunted American job machine. The U.S. unemployment rate is 4.7%, compared with 8.2% and 8.9%, respectively, in Germany and France. But the health-care systems of those two countries added very few jobs from 1997 to 2004, according to new data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, while U.S. hospitals and physician offices never stopped growing. Take away health-care hiring in the U.S., and quicker than you can say cardiac bypass, the U.S. unemployment rate would be 1 to 2 percentage points higher ... John Maynard Keynes would nod approvingly if he were alive. Seventy years ago, the elegant British economist proposed that in tough times the government could and should spend large sums of money to create jobs and stimulate growth. His theories are out of fashion, but substitute "health care" for "government," and that's exactly what is happening today.
Kevin shakes his head and then comes up with a very reasonable reply:
I'm not sure what to think about this. In one sense it's just statistical trickery: at any period in American history, if you remove the single fastest growing industry from the picture then the rest of the economy is going to look pretty anemic. In fact, that's true of nearly any statistical analysis: remove the highest scorers or the highest earners or the highest anything else, and by definition, what's left over looks a lot gloomier. On the other hand, deliberately running an entire industry less efficiently than the rest of the world is a helluva thin reed on which to base an economy. As Anderson says, since taxpayers are the ones footing the bill for healthcare in other countries, they're more willing to pay for technologies that cut costs. In America, doctors bear the burden of adopting IT enhancements but don't make any money from them (they might make less, in fact), so they're pretty unmotivated to bother with the whole thing. The fact that this inefficiency means we employs a lot more people than we would if we had a rationally run system is hardly a great rallying cry for the status quo. A national healthcare system, besides being tremendously beneficial for the actual consumers of healthcare, would also align the market incentives more reasonably and reduce costs considerably. I'm willing to take the risk that we'll somehow figure out what to do with all the jobs and money we save along the way.
I have two reactions to this bizarre argument from BusinessWeek. One is to suggest that increasing employment is not necessarily a sign of inefficiency. After all, a rational health care system would provide more and better healthcare services to more individuals – albeit at a lower price per treatment. The other reaction goes to the main theme here by reminding BusinessWeek that John Maynard Keynes would hardly “nod approvingly” at using inefficiency to restore full employment.
Keynes did note the Fable of the Bees
Although apparently often treated as a defense of laissez- faire - "Thus every Part was full of Vice/Yet the whole Mass a Paradice" - the Fable can also be seen as a presentation of early underconsumption theory. Anticipating Keynes's paradox of thrift, Mandeville argued that the "moral" activity of saving was actually the cause of recessions whereas luxurious consumption (a "vice") was a stimulus. Indeed, Mandeville argued for government intervention, including the Mercantilist policy of protection to promote internal consumption
Keynes also made a concession to gold bugs with the following argument:
It is curious how common sense, wriggling for an escape from absurd conclusions, has been apt to reach a preference for wholly “wasteful” forms of loan expenditure rather than for partly wasteful forms, which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict “business” principles. For example, unemployment relief financed by loans is more readily accepted than the financing of improvements at a charge below the current rate of interest; whilst the form of digging holes in the ground known as gold-mining, which not only adds nothing whatever to the real wealth of the world but involves the disutility of labour, is the most acceptable of all solutions. If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.
The BusinessWeek argument assumes away the ability of the government to find a more rational means for achieving full employment that the creation of wasteful activities. Such an argument has also been used to justify initiating wars to restore full employment. Six years ago, I would have suggested our Federal government was better than that. Alas, the current Administration may be proving BusinessWeek to be more correct.
Is Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics the ONLY source you use corno?? |
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joeyjock
Forum Elder
Joined: 24 Dec 2006
Posts: 2113
Location: Fort Lauderdale
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| Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 7:53 pm Post subject: |
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My goodness!!!!
I never knew that they were fallin over Dead in Canada and in Europe from a shoddy healthcare system...imagine that???
But peope are dying here in ER's and we have BUSES headin over the border so old folks can get prescriptions that they can afford
That IS what I see everyday - Livin' here in America |
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Lester
Forum Elder
Joined: 08 Dec 2006
Posts: 4650
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| Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 1:17 pm Post subject: Re: Why do you disagree with universal free health care? |
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| cornopean wrote: | | Lester wrote: | Insurance companies *don't* have to offer you a good product, because you don't exchange your money for a good product straight away, most of the time, when you have cause to complain about an insurance company, it has already sucked a considerable amount of money from you.
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sorry....but I lost track of where this discussion came from and where it is going. are you proposing some policy change here? I lost sight of the forest b/c of the trees here. sorry.
my initial comment is simply that for an insurance company to stay in business it has to offer a product that people want and it has to be a better product than what the other guys are offering. this is just a general principle that applies to all entrepreneurs. |
But this is exactly the point I'm trying to make, consumer satisfaction not really a problem when the chances of actually receiving the product are small and if you are unsatisfied they already have your money so they don't care. I don't think it does apply to medicine like it does to other businesses. Perhaps this is why the only part of your medicare that is socialized is more efficient than private market healtchare?
| Quote: | | Quote: |
You can argue a lack of innovation as a side effect of less competition, thats a different subject, but you can't say that there would be no improvement. Government services improve all the time. |
govt services have no incentive to improve other than the fact that sometimes a huge scandal prompts some temporary improvement.
again...the principle is that when you have third party payments (which all govt spending is) then you get notoriously inefficient and wasteful spending.
Here is Milton Freidman;
"There are four ways in which you can spend money.
You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.
Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.
Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!
Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else [sometimes referred to as third party payments]. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government."
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman |
Someone said something once, I don't agree with him, quoting doesn't prove your point, it just means there are two people who agree with the same principle.
Personally, when I buy stuff for myself I am very frugal, when I buy something for other people? I have a very loose purse. When I spend someone elses money I try and get the best quality I can, because I feel I owe them that..
| Quote: | | Quote: | | Uh-uh, that the equivalent of you buying a happy meal because it comes with a toy, I'm asking, if they give you bad service, how are they then supposed to upgrade it? Where is the customer satisfaction? |
they could give back half or all of your next premium or send you round trip airfare to Hawaii. |
[/quote]
Round trip to hawaii, somehow not making up for my wife dying because of a staph infection. |
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Anym
Forum Elder
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 2562
Location: Jersey
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| Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 2:28 pm Post subject: |
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| cornopean wrote: | | joeyjock wrote: | | why Would anybody disagree with Universal Healthcare? |
because the quality of our health care would decrease and our taxes would double. |
Can you back that up with an example? |
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cornopean
Forum Elder
Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 3576
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Anym wrote: | | cornopean wrote: | | joeyjock wrote: | | why Would anybody disagree with Universal Healthcare? |
because the quality of our health care would decrease and our taxes would double. |
Can you back that up with an example? |
CANADA....just check out CANADA.
"All the major candidates in Canada's recent national election acknowledged that the country's health-care system is failing Canadians."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....hak13.html
and I love this website; 
http://www.timelymedical.ca/
another article. (there are so many...alas)
http://www.city-journal.org/ht.....hcare.html |
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Lester
Forum Elder
Joined: 08 Dec 2006
Posts: 4650
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| Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 1:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Their taxes aren't doubled, and *a* healthcare system is better than no healthcare system, which is what those without insurance have. |
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joeyjock
Forum Elder
Joined: 24 Dec 2006
Posts: 2113
Location: Fort Lauderdale
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| Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 5:52 pm Post subject: |
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The U.S. Census Bureau has reported that the number of uninsured Americans rose by 1.4 million to 15.6 percent, or 45 million, in 2003, up from 15.2 percent in 2002, the third straight annual increase. Meanwhile, the nation’s poverty rate also climbed to 12.5 percent last year, from 12.1 percent in 2002.
...and you DON'T think you're paying for these people in your premiums???
and bears don't sh**t in the woods and Bush isn't an idiot? |
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cornopean
Forum Elder
Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 3576
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| Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 6:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Lester wrote: | | Their taxes aren't doubled, and *a* healthcare system is better than no healthcare system, which is what those without insurance have. |
people w/o health insurance have no healthcare system?!? mercy....what did people do before insurance? |
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