Seriously, to quote Sarah Palin: quit making things up!
🙂
Curt – if you actually read Daveon’s link you’d realize how stupid you look. It refers to a case where the NHS spent a massive amount of money on a disabled kid and didn’t charge the parents a cent. Of course, that’s how NHS works.
Of course, that’s how NHS works.
Right. All the time. Greatest thing since sliced bread. Why don’t you move there and let us know first hand. Oh right, you’d rather get the rest of us here to pony up so you don’t need to spend ANYthing.
Sounds like a plan.
Curt Thomson – you are proving the old saying that there is nobody so deaf as those that will not hear.
You are provided with a link that details extensive treatment provided free to a newborn, but rather than read it, you’d rather spout bullshit. Obvously mere things like “facts” are not relevant to you.
there is nobody so deaf as those that will not hear
But the real problem with the health-care services in Britain lies elsewhere, and we should not be diverted from recognising it by crude and sensational comparisons. What is needed is a subtle interplay of patient choice and professionalism, of the kind that can never now be achieved so long as health care in this country is funded solely by central taxation. It would take courage and honesty for a politician to recognise this, so it is extremely unlikely to happen.
The real problem is plain and simple – if the government is involved, politics decides the cure provided and to whom.
I was disabled for about 10 years. Unable to walk. Unable to even sit. I applied for disability, and was denied because the person that decided was a racist (I can’t prove that, but I firmly believe it).
I should have sued, you’ll say. I couldn’t afford a lawyer, and was too inexperienced to get around that. Obviously I would do differently today, but this was still a formative experience in my life.
I do not want government to decide the important aspects of my life.
So I was imagining it when I to have my Wisdom teeth removed in a private hospital in 2001 then?
And where did Dr Daniels, to use his given name, mention death panels?
He did mention regional variations in healthcare, especially in poor areas. Am I to assume that doesn’t happen under the current US system?
You can criticize it all you want, and you can dump on Sarah Palin all you want, and you can say that the Right Wing is full of it on Health Reform and engaging in scare tactics.
But “Death panels” is entering the lexicon. No . . . stopping . . . it. It is entering the lexicon for no other reason than it is something over-the-top and perhaps ridiculous uttered by an arch conservative. It is entering the lexicon because arch liberals are so cute when they fume about the term.
A person has to meet with the boss and assistant for a performance review at work. “What are you doing, Charlie?” “Oh not much, Sam, just have to appear before the ‘Death Panel’ this afternoon.”
Curt – you’re screaming about “death panels,” calling Daveon an idiot, and telling me to emigrate. Not particularly profound, and in fact the kind of “crude and sensational comparisons” your article mentions. An article without a word about the famed British “death panels,” probably because they don’t exist.
You are provided with a link that details extensive treatment provided free to a newborn, but rather than read it, you’d rather spout bullshit.
The plural of “anecdote” is not “data.”
Rand – agreed about data vs. anecdote (actually used that line on my blog today).
Alas, the data, in terms of average life expectancy and cost per capita, is not in the US favor. Google tells me that the average life expectancy is higher in the UK, and these folks tell us we spend more money per capita or as a percentage of GDP than any other industrialized country.
So the data confirms the anecdote – we spend more and get less.
Alas, the data, in terms of average life expectancy and cost per capita, is not in the US favor.
There is a lot more to health than life expectancy. I understand why you’d like to so oversimplify and misleadingly dumb down the debate, though.
Rand – what data set would you like to use?
“What are you doing, Charlie?” “Oh not much, Sam, just have to appear before the ‘Death Panel’ this afternoon.”
I’m outfitting my home with death panels to save on my electric bill.
Chris,
You are either ignorant or being deliberately disingenous. Life expentency is indeed higher in the UK (by a statistically insignificant fraction), ONLY if you ignore the differing demographic makeup of the US and the UK AND ignore the much higher number of deaths from violence and accident in the US. The word nobody wants to use here is……race. Compare apples to apples (white males to white males, for instance) and the UK comes off far, far worse, as does virtually every other country with socialized medicine. More to the point, if you want to look at more ‘neutral’ indicators (such as survival rates from cancer treatments), the US comes out way ahead, while Britain is a disgrace. As has been pointed out on several threads, the US is NOT the EU, and as a result, the kind of healthcare system that might work for a smallish, demographically homogenous country isn’t likely to work for a huge diverse country like the US.
If we are more interested in equity, the differences in health-care experienced by differing economic strata in the US are far smaller than those in most (not all, I believe that Japan is even ‘better’) socialized countries. This isn’t hard to understand, as in a socialized country, only the upper income brackets have the werewithal to get into the very small private sector that has survived the state’s onslaught.
Finally, consider the scandalous problems with MRSA infection rates in the UK (and this isn’t a few problem hospitals, it is system-wide in the NHS), while despite a few ugly outbreaks (which were quickly resolved) such problems are extremely rare in the US.
Oh, on the subject of ‘death panels’, consider that in a private system, if your insurer turns you down, you can (often at great expense, to be sure) go elsewhere, while in a wholly government run system, if you are turned down you are simply out of luck. For many conditions, that means you are indeed facing a ‘death panel’, whatever you want to call it. We don’t even have to die to make these things repellant: I am a diabetic, and I shudder to think what one of these panels might want to do to my treatment options…
arch liberals are so cute when they fume about the term.
LOL, so true. Example 1: The Gerbil.
My favorite “reason” is the argument that higher taxes will put us at a competitive disadvantage to Europe and Japan — where they already have universal health coverage.
Top reason to pass health care reform: 20,000 people die in the U.S. each year because they are uninsured or underinsured.
Top reason to pass health care reform: 20,000 people die in the U.S. each year because they are uninsured or underinsured.
But no one is killed each year by the NHS?
But no one is killed each year by the NHS?
Define what you mean by “killed” before we carry on.
as does virtually every other country with socialized medicine
A quick Googling suggests that the US is worse off pre-65 across most measures but post-65 things improve dramatically for Americans over everybody else…
You guys don’t do something… er… different… with your national healthcare system post 65 do you?
Chris: don’t worry about it, I’ve been called an idiot by Rand and his merry band more times than I recall.
Funny thing, more often than not, I get called an idiot for being right more than being wrong. Go figure.
Funny thing, more often than not, I get called an idiot for being right more than being wrong.
Actually, that never happens.
Just more proof of your idiocy. 😉
Define what you mean by “killed” before we carry on.
Died under its tender ministrations as a result of incompetence or unwillingness to expend resources to prevent the death.
A quick Googling suggests that the US is worse off pre-65 across most measures but post-65 things improve dramatically for Americans over everybody else…
You guys don’t do something… er… different… with your national healthcare system post 65 do you?
Yeah, we spend more money on health care post 65, at least that’s what the Democrats keep telling us. They think we should be spending less.
They think we should be spending less.
Yes, but don’t call it a “death panel.”
BTB, my favorite part of Star Wars was at the end where Luke’s flying his X-Wing and blows-up the Death Panel.
“How are the “Death Panels” going then?”
Dunno. How’d that public campaign financing work out for Obama?
Scott – I have heard the argument that the murder rate is higher in the US, which leads to our lower life expectancy, not just vs. the UK, but most industrialized countries. What I have never seen is a statistical analysis to show that. We are a country of around 300 million people, and IIRC we have around 40,000 murders a year.
Is that a big enough delta to move the needle? Since I think it would take an hour or two with Google to calculate an approximation at least, I’m really surprised that nobody seems to have done it.
Chris, according to my calculation, murders (assuming they shorten lifespan by 30 years when they occur) alone probably reduce life expectancy by a day and a half. Injuries from attempted murders might have more effect actually (for example, I met someone who was stabbed 16 times, that can’t be helping his life expectancy).
Karl – well, 1 day of average life expectancy is not significant to this conversation.
But no one is killed each year by the NHS?
The NHS has a lower rate of amenable mortality (deaths that would be averted by appropriate medical care) than the U.S. In fact, of 18 developed countries surveyed, the U.S. had the highest rate. The difference between us and the country with the lowest rate, France, comes to 75,000 – 100,000 deaths per year. What’s more, the rate of amenable deaths has been falling faster in other countries than in the U.S.
Google “Measuring the Health of Nations” for details.
Another reason why we need health care reform: over the last 3 years, 12 million Americans were discriminated against by insurance companies due to pre-existing conditions.
Measuring the Health of Nations, put out by the Commonwealth Fund, which pushes the same agenda as Jim. And Jim seems to like the philosophy of Milton Roemer. He asked us to look up Roemer yesterday, before telling us Roemer’s beliefs were irrelevant.
Died under its tender ministrations as a result of incompetence or unwillingness to expend resources to prevent the death.
Jim dug up the stats for me there. Thanks Jim.
Of course people die as a result of incompetence or unwillingness to expend resources – just as happens in the US. Except, and here’s the cool thing. The UK spends LESS THAN HALF the money the US spends on healthcare.
To a certain extent, you get what you pay for. What I don’t understand is why fiscal conservatives aren’t DEMANDING a socialised system, because it plainly obvious the private ones are not working.
Unlike most “liberals,” I actually know something about history. And given the history of the State, why shouldn’t we (and by “we,” I’m referring to those of us un in the pro-freedom camp, not State-fellators such as Jim and Daveon) assume the worst possible consequences of ObamaCare? If not immediately, down the line? If history, especially the history of the last hundred years, teaches us, it’s that any power the State can grab, the State will grab, sooner or later. And every time a further extension of the power of the State is proposed, the State-fellators supporting it tell us, “No, you’re just being paranoid–we just want to do X, not X+Y. No one’s seriously proposing Y.”
And guess what? Once we start doing X, then the State-fellators and power-junkies come back and say, “Okay, X isn’t enough. X is only effective if we add Y.”
Meanwhille “me-too” Republican and “responsible” (i.e., tamed) conservatives such as the “Uncle Daves” (Brooks and Frum) now support X; they just may be a little skittish about Y. Some “uppity” conservatives may even warn, “These statists are lying; if we give them X+Y, eventually they’ll want Z.” “No, no,” the anti-freedom forces say, “just give us X+Y. No one’s seriously proposing Z.” But as soon as the State is doing X+Y–surprise!– the Staat-shtuppers are back, complaining that X+Y just isn’t good enough; now we need X+Y+Z! And go it goes; and the State rolls on. . . . while individual liberty correspondingly diminishes.
What I don’t understand is why fiscal conservatives aren’t DEMANDING a socialised system, because it plainly obvious the private ones are not working.
No, the private system works, but it’s not perfect. Conservatives don’t demand perfection — that’s a leftist/statist value.
There, now you undertand. 🙂
Bilwik1 / Titus – back in the 1800s, cities had multiple and competing for-profit fire departments. The fire department would only put out fires in buildings that had paid their company for insurance. It was cumbersome, expensive and inefficient.
Then somebody (or several somebodies) had the brilliant idea to create taxpayer-supported citywide fire departments. This left the insurance companies free to sell property insurance, and reduced firefighting costs while improving results.
I have a feeling that, were you two around then, you’d be arguing against public fire companies.
Another problem I have with Bilwick1’s statements is that I don’t see liberty being reduced. I see it being increased. Now, instead of being tied to a job due to pre-existing health conditions, you would have the freedom to move, assured of a baseline of coverage. Also, I don’t see insurance companies losing anything. We’ve had Medicare for seniors since 1964, and selling Medicare supplements is apparently a profitable business. So why wouldn’t selling “Obamacare” supplements be profitable?
But at any event, thanks for your comments. It is clear to me that this discussion has nothing to do with facts, effectiveness or cost.
Now, instead of being tied to a job due to pre-existing health conditions, you would have the freedom to move, assured of a baseline of coverage.
You don’t need a government health-care program to achieve that. All you have to do is change the tax code.
Then somebody (or several somebodies) had the brilliant idea to create taxpayer-supported citywide fire departments.
I don’t see liberty being reduced.
We know you don’t. Try reading past the Commerce Clause. Let us know when you reach the 10th Amendment.
I have a feeling that, were you two around then, you’d be arguing against public fire companies.
I would have argued against federal fire companies, but this analogy is a canard. Fire protection is a public good (non-excludable & non-rivalrous). Most forms of health care are private goods (freedom from communicable diseases, access to clean water, etc. are the exceptions). This is why leftist “economists” focus on “externalities” to “prove” that any entitlement they want is somehow a “public good” and thus, like the common defense, should be treated as such.
Titus – when they stop taking uninsured patients at the emergency room you can tell me that health care is not a public good. Until that time, there is a clear free rider effect – supposedly on the order of $1100 per insured person per year.
“When they stop stealing cars you can tell me that cars are not public good…”
The obvious solution isn’t to socialize the automobile industry…oops! Too late…
Titus – so now we don’t let uninsured people go to the emergency room, we let them die? (The obvious Choice B, make them get health insurance, being ruled out apparently.)
Now I’m convinced that you’d be against any public fire departments. “Let it burn – that’ll teach them not to buy insurance!”
All you have to do is change the tax code.
And how does that actually incentivise private insurance companies to insure people with existing conditions?
It doesn’t make the least bit of business sense. You CANNOT insure somebody against something that they already have, if you’re going to insist on private companies being responsible for insurance it doesn’t make any sense to force them to “insure” people for a condition they already have. All you’re doing it pushing the problem onto another part of their profit structure, and the net result should, from a good business perspective, be higher premiums for all and more denied cover.
Oh… isn’t that, in fact, what we are actually seeing?
Titus – so now we don’t let uninsured people go to the emergency room, we let them die?
My state has a medical program for the indigent. Doesn’t yours?
Now I’m convinced that you’d be against any public fire departments. “Let it burn – that’ll teach them not to buy insurance!”
Yes, I’m sure you are; you’ve proved yourself a bonehead who mostly loves thrashing straw-men. I’ll remember not to take you seriously from now on.
he said, “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller,” when asked about an elderly woman who needed a pacemaker.
I seem to recall that was about a patient with a muscle injury, not a pace-maker.
Although this should be called the Top Ten Made Up Reasons for Scaring People rather than anything else. Keep linking to nonsense Rand, please.
Oh, but Obama never “scares people.”
Didn’t say he didn’t.
But generally speaking his stuff isn’t in my “made up” category.
But generally speaking his stuff isn’t in my “made up” category.
Well, that’s your problem, not that of those of us who live in reality.
Well, you live in “a” reality, I wouldn’t get more specific than that.
How are the “Death Panels” going then?
Or that guy saying there needed to be a nuclear attack to “save” America or…
You get the idea.
Oh, here’s another story about the NHS and frightening socialist medicine etc…
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/08/another_story_from_the_uk.php#more?ref=fpblg
You tell us, you’re the one who lives with them.
Yeah, you’re an idiot.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/08/another_story_from_the_uk.php#more?ref=fpblg
You mean like this guy encountered?
Seriously, to quote Sarah Palin: quit making things up!
🙂
Curt – if you actually read Daveon’s link you’d realize how stupid you look. It refers to a case where the NHS spent a massive amount of money on a disabled kid and didn’t charge the parents a cent. Of course, that’s how NHS works.
Right. All the time. Greatest thing since sliced bread. Why don’t you move there and let us know first hand. Oh right, you’d rather get the rest of us here to pony up so you don’t need to spend ANYthing.
Sounds like a plan.
Curt Thomson – you are proving the old saying that there is nobody so deaf as those that will not hear.
You are provided with a link that details extensive treatment provided free to a newborn, but rather than read it, you’d rather spout bullshit. Obvously mere things like “facts” are not relevant to you.
Just… profound. Rather than relying on TalkingPointsMemo, how about Dr. Theodore Dalrymple:
The real problem is plain and simple – if the government is involved, politics decides the cure provided and to whom.
I was disabled for about 10 years. Unable to walk. Unable to even sit. I applied for disability, and was denied because the person that decided was a racist (I can’t prove that, but I firmly believe it).
I should have sued, you’ll say. I couldn’t afford a lawyer, and was too inexperienced to get around that. Obviously I would do differently today, but this was still a formative experience in my life.
I do not want government to decide the important aspects of my life.
So I was imagining it when I to have my Wisdom teeth removed in a private hospital in 2001 then?
And where did Dr Daniels, to use his given name, mention death panels?
He did mention regional variations in healthcare, especially in poor areas. Am I to assume that doesn’t happen under the current US system?
You can criticize it all you want, and you can dump on Sarah Palin all you want, and you can say that the Right Wing is full of it on Health Reform and engaging in scare tactics.
But “Death panels” is entering the lexicon. No . . . stopping . . . it. It is entering the lexicon for no other reason than it is something over-the-top and perhaps ridiculous uttered by an arch conservative. It is entering the lexicon because arch liberals are so cute when they fume about the term.
A person has to meet with the boss and assistant for a performance review at work. “What are you doing, Charlie?” “Oh not much, Sam, just have to appear before the ‘Death Panel’ this afternoon.”
Curt – you’re screaming about “death panels,” calling Daveon an idiot, and telling me to emigrate. Not particularly profound, and in fact the kind of “crude and sensational comparisons” your article mentions. An article without a word about the famed British “death panels,” probably because they don’t exist.
You are provided with a link that details extensive treatment provided free to a newborn, but rather than read it, you’d rather spout bullshit.
The plural of “anecdote” is not “data.”
Rand – agreed about data vs. anecdote (actually used that line on my blog today).
Alas, the data, in terms of average life expectancy and cost per capita, is not in the US favor. Google tells me that the average life expectancy is higher in the UK, and these folks tell us we spend more money per capita or as a percentage of GDP than any other industrialized country.
So the data confirms the anecdote – we spend more and get less.
Alas, the data, in terms of average life expectancy and cost per capita, is not in the US favor.
There is a lot more to health than life expectancy. I understand why you’d like to so oversimplify and misleadingly dumb down the debate, though.
Rand – what data set would you like to use?
“What are you doing, Charlie?” “Oh not much, Sam, just have to appear before the ‘Death Panel’ this afternoon.”
I’m outfitting my home with death panels to save on my electric bill.
Chris,
You are either ignorant or being deliberately disingenous. Life expentency is indeed higher in the UK (by a statistically insignificant fraction), ONLY if you ignore the differing demographic makeup of the US and the UK AND ignore the much higher number of deaths from violence and accident in the US. The word nobody wants to use here is……race. Compare apples to apples (white males to white males, for instance) and the UK comes off far, far worse, as does virtually every other country with socialized medicine. More to the point, if you want to look at more ‘neutral’ indicators (such as survival rates from cancer treatments), the US comes out way ahead, while Britain is a disgrace. As has been pointed out on several threads, the US is NOT the EU, and as a result, the kind of healthcare system that might work for a smallish, demographically homogenous country isn’t likely to work for a huge diverse country like the US.
If we are more interested in equity, the differences in health-care experienced by differing economic strata in the US are far smaller than those in most (not all, I believe that Japan is even ‘better’) socialized countries. This isn’t hard to understand, as in a socialized country, only the upper income brackets have the werewithal to get into the very small private sector that has survived the state’s onslaught.
Finally, consider the scandalous problems with MRSA infection rates in the UK (and this isn’t a few problem hospitals, it is system-wide in the NHS), while despite a few ugly outbreaks (which were quickly resolved) such problems are extremely rare in the US.
Oh, on the subject of ‘death panels’, consider that in a private system, if your insurer turns you down, you can (often at great expense, to be sure) go elsewhere, while in a wholly government run system, if you are turned down you are simply out of luck. For many conditions, that means you are indeed facing a ‘death panel’, whatever you want to call it. We don’t even have to die to make these things repellant: I am a diabetic, and I shudder to think what one of these panels might want to do to my treatment options…
LOL, so true. Example 1: The Gerbil.
My favorite “reason” is the argument that higher taxes will put us at a competitive disadvantage to Europe and Japan — where they already have universal health coverage.
Top reason to pass health care reform: 20,000 people die in the U.S. each year because they are uninsured or underinsured.
Top reason to pass health care reform: 20,000 people die in the U.S. each year because they are uninsured or underinsured.
But no one is killed each year by the NHS?
But no one is killed each year by the NHS?
Define what you mean by “killed” before we carry on.
as does virtually every other country with socialized medicine
A quick Googling suggests that the US is worse off pre-65 across most measures but post-65 things improve dramatically for Americans over everybody else…
You guys don’t do something… er… different… with your national healthcare system post 65 do you?
Chris: don’t worry about it, I’ve been called an idiot by Rand and his merry band more times than I recall.
Funny thing, more often than not, I get called an idiot for being right more than being wrong. Go figure.
Funny thing, more often than not, I get called an idiot for being right more than being wrong.
Actually, that never happens.
Just more proof of your idiocy. 😉
Define what you mean by “killed” before we carry on.
Died under its tender ministrations as a result of incompetence or unwillingness to expend resources to prevent the death.
A quick Googling suggests that the US is worse off pre-65 across most measures but post-65 things improve dramatically for Americans over everybody else…
You guys don’t do something… er… different… with your national healthcare system post 65 do you?
Yeah, we spend more money on health care post 65, at least that’s what the Democrats keep telling us. They think we should be spending less.
They think we should be spending less.
Yes, but don’t call it a “death panel.”
BTB, my favorite part of Star Wars was at the end where Luke’s flying his X-Wing and blows-up the Death Panel.
“How are the “Death Panels” going then?”
Dunno. How’d that public campaign financing work out for Obama?
Scott – I have heard the argument that the murder rate is higher in the US, which leads to our lower life expectancy, not just vs. the UK, but most industrialized countries. What I have never seen is a statistical analysis to show that. We are a country of around 300 million people, and IIRC we have around 40,000 murders a year.
Is that a big enough delta to move the needle? Since I think it would take an hour or two with Google to calculate an approximation at least, I’m really surprised that nobody seems to have done it.
Chris, according to my calculation, murders (assuming they shorten lifespan by 30 years when they occur) alone probably reduce life expectancy by a day and a half. Injuries from attempted murders might have more effect actually (for example, I met someone who was stabbed 16 times, that can’t be helping his life expectancy).
Karl – well, 1 day of average life expectancy is not significant to this conversation.
But no one is killed each year by the NHS?
The NHS has a lower rate of amenable mortality (deaths that would be averted by appropriate medical care) than the U.S. In fact, of 18 developed countries surveyed, the U.S. had the highest rate. The difference between us and the country with the lowest rate, France, comes to 75,000 – 100,000 deaths per year. What’s more, the rate of amenable deaths has been falling faster in other countries than in the U.S.
Google “Measuring the Health of Nations” for details.
Another reason why we need health care reform: over the last 3 years, 12 million Americans were discriminated against by insurance companies due to pre-existing conditions.
Measuring the Health of Nations, put out by the Commonwealth Fund, which pushes the same agenda as Jim. And Jim seems to like the philosophy of Milton Roemer. He asked us to look up Roemer yesterday, before telling us Roemer’s beliefs were irrelevant.
Died under its tender ministrations as a result of incompetence or unwillingness to expend resources to prevent the death.
Jim dug up the stats for me there. Thanks Jim.
Of course people die as a result of incompetence or unwillingness to expend resources – just as happens in the US. Except, and here’s the cool thing. The UK spends LESS THAN HALF the money the US spends on healthcare.
To a certain extent, you get what you pay for. What I don’t understand is why fiscal conservatives aren’t DEMANDING a socialised system, because it plainly obvious the private ones are not working.
Unlike most “liberals,” I actually know something about history. And given the history of the State, why shouldn’t we (and by “we,” I’m referring to those of us un in the pro-freedom camp, not State-fellators such as Jim and Daveon) assume the worst possible consequences of ObamaCare? If not immediately, down the line? If history, especially the history of the last hundred years, teaches us, it’s that any power the State can grab, the State will grab, sooner or later. And every time a further extension of the power of the State is proposed, the State-fellators supporting it tell us, “No, you’re just being paranoid–we just want to do X, not X+Y. No one’s seriously proposing Y.”
And guess what? Once we start doing X, then the State-fellators and power-junkies come back and say, “Okay, X isn’t enough. X is only effective if we add Y.”
Meanwhille “me-too” Republican and “responsible” (i.e., tamed) conservatives such as the “Uncle Daves” (Brooks and Frum) now support X; they just may be a little skittish about Y. Some “uppity” conservatives may even warn, “These statists are lying; if we give them X+Y, eventually they’ll want Z.” “No, no,” the anti-freedom forces say, “just give us X+Y. No one’s seriously proposing Z.” But as soon as the State is doing X+Y–surprise!– the Staat-shtuppers are back, complaining that X+Y just isn’t good enough; now we need X+Y+Z! And go it goes; and the State rolls on. . . . while individual liberty correspondingly diminishes.
What I don’t understand is why fiscal conservatives aren’t DEMANDING a socialised system, because it plainly obvious the private ones are not working.
No, the private system works, but it’s not perfect. Conservatives don’t demand perfection — that’s a leftist/statist value.
There, now you undertand. 🙂
Bilwik1 / Titus – back in the 1800s, cities had multiple and competing for-profit fire departments. The fire department would only put out fires in buildings that had paid their company for insurance. It was cumbersome, expensive and inefficient.
Then somebody (or several somebodies) had the brilliant idea to create taxpayer-supported citywide fire departments. This left the insurance companies free to sell property insurance, and reduced firefighting costs while improving results.
I have a feeling that, were you two around then, you’d be arguing against public fire companies.
Another problem I have with Bilwick1’s statements is that I don’t see liberty being reduced. I see it being increased. Now, instead of being tied to a job due to pre-existing health conditions, you would have the freedom to move, assured of a baseline of coverage. Also, I don’t see insurance companies losing anything. We’ve had Medicare for seniors since 1964, and selling Medicare supplements is apparently a profitable business. So why wouldn’t selling “Obamacare” supplements be profitable?
But at any event, thanks for your comments. It is clear to me that this discussion has nothing to do with facts, effectiveness or cost.
Now, instead of being tied to a job due to pre-existing health conditions, you would have the freedom to move, assured of a baseline of coverage.
You don’t need a government health-care program to achieve that. All you have to do is change the tax code.
Then somebody (or several somebodies) had the brilliant idea to create taxpayer-supported citywide fire departments.
I don’t see liberty being reduced.
We know you don’t. Try reading past the Commerce Clause. Let us know when you reach the 10th Amendment.
I have a feeling that, were you two around then, you’d be arguing against public fire companies.
I would have argued against federal fire companies, but this analogy is a canard. Fire protection is a public good (non-excludable & non-rivalrous). Most forms of health care are private goods (freedom from communicable diseases, access to clean water, etc. are the exceptions). This is why leftist “economists” focus on “externalities” to “prove” that any entitlement they want is somehow a “public good” and thus, like the common defense, should be treated as such.
Titus – when they stop taking uninsured patients at the emergency room you can tell me that health care is not a public good. Until that time, there is a clear free rider effect – supposedly on the order of $1100 per insured person per year.
“When they stop stealing cars you can tell me that cars are not public good…”
The obvious solution isn’t to socialize the automobile industry…oops! Too late…
Titus – so now we don’t let uninsured people go to the emergency room, we let them die? (The obvious Choice B, make them get health insurance, being ruled out apparently.)
Now I’m convinced that you’d be against any public fire departments. “Let it burn – that’ll teach them not to buy insurance!”
All you have to do is change the tax code.
And how does that actually incentivise private insurance companies to insure people with existing conditions?
It doesn’t make the least bit of business sense. You CANNOT insure somebody against something that they already have, if you’re going to insist on private companies being responsible for insurance it doesn’t make any sense to force them to “insure” people for a condition they already have. All you’re doing it pushing the problem onto another part of their profit structure, and the net result should, from a good business perspective, be higher premiums for all and more denied cover.
Oh… isn’t that, in fact, what we are actually seeing?
Titus – so now we don’t let uninsured people go to the emergency room, we let them die?
My state has a medical program for the indigent. Doesn’t yours?
Now I’m convinced that you’d be against any public fire departments. “Let it burn – that’ll teach them not to buy insurance!”
Yes, I’m sure you are; you’ve proved yourself a bonehead who mostly loves thrashing straw-men. I’ll remember not to take you seriously from now on.