Even if it has some regulations(preferably not). Generally when I argue with people who like the new healthcare reform and UHC, the one point I can't ever get around is that in those systems the price is able to remain relatively low compared the one in the US( I know ours isn't a free system) is because everyone is forced to pay into it so theres a larger pool which in turn causes it to be relatively cheaper compared to other systems. I don't understand everything about it entirely, but I do think doing things such as people paying for their own checks up instead of relying on on insurance and negotiating prices with their physician could help keep prices down for insurance, but the goal would be to make it an attrative option to get insurance instead of it being forced.
I'm looking for something more detailed than saying "get government out of it" because your average person wouldn't buy that and I typically wouldn't be convinced. If there are other alternatives I would love to hear them.
I'm actually not opposed to government-funded health care, but at the same time, the government is the main reason why health care is so expensive.
Government enforces the legal cartel of doctors, which limits the supply of health care providers.
Consider the fact that only doctors are allowed write give prescriptions, despite the fact that pharmacists have the skills to diagnose and write prescriptions. In many countries, you can go straight to the pharmacist for a prescription, which cuts out a middleman and lowers prices.
In many states, mid-wives are banned, so that only doctors can deliver babies, even if midwives are vigorously trained in how to deliver babies - again creating a government enforced cartel which raises prices.
The FDA makes it a crime to claim that foods, herbs, or excercies can 'treat any disease,' despite reams of peer-reviewed science proving they can, which has the effect of limiting health care to often expensive pharmaceuticals.
The AMA gets to decide who is a doctor - they give accredidation to universities. As basically a guild, their interest is in ther being as few doctors as possible, which is part of the reason med-school takes so long.
So imagine there were alternatives to being AMA certified - that students could start med-school straight out of high school - that Americans could go straight to pharmacists to get presecriptions, could go to midwives for natal care, could go to nutritionists for diagnoses and treatment - that doctors were forced to compete on the free market.
What do you think would happen to the price of doctors bills? What do you think would happen to the cost of health care?
"the way insurance is supposed to work."
This is a good post about why having a system of insurance for day-to-day health care doesn't make sense in the first place.
"You just gobble up every bit a baloney someone feeds you?"
Caley, don't antagonize newbies.
It's vague in the sense that it basically says private industry is going to be more efficient at managing money which I already believe and doesn't go much in depth at the problems plaguing the US industry. BTW is there an autoquote feature?
@Sieben: Agreed. Unfortunately, the majority of people (including very smart and well-educated people that should know better) have "brain-scramble" when it comes to reasoning about things the government already produces or wants to produce. My counter-argument is not intended to show "the free market would do it better"* but to attempt to dislodge the fnord in people's brains that prevents them from actually reasoning about the issue. Pointing out that there are things which are a higher priority to be universalized than health-care, it may be possible to get people asking themselves why it is, really, that we are universalizing health care.
Clayton -
*This much is obvious, if the person doesn't already get it, there are larger problems in his or her thinking than just an assessment of the facts and reasons
@pent: As I said before, feel free to ask specific questions. I don't have access to HAARP technology, so I can't read your mind or anybody else's.
Oh sorry, I wasn't sure if you meant questions about the article or just in general. One of the proposals by Republicans during the reform debate is that we should open up state lines for healthcare but it was strongly opposed since the companies would just flock to the states with the youngest, healthiest pool of individuals and sell their product to them. With healthcare businesses dropping people and their profits still going up, do you think opening up state lines could help fix costs?
In my first posts I brought up that ideally costs would go down if people, especially young people found the costs of buying healthcare worth it, but probably don't because of how much it might costs. In another post I brought up the hidden costs people who go bankrupt becasue of not having healthcare have on those who do. Do you think making the industry more free might lead to people purchasing more healthcares which drives down the costs since there is a larger pool?This is from the viewpoint that more people on insurance would help fix costs on top of the ideas suggested earlier with removing the middle man. I have another one but I can't remember.
I know Mises put this together a while back, hope it helps.
"Man thinks not only for the sake of thinking, but also in order to act."-Ludwig von Mises
Well, reducing restrictions on interstate sale of healthcare would certainly be a good idea but the cure (Federal intervention) is worse than the disease (braindead state regulations).
I guess my view of the healthcare debate is that getting into the percentages and numbers is a losing argument because you've already granted from the outset that it is possible, through debate and discussion, to determine a "best state of affairs" which is exactly central-planning. You lose. Then it's just a debate over which state of centrally-planned affairs is the best or ideal. The free market is a more thorough-going rejection of this point of view. The problem is that the whole argument assumes that we can determine society-wide priorities when, in fact, we cannot. Everyone values things differently. Universalization imposes values onto people that they may or may not have. If you value healthcare more than other things, then UHC is a subsidy of your valuations. If you value a lot of other things more than healthcare, then UHC is an imposition of a high valuation for healthcare onto you.
Thanks Alex And no Clayton I wasn't arguing for centralizing healthcare. I was asking you of your opinion on how healthcare costs could go down via making it attractive enough to encourage those who wouldn't but it to get it to contribute to the pool, the way insurance is supposed to work.
If you aren't going to help me with my answer then please don't post in my topic please anymore.
You have to realize that you can't get anywhere starting from the assumptions you are making. I should have just said that instead posing it as a question.
The people living in those countries are healthy and not dying because of their system.
If you believe something like this you don't have anything to argue about with someone who supports that system. It raises the question of why you would be against it.
There was a sticky thread on health care.
The system of healthcare in Europe is less expensive than the one in America, but often the quality here is a lot better. When I had to research it I found that a lot of the times the waiting times to see specialists could be up to a month compared to around 2-3 weeks here, their hospitals sometimes weren't in great shape depending on where you were at, it's done on an emergency basis, and theres a doctor shortage from controlled doctor wages. Despite that Europeans still seem to love it and would prefer their system over ours. I would just want to know if by decentralizing ours we could make ours more efficient than what we have and less costly. And I hope I didn't come across as being rude earlier, it's just that I sometimes get "oh you're just repeating libertarian talking points" and it's my first day here and I get a "you're repeating commie talking points" which I wasn't expecting.
I wasn't accusing you using opposing talking points. It's just that you might not be as hyperskeptical as I am. I once read a whole World Health Report and found that it was both totally biased and being wrongly referenced. The opposition always uses the fallacy of comparing total spending divided by population and equating this to a price comparison.
When I ran in the last provincial election I did an all-candidates meeting at a retirement home. One guy from the audience walked up to the mic and broke down crying after saying that he had cancer and there was no provision from OHIP for treatment (and there is no such thing as a private health sector here). A 20 year old student will swear that Canada (or whatever European state he is from) has the best health care in the world, except Cuba.
Thank you Grayson. Paul talked about that a little his Revolution: A Manifesto and I brought it up earlier. I came across this that I need to look over later http://mises.org/daily/3613
I didn't mean to be as cheeky as it seemed..
Unfortunately, there is no good way to compare health systems in the fashion of comparing prices. In a system without prices you get the socialist calculation problem, where politicians are arbtrarily deciding the total amount that should be spent on it. Whatever arguments you are engaged in regarding unit costs must not reference anything beyond the U.S border.
I've read Mises and his calculation theory, but I don't think thats the way to go in trying to debunk socialized healthcare system. IMO
And yeah I looked at the WHO. They stopped trying to measure a contries healthcare since there isn't a objectivable way to do it.