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

To: geode00 who wrote (215872)	2/1/2007 5:42:43 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

1. You finally agree there is no free market in the US or anywhere in the world. I said there is no "ideal" free market because that was your hangup. Just like there is no ideal electrical motor, or transistor, or anything else. But only a fool would claim that because nothing is ideal, we can't do anything. I keep telling you that Medicare IS available to get rid of private insurance. No it is not. It is limited by law to a certain segment of the population. There it has a pretty good monopoly. What are you trying to argue? That new insurance companies don't startup, despite the enticing field you claim is there, because they fear Medicare will put them out of business? In that case, why do the existing ones stay in insurance. Surely they fear the same thing, and are all trying to get out of their lucrative business and into something else. The US still ranks very poorly in terms of OUTCOMES. Go google about about the excellent and speedy service that patients get under socialized medicine. As I already pointed out to you, eating healthfully, good exercise, immunizations, antibiotics, and responsible behavior along with perhaps dental care, will give by far the best ROI of any health care system. Hands down beat any system on the planet from and ROI POV. But when the statistically unlikely happens to you (appendix ruptures say), you just die. As would most premature babies. This is what American will not tolerate. We spend millions on a premature baby, but underfund childhood immunizations. That is why the ROI is poor in our system. The premature baby is going to die unless treated, while a health child lacking immunizations, is not currently a problem, so we punt. The only thing that going with a Medicare type system does, is it places a single entity in charge of deciding how the money gets spent: Do a few babies die so we can immunize more kids, or do we run more risks with the kids to save the babies. A godlike Bureaucracy making all the important decisions is what Medicare gets you. That and a lack of innovation. It might get a little boost from scale, but that is the only upside. You'd have to be an idiot to choose those two major negatives for that particular upside.

To: geode00 who wrote (215872)	2/1/2007 5:45:44 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Health insurance premiums rose 96% under Bush. Who can afford that? How much do you think the cost of Medicare tax will go up if Medicare becomes universal?

To: geode00 who wrote (215872)	2/1/2007 5:50:39 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Part of the problem with the healthcare system is that it is a for-profit enterprise that wants people to be chronically ill so that they will be chronically treated. That is not a 'healthcare' system, that is a 'for profit' business. I'd be willing to discuss this with you if you could offer any plausible argument for why you find this to be the case in health care but not in computers or autos. I asked you that once before, and your response was that critical & immediate requires a non-profit monopoly system to be effective. I then pointed out that FEMA and Katrina should show you how stupid that POV is. Please tell me why anyone looking at FEMA & Katrina would advocate that something both critical and immediate requires a non-profit monopoly system calling the shots.