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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (214473)	1/24/2007 5:09:36 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The uninsured may not spend as much on their healthcare as the insured, but when they become injured or truly sick they get treatment, oftentimes at emergency rooms. So insuring the uninsured might not increase total usage as much as you think. Also the insured are now greatly subsidizing the uninsured. With a universal single payer system, everyone pays in. Most of the uninsured can afford some amount of premium...even more so if the coverage is only for catastropic illnesses. As for 'wealth transfer', in theory, every change in the tax code would constitute a transfer of wealth from one group to another. Deficit spending by a government negates that.

To: neolib who wrote (214473)	1/24/2007 5:15:25 PM
From: geode00	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Of course it does. Wealth isn't a physical thing, it's the mutual acceptance of control over resources. That's it. Open your mind and get away from what IS to what CAN BE. Your thinking is too limited by convention. Think unconventionally. Wealth, like that of Bill Gates, is created ONLY BECAUSE of the system within which he lives. No system, no wealth. Don't limit this discussion to just insurance. I'm talking about national health CARE. Yes, some people will use the medical system more because they now have a way to pay for it. So what? Some people use the roads more than others. So what? Some people use the schools more. So what? There are also people like moi with insurance but with no desire to be sick and go to a sickly place like a hospital. YEECH. Some people use the public parks more, the sidewalks more, the fire department more. So what? Who the heck is using $2-3 billion a week waging a ridiculous war? I don't see 300 million Americans up in arms about that. In fact, millions of Americans said...okey dokey go spend. We, as a country, can spend $1 TRILLION killing people for oil but not spend money for health care to keep everyone healthy and productive? No? Why not? What kind of people are we? Let's see how this works now. If you own lots of property but have no children, you are paying lots of money for schools even though you receive no benefit from said schooling. So, why not get rid of the property taxes that go to education and make every family pay their own way for the children they want to have? Why not? Profits can be a fine way to keep efficiency in a system. Yep, that's the freshman college student's understanding of economics. It's easy, it sounds familiar but it's incorrect. The 'free' market doesn't exist..if you think it does SHOW ME where it exists. It's only a theory and an interesting exercise for academics nothing more. You can set up experiments for 'free' markets but try and find one in the real world. Profits are just that, profits. They're not makers of efficiency. What exactly caused those humongous profits for ExxonMobil? A DESTABILIZED ME. That's efficient? A $1 TRILLION war for profit? Does raising the pay of a CEO to 400 times that of the average worker make CEO's better CEO's? Ask Home Depot's shareholders about that one. generally speaking we have a wealth of economic data that says for profit systems work better than non-profit systems. Where? For what purposes? Under what conditions? Sometimes for-profit works better, sometimes it doesn't. Try and get a for profit enterprise to develop a new antibiotic over an improved Viagra why don't you. Try and get a for profit to give up fighting for extended patent protection in order to let the 'market' sell generics. Good luck. I'm all for a mix of public and private in healthcare but I believe that, as the richest country on earth, we have an OBLIGATION to every citizen to provide cradle to grave affordable healthcare. From what I see, people are dying because of money. Almost half of bankruptcies are from medical bills. Get rid of middle-men insurance companies in favor of single-payer, get rid of the AMA's monopoly over the number of practicing physicians, get rid of all the money that goes to end of life in favor of hospice and sufficient pain medication. Get rid of government subsidies for the likes of high fructose corn syrup. Get rid of advertisements for zero-nutritional content sodas and fast foods. Subsidize local farmers, build more sidewalks. There's so much that can be done to improve the health of the country and most of it actually saves us money.