While it is obvious that the government can make things worse (do they do anything else?), the problem of consumer insensitivity to health costs in the US has little to do with government subsidies and everything to do with the ridiculous employer-provided health-care insurance concept. It’s the same reason why tax withholding is bad – people become insensitive to anything they don’t pay out of their own pocket!
Trent, are you unaware that the reason for employer health care is government policies? That if it weren’t given preferential tax treatment for employers, more people would opt for extra cash instead of the health plan?
Maybe we could have this discussion again in non-160-character delimited form. 🙂
The tax benefit does not offset the cost insensitivity. If it did, no-one would be complaining about the rising costs of healthcare. A truly rational actor would still choose to demand enough and as much cash as they require for healthcare from their employer and buy a policy that is appropriate for their needs. If enough people did this, the price of healthcare would go down. One quick and easy way to reach this critical mass is to start a healthcare insurer that never sells to employer providers. Everyone who wants control over their own healthcare will go to this insurer, and their individual choices over what sort of coverage they want will result in lower premiums, which will encourage people who want lower premiums to demand cash from their employer. “Payer-claimer insurers” would have an advantage in the market place.
The only problem with this scheme is government mandates on what healthcare insurers must cover.
The tax benefit does not offset the cost insensitivity.
[…]
The only problem with this scheme is government mandates on what healthcare insurers must cover.
That’s the two effects. Because of the tax consequences, employer health care is subsidized roughly at a third, which is a huge level. And government mandates on health insurance provide the insulation needed to ignore much of the cost of treatment.
“While it is obvious that the government can make things worse (do they do anything else?)”
Yeah. Good fraud law is a help to the nation, for example.
Heard of arbitration?
Yes, I have.
Do you disagree that good fraud law is a help to a nation?
I like fraud laws (and some others) so much that I like to seeing the competitive industry developing to adjudicate them – primarily because the state courts are clogged with those laws which we don’t seem able to be rid of. Why do you want the government involved?
Because making laws against fraud is a good thing.
And who but the government can and should make laws?
Laws made by not-the-government are called “contracts”.. and arbitration specialization is a way of making precedent. The idea that governments should have (or always have had) a monopoly on making laws is just wrong.
Good fraud law is a help
This is exactly the type of reasoning that allows the camel’s nose into the tent.
Which is why RR said what he said about, “we’re the govt. and we’re here to help.”
It’s not the governments job to help. The government is to secure liberty so the people can pursue their own happiness and help themselves.
Their is absolutely zero reason for government to be involved in healthcare (among all other business activities.)
1) Because more services would be available if the government didn’t interfere.
2) It would cost less because open competition (insurance and other) does that.
Hardship stories are not a reason for government involvement. They are a reason for the rest of us to make sober, sound, adult decisions. Communities will take care of their own without any government assistance.
Consumers are the best regulation and the only regulation we really need (with as much real transparency as we can get.)
I agree. A gigantic, Kafkaesque central-government bureaucracy is the absolute worst way to help those in need.
The best way: the Catholic parish. I know where every dime of money our little Catholic parish takes in goes. It goes to quietly pay the rents, mortgages, doctor bills, and grocery bills of people in our community who are in trouble. I also know to the penny how much the parish spends and what it spends it on. We help thousands of self-destructive people, including drunks, drugheads, sexual perverts, and depressives. We’re there for unwed mothers, rape victims, guys on Death Row, and layoff victims. We put roofs over heads, shoes on feet, schoolbooks in the hands of children, and prescription drugs in the medicine cabinets of the old and forgotten. And we do it all on the regular contributions of about 500 middle-class people.
Is there a government bureaucracy anywhere that can provide the services our little parish does with as little money as our parish has? You and I both know the answer: not just no, but hell no.
The proper role of government is to govern. The care of the needy is the Church’s bailiwick.
“govern”, that word which spawned a revolution and the first nation of free men.
Kudos on the charity, good to hear there’s people out there who know taxes are no substitute.
Thanks. I’m proud of our little parish. There’s a lot of good people there — the kind you can count on when Trouble shows up on your doorstep.
As Christians, it’s our duty to take care of those for whom society has no use. Far too many of us — Catholics, Protestants, and others — have forgotten this. By leaving to Caesar the task that God has given us to do, we betray our Founder, and we open the door for the intrusion of Caesar and his bread and circuses.
Nothing wrong with the care (well, I have my gripes) it’s that government has no business in business… any business.
Umm.. the government is completely superfluous in that chart.. Here: http://i.imgur.com/E5cHm.jpg
While it is obvious that the government can make things worse (do they do anything else?), the problem of consumer insensitivity to health costs in the US has little to do with government subsidies and everything to do with the ridiculous employer-provided health-care insurance concept. It’s the same reason why tax withholding is bad – people become insensitive to anything they don’t pay out of their own pocket!
Trent, are you unaware that the reason for employer health care is government policies? That if it weren’t given preferential tax treatment for employers, more people would opt for extra cash instead of the health plan?
Maybe we could have this discussion again in non-160-character delimited form. 🙂
The tax benefit does not offset the cost insensitivity. If it did, no-one would be complaining about the rising costs of healthcare. A truly rational actor would still choose to demand enough and as much cash as they require for healthcare from their employer and buy a policy that is appropriate for their needs. If enough people did this, the price of healthcare would go down. One quick and easy way to reach this critical mass is to start a healthcare insurer that never sells to employer providers. Everyone who wants control over their own healthcare will go to this insurer, and their individual choices over what sort of coverage they want will result in lower premiums, which will encourage people who want lower premiums to demand cash from their employer. “Payer-claimer insurers” would have an advantage in the market place.
The only problem with this scheme is government mandates on what healthcare insurers must cover.
The tax benefit does not offset the cost insensitivity.
[…]
The only problem with this scheme is government mandates on what healthcare insurers must cover.
That’s the two effects. Because of the tax consequences, employer health care is subsidized roughly at a third, which is a huge level. And government mandates on health insurance provide the insulation needed to ignore much of the cost of treatment.
“While it is obvious that the government can make things worse (do they do anything else?)”
Yeah. Good fraud law is a help to the nation, for example.
Heard of arbitration?
Yes, I have.
Do you disagree that good fraud law is a help to a nation?
I like fraud laws (and some others) so much that I like to seeing the competitive industry developing to adjudicate them – primarily because the state courts are clogged with those laws which we don’t seem able to be rid of. Why do you want the government involved?
Because making laws against fraud is a good thing.
And who but the government can and should make laws?
Laws made by not-the-government are called “contracts”.. and arbitration specialization is a way of making precedent. The idea that governments should have (or always have had) a monopoly on making laws is just wrong.
Good fraud law is a help
This is exactly the type of reasoning that allows the camel’s nose into the tent.
Which is why RR said what he said about, “we’re the govt. and we’re here to help.”
It’s not the governments job to help. The government is to secure liberty so the people can pursue their own happiness and help themselves.
Their is absolutely zero reason for government to be involved in healthcare (among all other business activities.)
1) Because more services would be available if the government didn’t interfere.
2) It would cost less because open competition (insurance and other) does that.
Hardship stories are not a reason for government involvement. They are a reason for the rest of us to make sober, sound, adult decisions. Communities will take care of their own without any government assistance.
Consumers are the best regulation and the only regulation we really need (with as much real transparency as we can get.)
I agree. A gigantic, Kafkaesque central-government bureaucracy is the absolute worst way to help those in need.
The best way: the Catholic parish. I know where every dime of money our little Catholic parish takes in goes. It goes to quietly pay the rents, mortgages, doctor bills, and grocery bills of people in our community who are in trouble. I also know to the penny how much the parish spends and what it spends it on. We help thousands of self-destructive people, including drunks, drugheads, sexual perverts, and depressives. We’re there for unwed mothers, rape victims, guys on Death Row, and layoff victims. We put roofs over heads, shoes on feet, schoolbooks in the hands of children, and prescription drugs in the medicine cabinets of the old and forgotten. And we do it all on the regular contributions of about 500 middle-class people.
Is there a government bureaucracy anywhere that can provide the services our little parish does with as little money as our parish has? You and I both know the answer: not just no, but hell no.
The proper role of government is to govern. The care of the needy is the Church’s bailiwick.
“govern”, that word which spawned a revolution and the first nation of free men.
Kudos on the charity, good to hear there’s people out there who know taxes are no substitute.
Thanks. I’m proud of our little parish. There’s a lot of good people there — the kind you can count on when Trouble shows up on your doorstep.
As Christians, it’s our duty to take care of those for whom society has no use. Far too many of us — Catholics, Protestants, and others — have forgotten this. By leaving to Caesar the task that God has given us to do, we betray our Founder, and we open the door for the intrusion of Caesar and his bread and circuses.