Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (3734)	1/11/2008 12:47:18 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Hi guys, I just spent a little time going back some in this thread and want to just throw another idea into the mix. It may have been discussed before but I did't see it. First let me say that I'm a committed capitalist and investor, and I tend to strongly favor private market solutions to things. But when I step back and look at healthcare, it seems to me that it's simply not suited for capitalist solutions. First, there's not really the kind of competitive forces that drive costs down and make the 'best' product easily available to all consumers. We don't see ads which say 'two for one hip-replacements' or 'gall-bladder surgery, 20% off in the month of January'. If we've been injured in car wreck, we're not going to ask the ambulance driver to take us to the next town because that town has 'cheaper' emergency room care. And we can't return a botched amputation and ask for a better one, the way we can return a camera that didn't work they way it was supposed to. The fact is that medical costs are set for us and we, the end user, lack the traditional capitalist methods to get the best and the cheapest end product for ourselves. The end product is really our well-being, not the health insurance policy, it seems to me. The second problem, however, does involve the insurers. Like the first I see the problem again as one of the inherent structure of capitalism. Capitalism is adversarial in structure. That's the genius of it. Competition brings us great tennis shoes as different companies duke it out in the marketplace. But does this adversarial structure really work as far as health care goes? Do we want to be party to a situation where the provider, the insurer, is part of a system that succeeds by delivering less for more? Publicly traded health insurers face a double whammy. They compete for customers and they're compelled to deliver rising earnings. It's only logical that they will deliver as little as they can in the way of benefits (and still hold on to the customer) and charge as much as they can (and still hold on to the customer). That's capitalism, and capitalism works to the consumer's benefit 99% of the time. So I'm not sure the best argument is one of everyone having a right to healthcare, of putting it in the entitlement arena and appealing to the sensibilites of the public. It seems to me that one can look at the situation logically and see the inherent structural difficulties in a private payer system. The next step then is simply for us, the end user, to ask ourselves if there's a better one.