Universal Healthcare? Can it work? I'm doubtful...

[TomVeil]

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What happens to the price of TVs?

What happens to the price of VCRs?

DVD players?

Pocket calculators? Digital watches? Ball point pens? Do you know when the first ball point pen was introduced in 1947 it sold for $20 (in 1947 dollars no less), and within 2 years they sold for something like $0.60?

How about computers? Microwave ovens? Boob jobs? Cell phones?

In the free market, providers have to *compete* with each other to get you to *voluntarily* choose to patronize them. They compete by lowering costs, lowering prices, increasing services, increasing quality, innovating new products. This is why *your* life gets *easier* every single year.

But in some industries, that mechanism is not allowed to operate because of government intervention. Those are the ones where the real costs go *up* every year, like health care, insurance, public education, roads, police, and courts.



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All these things got cheaper because of technology. Medical costs go UP because of technology. Amazing.

Now if you could only convince me that by opening up the market, prices would go down and everybody would be happy, I'll jump right along side of you. But for all your ramblings about the evils of government, you haven't given me anything to show that this would actually be the case. Medical care vs Ball Point Pens really doesn't do it for me.

[TomVeil]

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Health care is a basic human right. As such, everyone is entitled to care. We currently have a system where millions of people do not get care. Private health care will never address this problem because it's not in their interest to.

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That depends greatly on your definition of "health care". I will actually agree that, yes, if an uninsured single mother has a baby with a fever of 103, that baby should (and will, according to FEDERAL law) get care in any emergency room.

I have no problem with that. My beef is this. If you're saying that everyone has a right to go sit in the doctors office every time they have a sinus infection or a headache, without paying for that right by paying for their OWN INSURANCE you're wrong, such a system provided at my expense is ridiculous, and I don't believe most Americans will tolerate it.

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Why do you think that we would tolerate it either?

[bills217]

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Health care is a basic human right. As such, everyone is entitled to care.

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So you're in favor of slavery?

Also, has it *always* been a basic human right? Or is this a recent development?

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Let me expand on this a little - I know some of you don't speak the language of freedom.

If health care is a basic human right that we all are justly ENTITLED to, then what you are saying is that it is morally justifiable for someone, even a WEALTHY person, to enter a doctor's office waving a gun whilst demanding free and immediate treatment for his cold. After all - said wealthy person is ENTITLED to it - it justly belongs to him - it is his most basic right as a human. And I think everyone would agree that when our most basic rights as humans are violated, utilizing the amount of force necessary to solve the problem is a justifiable response.

Now let's talk about entitlements vs. obligations. Where there is an *entitlement*, there MUST also be an *obligation*. So if health care is a basic human right that everyone is MORALLY ENTITLED to, then SOMEONE must be MORALLY OBLIGATED to supply it.

So what exactly are the moral requirements surrounding these obligations? Are only doctors/insurance companies obligated? Besides sounding an awful lot like slavery, it really isn't very fair, considering that (# of people on earth) > (# of doctors/insurance agents). The doctors and insurance agents are obligated to provide a lot more than what they receive. To repeat - they are actually MORALLY OBLIGATED to provide more than they themselves are MORALLY ENTITLED to receive! They are in the hole from the day they are born! There's certainly nothing universal or basic about that. What's that, you say? The obligation doesn't come until they become a doctor? When exactly does this turnover take place? Are you claiming their basic moral nature as a human somehow changes because they become a doctor? What about when doctors retire? Does their basic moral nature as humans change again and now they're entitled to be net receivers of health care again rather than net providers? Doesn't sound like you're talking about universal basic human rights to me.

So surely you're not in favor of slavery - let's go with something more fair that's universal and equal for everyone throughout all time - everyone is morally entitled to X $ of health care, and everyone is also morally obligated to provide X $ of health care. This is more fair and equitable, right? Well, there are several problems. In this way of doing it, your downtrodden poor are actually quite evil, since they clearly aren't meeting their provider requirements, which, let me remind you, they are MORALLY OBLIGATED to provide, so this is a pretty steep offense. They seem like the biggest offenders here, not the victims.
We should really be designing a system that forces them to provide their morally just share, not a system that further subsidizes them.

Also, has this universal moral right to X $ of health care been true for all time, for everyone, or is it a recent development? If it hasn't been true for all time, then, again, it certainly isn't very equitable and doesn't sound like something we can be calling a basic human right. As a matter of fact, I am very certain that (total $ amount of available health care 10k years ago) < (total $ amount of available health care today). (DUCY? Capitalism FTW!) So does the amount correspond to then or now? If it corresponds to now, then we have certainly had a lot of despicable human beings over the years who have been defaulting on the health care they are morally obligated to provide. If it corresponds to then, then it looks to me like the current system actually provides health care to everyone already way, WAY in excess of that dollar amount. This would make an excellent case for reducing gov't health care subsidies.

So which is it exactly? Or were you really just talking out of your ass about all that basic human right/entitlement stuff?

[TomVeil]

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If health care is a basic human right that we all are justly ENTITLED to, then what you are saying is that it is morally justifiable for someone, even a WEALTHY person, to enter a doctor's office waving a gun whilst demanding free and immediate treatment for his cold. After all - said wealthy person is ENTITLED to it - it justly belongs to him - it is his most basic right as a human. And I think everyone would agree that when our most basic rights as humans are violated, utilizing the amount of force necessary to solve the problem is a justifiable response.


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And that's where I stopped reading. Hope the rest of your post was better.

[Borodog]

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Is there a large amount of doctors that will suddenly do something else because of....I don't even know, some random reason that makes sense in your head.

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Yes, there are. You can tell by comparing the salaries of doctors to the salaries of people with similar levels of training an skills, like say Ph.D. biologists. Doctors make consistently about 3 times the salary as the biologists, and have for a long, long time. In a free market, people would choose to become doctors rather than Ph.D. biologists, raising the supply of doctors and loweing their average wage, and lowering the supply of Ph.D. biologists and raising their average wage, until the two equilibrated. The fact that this difference continues for decades indicates that an artificial barrier to entry exists. It's called the AMA and the rules that have the government put in place to protect them from competition. So yes, there are a large number of people who would be doctors but are not because of government interference.

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Are there huge doctor shortages in countries where universal health care exists?

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Uh, yes?

doctor shortage canada

doctor shortage UK

[bills217]

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If health care is a basic human right that we all are justly ENTITLED to, then what you are saying is that it is morally justifiable for someone, even a WEALTHY person, to enter a doctor's office waving a gun whilst demanding free and immediate treatment for his cold. After all - said wealthy person is ENTITLED to it - it justly belongs to him - it is his most basic right as a human. And I think everyone would agree that when our most basic rights as humans are violated, utilizing the amount of force necessary to solve the problem is a justifiable response.


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And that's where I stopped reading. Hope the rest of your post was better.

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Hey, it's your idea, not mine.

[Brainwalter]

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If health care is a basic human right that we all are justly ENTITLED to, then what you are saying is that it is morally justifiable for someone, even a WEALTHY person, to enter a doctor's office waving a gun whilst demanding free and immediate treatment for his cold. After all - said wealthy person is ENTITLED to it - it justly
belongs to him - it is his most basic right as a human. And I think everyone would agree that when our most basic rights as humans are violated, utilizing the amount of force necessary to solve the problem is a justifiable response.


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And that's where I stopped reading. Hope the rest of your post was better.

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Don't argue with logic, just ignore it and it'll go away.

[owsley]

What is going to force the government to do a good job of providing healthcare and avoid wasting money if it doesn't have to compete with anyone else?

[Jamougha]

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For the money the US is putting into health most countries could have a stellar system. However you slice it, the US doesn't seem to.


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Yes, our people like to sue our doctors for no good reason and juries like to unfairly give them huge rewards for it. This doesn't really count as a problem with the health care system. In addition, we have to pay for all the R&D for the rest of the world since your artifically lowered prices don't allow for any.

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Total R&D on health, including government and private spending, is apparently under 6% of total US healthcare costs. That doesn't seem ruinous. http://www.researchamerica.org/publi...dollar2005.pdf

Pharmaceutical spending was 12.9% of total US health costs in 2005, much lower than the average for OECD countries. Again, not ruinous. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/23/34970246.pdf

I'm surprised that you're so eager to take the word of the US government on these things. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Litigation may be more of a problem there.

[Borodog]

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[ QUOTE ]
What happens to the price of TVs?

What happens to the price of VCRs?

DVD players?

Pocket calculators? Digital watches? Ball point pens? Do you know when the first ball point pen was introduced in 1947 it sold for $20 (in 1947 dollars no less), and within 2 years they sold for something like $0.60?

How about computers? Microwave ovens? Boob jobs? Cell phones?

In the free market, providers have to *compete* with each other to get you to *voluntarily* choose to patronize them. They compete by lowering costs, lowering prices, increasing services, increasing quality, innovating new products. This is why *your* life gets *easier* every single year.

But in some industries, that mechanism is not allowed to operate because of government intervention. Those are the ones where the real costs go *up* every year, like health care, insurance, public education, roads, police, and courts.



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All these things got cheaper because of technology. Medical costs go UP because of technology. Amazing.

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Lol. And why is that?

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Now if you could only convince me that by opening up the market, prices would go down and everybody would be happy, I'll jump right along side of you. But for all your ramblings about the evils of government, you haven't given me anything to show that this would actually be the case. Medical care vs Ball Point Pens really doesn't do it for me.

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I gave you an entire laundry list of ways that government interference raises costs, a laundry list of axes along which private companies have to fiercely compete, a laundry list of non-regulated industries where prices continually fall, a laundry list of heavily regulated industries where prices continually skyrocket, and you claim that nothing I've provided shows that the market works. Prices only started to go up after government began destroying the market. You don't think that's a mighty interesting coincidence?

It's like a religion with you people.