Whereas mine was far more similar to Uptight's.

Adroitbeing, it is clear you have expeince in economics. The examples you provide such as the Eisenhower freeways and other infrastructure are compelling, but you must admit that they, by nature, either fit the definiition of public good, or, it would be very difficult to force them into the tests for a private good.

Medical care, on the other hand, meets neither the rival test, nor the exclusive test. It is not, therefore, in the economic definition, a "public good."

There is no reason, however, not to do anything about it.

HSAs are a good idea, and would help out a lot of people. Very few people know about them, though. That can be easily changed. While it is not the entire solution, it is no reason not to test them out.

It seems to me that most people are posting about the hardships of being uninsured. I am sypathetic here, as I am uninsured. This does not justify a government takeover of 17% of the economy in a bureaucracy which mandates which doctor you will see, which procedures are availible, and even who can enter medical school.

Choose your health insurance. Write it off on your taxes. It is not as if taxes are not social control, so we may as well use them to alleviate this problem. This can be fine tuned in any number of ways, such as means testing, limiting the amount allowed to be written off, excluding those who have insurance through employment, et cetera.

I think most problems that may creep up under this National Helath Insurance program could be easily repaired. If it is fundematally flawed and unworkable, we may have to look at another system. We should not simply impose the NHS on people until we have explored other options.

Apologies for spelling errors and typos; I am a bit rushed.

National Health Insurance is certainly an idea, but onlly solves half the problem. Serious changes need to be made in our health care system as a whole.

Pharma companies are spending far too much on marketing, passing the [/savings] on to us. Treatment decisions need to be given back to doctors. And, yes, I am a democrat who thinks tort reform is long overdue.

These problems are the real issues that are breaking the system. NHI or NHS will still be fucked up unless we deal with them. Still worthwhile, but it will be giving universal access to a fucked up system.

Hi,
there it is for a first post...

Health care for everyone means bad deficient sevices for everyone. I live in Quebec, I know first hand what I'm talking about. Adding up all the various taxes around here, we give almost 50% of our earning to the state to pay for all these socialist utopias. We end up with a huge bureaucratic missmanaged mess, corruption, many months long waiting list for very sick people waiting for their chirurgical intervention and the list goes on and on. Some people are dying every months waiting in line for an intervention they will never get in time but we're still paying huge taxes. To stay on topic I'll avoid talking about all the other government programs but most of the time, it is about the same thing and it ends up with similar result.

To be honest, the sheme worked well for almost a generation. Those who started this sheme, paying for it in part with debt accumulated on the shoulders of future generations profitted greatly from it.

Governments will always be elected when they promise more cookies to the mass.

Do you want more of those poisonous cookies ?


For more information on sound economic practices and the long term effect of socialism, I recommend a visit to the Mise Institute and particularly the works of Murray N. Rothbard.

Nice personal attack!!!

Oh I forgot Americans have become pussies!!!! Unions did it back in the '20's and "30's.......have a "sit in" strike or a protest.......lefties are good at that!!! I do remember a bunch of immigrants holding L.A. hostage a few years ago with their Housekeeping and janitor strike.......they got what they wanted!!!

Ah, OK - you're living in *that* fantasy world.


I can't believe I have to rehash the obvious like this but for your benefit, here goes:

This is not the 1920's or '30s.

American manufacturing employment has plummeted since 80 years ago, to be replaced largely with low-paying non-benefit non-union service jobs at megacorporations like Wal-Mart (the #1 employer in the country).

Tactics like agressive union-busting, hiring large numbers of workers who work just under the full-time threshold, and making healthcare optional with large payroll deductions that many low paid workers cannot afford keep the workers at a disadvantage. When management threatens to close the entire store after a sucessful union membership drive, other employees notice.

As far as events in L.A. go, please elaborate with some actual facts, from actual sources.

KTHX.

For a big scary biker dude, you have a thin skin and a poor grasp of the difference between a personal attack and someone correctly noticing your exaggeration.

Ssshhhhh. You'll only encourage him, Stiles. If we're all very, very quiet, he might get bored and go look at boobs, instead.

"Public good" is narrowly defined jargon used by economists with even more narrowly defined objectives. Fortunately, even those of us in the capital markets don't make all decisions on such narrowly defined jargon; we employ the use of empathy; we do the right thing; etc. This is the responsibility of all citizens.

From an economics perspective, we must provide healthcare to every US citizen, then concern ourselves with the issue of ensuring the healthcare service and pharmaceutical providers generate sufficient profit to fund future development and provide a reasonable return to investors.

If you are one of those narrow minded economists, you might also narrowly argue that if we provide public good for profit then we introduce problems. The most serious of which is known as the "free rider." How can a for-profit provider (this should be hospitals, doctors, and pharma companies) be sure of payment for good use if by the definition of a public good it is impossible to exclude access to it? The answer is quite simple actually, the government carries the burden of payment - or in clear terms, we taxpayers pick up the tab for that element. This makes economic sense due to the even demand for the good by all US citizens. There is no more or less even demand for healthcare than there is for say...a road or transportation infrastructure. (Sorry of the economic jargon muddies the message here - terms like even demand are more economic jargon used to characterize "traits."

To stay with the economic jargon, healthcare is not "consumed." Beds may be used, medical services may be employed, but healthcare is not consumed. Medications are consumed and already under government protection (disbursement), regulation (patent protection, testing, and narcotic credentials.) Developing governmental influence to nationally negotiated pricing is no more threatening to pharma profits than is the back-door approach used today where federal and state authorities pressure insurance carriers who then either negotiate better prices or strong-arm, the market through denial of reimbursement for expensive care.

Moreover, of course, we have the example of Medicare, which is no different from a national healthcare plan. Medicare covers the costs of healthcare for people with fixed incomes who would otherwise not be able to afford care. The objective of Medicare would seem to apply to a much broader range of American citizens than originally intended when healthcare costs represented a much smaller percentage of personal expense.

My economic argument asserts that universal healthcare is a public good with reference to excludability (more economic jargon), but for argument's sake, let's assume that the reverse is true and consider the implications. If universal healthcare was a private good by way of exclusion then what are the implications to the nation of "workers" and to the future of children on whom we depend to continuously expand our nation's intellectual, economic, and social capital? The health of a nation forms the foundation in its rawest form, for all other advancement. Unhealthy nations are unable to compete, grow, or even survive. (I encourage all the objectivists who might believe that they are the reincarnation of John Galt to remember that Ayn Rand wrote novels, not life-guides.)

Finally, there are market dynamics at work to which we must remain aware. Healthcare inflation outpaces nearly every spending category and may be peaking as measured by the willingness of corporations to fund growth through benefits funding and the ability for individuals to pay. Declining market growth will force restrictions on research into new drugs, procedures, and cures. Bill, Melinda, and Warren cannot fund the difference.

Most of you here on these boards are not old enough to remember the effects of polio on this nation. Many thousands of people died and 50,000 US citizens were afflicted with this crippling disease each year. Private industry failed to address this disease; the combination of government effort and citizenry contributions saved the day. The March of Dimes was a program encouraging even the poorest of families to contributed dimes to the effort to cure polio. Conversely, the UK took an entirely different approach. Rather than establishing government funding for research for a cure, they set up clinics that taught people how to deal with the effects of polio, while waiting for private industry. The results were devastating to the country in terms of both unnecessary deaths and the cultural phenomenon of finding itself resigned to accepting the difficulties the disease wrought.

I will catch my breath before addressing the issue of HSAs - but the concern is personal cash flow, NOT tax deferred temporary tax savings; but that is another chapter.

Sorry for the longish post - I have strong feelings on this subject.

COMMIE PINKO!

Adroitbeing, I talked to an old friend who teaches economics at a university. She agreed with me that US helath care is, at this point, a private good. She also pointed out that an NHS is neither rival nor exclusive, and, is, therefore, a public good. I must bow to her knowlege, and I concede that point was not well taken.

As to HSAs, you are correct, which I why I posted above that they may help to solve some of the problem. They are not an end all, but they will work for some.

Ayn Rand is a philosopher, too.

My stomach is in knots because this actually happened. Ulgh, this country is its last weak nimble leg.

You should see a doctor about that.

Aren't there a bunch of current threads on this issue? Why bump one from 4 years ago when people are actually discussing it in other threads?

Anyway...I'm hopeful because lots of people I know who work very hard but have no benefits may actually be able to get treatment for their medical conditions now.

Maybe those doctors can do something for your knots too. Doesn't sound like a normal reaction to me.

Did you post anything like this in response to the two "wars" that are currently (and were already) bankrupting this country?

It never fails to astound me when people gripe about how deleterious and expensive it will be (as in, the future) to try to make sure that dirt-poor children don't die from brain abscesses, but couldn't apparently have been bothered about our billions-a-month "nation-building" projects in the Middle East.