Can someone explain the health care 'crisis' to me?

[Richard Tanner]

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Are you arguing for or against socialism, because all of the problems you described are caused by too much socialism, not a lack of more.

The frightening thing is that the people who advocate socialism never understand that it does not, in fact, increase access to goods and services, which is the stated aim, but instead always reduces the quantity and quality of services available.

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I'm calling for universal health coverage. Call it what you want.

The frightening thing is that you are arguing from theory, not a comparison of actual health care systems. You start from a theoretical position, that anything you define as socialism is always bad, therefore single payer health care must be bad. But if we compare the systems of Canada and Europe to the US, studies consistently find that they treat more people at lower costs. Yes, new problems may come from trading systems. But the real life experience is that patients in the other countries survive better.

I suspect you will use some sleight of hand and say that the US problem is collectivism, not free market. But that's arguing from theory again, not facts on the ground. In a reality based universe, Canada and Western Europes' collective health care is superior. And if we go to single payer, we would have the advantage of learning from all the past experience; borrowing what works, avoiding Canada's ban on out of network coverage.

A general note. The rhetoric of anarchocapitalists gives me a powerful feeling of deja vu -- to 1983 conversations with Trotskyites. Twenty year olds who had just read the Manifesto had all the answers. Socialism solved everything. Shortages might occur? No, economic democracy would unleash the creative abilities of the masses, and outproduce previous systems. What about the USSR? That isn't real socialism. If you do it the ideologically correct way, all those problems will disappear. Ideology ALWAYS provided a dodge from pesky facts.

Like anarchocapitalists, the Trotskyites had no existing example of successful socialism (they are Trots, so they are critical of China and the USSR). So ALL their arguments were from the pristine, mathematically precise world of ideology.

Eventually, a wing of ACs will start grappling with the problem of reality, and trying to adapt their theories to fit pragmatic conditions. Then another wing will jump on them for "revisionism," abandoning the path to the true heaven. You heard it here first. It's all happened before.
Seek truth from fact. Show me an ideology with all the answers, and I'll show you a burning bush.

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There is no practicality, just theory. No shades of gray, just black and white. [/sarcasm}

I don't advocate universal health care (there seem to be alot of problems with it) but nor can I advocate 100% free market health care either. I should know, I'm part of it.

To quote a show vaguely dealing with medicine, "People are just bastard covered bastards with bastard cream filling" and your experiences with health care are most likely going to be common place if the industry is deregulated entirely.

Edit: Re: Bolded part: Truer words were never spoken.

Cody