insurance should not cover pre existing conditions

insurance should not cover pre existing conditions

There, I said it. Google be damned. I looked for "insurance should not cover pre existing conditions" and I got 0 (zero) hits.

I then looked for "insurance should not cover pre-existing conditions" and got 0 (zero) hits.

I then looked for "insurance should not cover preexisting conditions" and I moved up to 1 (one) hit.

We don't buy fire insurance while our houses are burning down, we don't buy life insurance for corpses, we don't buy flood insurance while standing in a hurricane, so why is it such an INCREDIBLY rare opinion that pre existing conditions should not be covered?

Insurance is bought to share risk. There's no risk of getting sick for those that are already sick!

Well now when people search for "insurance should not cover pre existing conditions" they'll know they're not the only sane people on the planet.

This has been a public service announcement, thank you for reading.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/0910/p09s02-coop.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2012/03/pre_existing_conditions_the_real_reason_insurers_won_t_cover_people_who_are_already_sick_.html

If an insurance company decides to cover pre-existing conditions, why stop it? ;)

Seraiah:

There, I said it. Google be damned. I looked for "insurance should not cover pre existing conditions" and I got 0 (zero) hits.

Probably because it's an oxymoron?

 

(For those readers who don't know words, and are too lazy to look it up, I'm referring to the fact that a program that "covers pre-existing conditions" is not "insurance.")

"There, I said it."

 

I agree it's an oxymoron, but when I look for "insurance should cover pre-existing conditions" I get 8,760 hits.

So Google is telling me that for each person that proposes such a ludicrous idea, there's not even .1% that will respond back with the opposite? That's incredible.

Seraiah:

So Google is telling me that for each person that proposes such a ludicrous idea, there's not even .1% that will respond back with the opposite? That's incredible.

Again, probably because the people who are smart enough to not hold such an idiotic notion are smart enough to understand the most obvious reason it is idiotic.

(i.e., if you know "insurance covering pre-existing conditions" is an oxymoron, you're not going to create literature that says it "shouldn't".)

You're basically whining that almost no one has come out and stated that "water should not be solid", when there's over 20k references to people saying "water should be solid".  I'd be willing to bet the reason for the discrepancy is that people who understand the oxymoronic nature of the phrase "water should not be solid" are not going to come out and assume the same oxymoron in order to try and correct it.

 

How will the free-market provide for those that do have pre-existing conditions? Charity and nothing more?

Btw, I got almost 10 million results from google. Not sure what's going on at your end of the interspace.

How will the government protect forests that are "predestined" to be dry and then struck by lightning. There are no guarantees, unfortunately. Not everyone can live forever, no matter how much we wish it were so. But I do believe that charity could provide plenty if government spending were to be reduced DRASTICALLY.

Consumariat:

How will the free-market provide for those that do have pre-existing conditions? Charity and nothing more?

No. There is such a thing as private welfare. Mutual-aid societies and fraternal hospitals were hugely popular as a form of private welfare before the government got its greedy hands into them and destroyed them: http://mises.org/daily/5388

 

Firstly, we're not talking about forests; we are talking about people, and as such, the question that should be asked is either "how will the government protect those with conditions that private insurance will not cover?" or "how will the free-market do so". If charity is the only means by which vulnerable people can be protected, then I fear that a lot more people will suffer under a completely free market as opposed to a properly run welfare state.

There is such a thing as private welfare. Mutual-aid societies and fraternal hospitals were hugely popular as a form of private welfare before the government got its greedy hands into them and destroyed them

Were they good enough to alleviate the conditions prevalent at the time though? My understanding of 19th century England is that it was a pretty dire place to live.

John James:

You're basically whining that almost no one has come out and stated that "water should not be solid", when there's over 20k references to people saying "water should be solid".

Not at all.

It's like if someone says that all lemonade should have vodka in it, and then to continue to call that beverage "lemonade".

For someone to come in and say, "No, all lemonade should not have vodka in it, and by the way, that wouldn't just be 'lemonade' anymore." isn't wild and crazy.

Also, why are you picking such a silly fight?

Consumariat:

Btw, I got almost 10 million results from google. Not sure what's going on at your end of the interspace.

I was searching in quotes for the exact phrase. Searching "insurance can not cover pre existing conditions" yields similar results. (One result)

I always enjoy it when someone is willing to argue on the opposing side on a forum that could be incredibly hostile to the position. Very ballsy.

So explain to me how you think a welfare system should work, from the point of view of the money. Start with the first tax collection and then trace it to the poor and I will tell you how I think I could make the system better. Does that sound reasonable?

So explain to me how you think a welfare system should work, from the point of view of the money. Start with the first tax collection and then trace it to the poor and I will tell you how I think I could make the system better. Does that sound reasonable?

That sounds very reasonable. A progressive taxation system would take a portion of a person's income over a particular threshold and place it into a central pool. The more you earn, the higher a rate you pay. This pool is used to fund healthcare that is available to all citizens based on medical need; an unemployment safety net that ensures people do not go hungry or lose their home in the event they get laid off; universal education up to a certain level; and care provision for the elderly.

 

Seraiah:

It's like if someone says that all lemonade should have vodka in it, and then to continue to call that beverage "lemonade".

For someone to come in and say, "No, all lemonade should not have vodka in it, and by the way, that wouldn't just be 'lemonade' anymore." isn't wild and crazy.

Also, why are you picking such a silly fight?

Well, technically, it's still lemonade.  It's just been spiked.  This can also called "hard lemonade" (although that typically refers to lemonade with a malt liquor, but alcohol just the same).  Or, if you want to look at it another way, one might argue that it's lemonade that's been added to the alcoholic beverage.

Either way, your analogy is not really a good one, as the drink is still generally considered lemonade...it's just alcoholic lemonade...or rather, lemonade with alcohol (or alternatively, alcohol with lemonade in it).  Afterall, "non-alcoholic beer" isn't considered an oxymoron, and the term "virgin" is commonly used in front of the name of typically alcoholic beverages to designate them as not having alcohol...as opposed to completely different names being used for alcoholic and non-acoholic versions of the (otherwise) same beverage.

 

As for your question, I find it curious you'd consider this debate "silly", considering you were the one who created an entire thread to vent your apparent anger with the situtation of there not being enough Google hits for this particular oxymoron to satisfy your liking.  In other words, I didn't introduce any new topic.  We're talking about precisely what this thread (you created) is about.  If this is such a silly subject, why did you create the thread?

 

Consumariat:

A progressive taxation system would take a portion of a person's income over a particular threshold and place it into a central pool.

There are two basic challenges for any centralised system that I'd like to discuss; Lack of experimentation, and similarly a lack of knowledge.

People have traditionally excelled when they have room for trial and error, so it would be beneficial to divide up this central pot among many different caretakers. Some caretakers would fail but the majority of them would trend toward emulating the caretakers that have yielded the best results. One central monopoly can only test one method at a time, so it is much slower to innovate.

So I think instead of having one central monopoly controlling the flow of money, we should divide up the system into many small groups.

Now the second challenge of a central insurance company is a knowledge problem. It's very difficult to know what's going on all around the country. Surveyers and oversight groups are needed to gauge the market and ensure that money is being allocated to the proper locations. In most centralised welfare states, the people that control the money are people that actually have very little knowledge about the healthcare industry or the areas that they are trying to serve. This often results in money being allocated to people that don't need it, and costing alot of money just for oversight and data gathering.

It would make more sense to split the groups up geographically into regions that they serve. This way, the caretakers are intimately knowledgable about the needs of their local community without the need to hire staff for the sole purpose of data gathering.

Also, politicians shouldn't decide how the money is spent, as they have very little knowledge about what produces results, especially in a specific area. Specialized workers in the area should have the ultimate decision on how the money is spent. Waste is much more obvious to the locals than it is to politicians thousands of miles away, without the need of oversight committees, or elaborate surveys.

At this point I hope I've established that specialised, decentralised, and independent groups would be better at innovating and oversight than one centralised authority.

Consumariat:

The more you earn, the higher a rate you pay.

When it comes to the amount of money that could be gathered, this method of funding is superb. However, it's important to be able incentivise workers to produce the best results.

So instead of taxing citizens to fund the program in their area, the caretakers should compete for tax dollars. Citizens would vote for the caretaking facility that they approve of the most, that way caretakers that produce the best results could get the most funding, while those that are not producing good results will be defunded and eventually closed.

But getting voting machines and counting ballots is expensive, and who's to say how much the highest voted facility should get? We already established that politicians should not decide as they don't know the needs of any particular area without costly data mining techniques, and we can't just let the best caretakers decide their own salary.

So instead of voting, citizens should just "vote" with their tax dollars by giving it to the caretakers they appreciate the most.

At this point I hope I've established that decentralised caretakers, funded by a certain percentage of tax dollars that the citizens themselves control is better than a centralised monopoly that funds the operations by taxing and having politicians decide where the money should be allocated.

Consumariat:

This pool is used to fund healthcare that is available to all citizens based on medical need; an unemployment safety net that ensures people do not go hungry or lose their home in the event they get laid off; universal education up to a certain level; and care provision for the elderly.

I think we can agree that specialists local to the area they serve would be much better at deciding how all of this should be done, rather than politicians in one area trying to decide how thousands of caretaking facilities should be managed, right?

If all of that makes sense I think we can get into why a voluntary system would make more sense that a taxing system.

John James:

As for your question, I find it curious you'd consider this debate "silly", considering you were the one who created an entire thread to vent your apparent anger with the situtation of there not being enough Google hits for this particular oxymoron to satisfy your liking.

Person 1: "Insurance should cover pre existing conditions."

Person 2: "Insurance should not cover pre existing conditions."

The whole conversation isn't ruined because they're technically oxymoronic statements, in fact I think both speakers would understand eachother perfectly well. You seem to be implying that no one on Earth should ever say what person 2 said because they'd be a stupid face. The purpose of language isn't to out-do others symantically, but to understand one another, so it still surprises me that people say, "Insurance should not cover pre existing conditions" once in a blue moon, even when there are thousands of pages in which the opposite was said. People don't even rebut with "insurance can not cover pre existing conditions"!

Edit: Thought of a better analogy.

It's like if the popular opinion in the world was that "all chairs should not have backs" and there being virtually no one sayindg, "chairs should have backs".
Maybe it would be better if someone went into a historical context to describe the first chair and how the word was originally used and how it doesn't make sense to say a chair shouldn't have a back and symantically it makes more sense to say that "all chairs should be changed into stools", and then finally arguing why it's a bad thing to remove the backs from all chairs.
It's just easier to counter with the opposite and go onto why it's a bad idea rather than dispute the use of words with people, but I guess that's just my opinion.

 

 A progressive taxation system would take a portion of a person's income over a particular threshold and place it into a central pool. The more you earn, the higher a rate you pay. This pool is used to fund healthcare that is available to all citizens based on medical need; an unemployment safety net that ensures people do not go hungry or lose their home in the event they get laid off; universal education up to a certain level; and care provision for the elderly.

A system that punishes and therefore arbitrarily suppresses output does not help the poor. A system that arbitrarily fixes the prices of medical goods and services (which is the inevitable result of such an entitlement program) neither increases the supply of doctors, nor the sophistication of its equipment nor the quality of care in general. A system that pays people to remain unemployed does not create employment and a system where banks can foreclose on delinquent homes will only reduce home ownership.

This is the lesson of economics.

insurance should not cover pre existing conditions

If you have a great idea for a business I suggest you start one up. When you do that,let us knowhow the customer feed back worked forthis particular model, and how it related to your initial plans and expectations.  

If not all you are doing is speaking intellectual gibberish

Consumariat:

How will the free-market provide for those that do have pre-existing conditions? Charity and nothing more?

Nothing is a pre-existing condition if you go back enough in time. Just insure your newborn baby for life (at what will be the cheapest rate he could ever conceivably get) and you’re set. 

Otherwise, pay from you own pocket, sell your house or car.

Otherwise, charity.

 

I would think we would all agree that insurance shouldn't cover pre existing conditions because you can't insure against something you already know the risk for, at it's 100%.

However, I have empathy for these people, not in the least because of the track healthcare has taken in this country, with insurance largely being tied to your employment, insurance companies got to unload a lot of people they might have been stuck with had their customer base not been forced into such fluidity.  For example, if it weren't prohibitively expensive for a lot of people to buy their own insurance and keep it regardless of where they are employed, they would never technically have to leave that plan and anything that happened to them or those insured under it would be covered.  Now some kid is insured under his paren't plan, gets some disease, and now God forbid his parents get laid off or switch jobs for any reason, they're screwed.  I'm sure the insurance companies don't mind this off loading of people they'd otherwise be stuck with, among other favors they get from the government.  So personally I don't care much about this issue from a practical stand point.

 

I would think we would all agree that insurance shouldn't cover pre existing conditions because you can't insure against something you already know the risk for, at it's 100%.

These are things that are exist only in our mind.  I can and sell "hope" or "widgets" for money.  The "ought" is for actual factual entrpreneurs who take the risk, whobelieve they can tap into some need.  Not moralistic Platonic intellectual speculators.  We can not plan  how society "ought" to behave - we can not turn themarket process or any of the goods it sells into "things"

There is no possible way anyone here can coordinate how these plans would work out by speculating. 

Besides all that it is possible people have made sweeping generalizations and category errors.  I may have "asthma", but what I am being protected from could be a number of more "acute" or deadly things that could or could not stem from it (e.g: an asthma attack).  To think in such narrow terms is self defeating, and once again...ultimately meaningless.

 

Firstly, we're not talking about forests; we are talking about people,

Then it s not insurance, its medical care.

A system that punishes and therefore arbitrarily suppresses output does not help the poor. A system that arbitrarily fixes the prices of medical goods and services (which is the inevitable result of such an entitlement program) neither increases the supply of doctors, nor the sophistication of its equipment nor the quality of care in general. A system that pays people to remain unemployed does not create employment and a system where banks can foreclose on delinquent homes will only reduce home ownership.

Well the system I describe is the one that my country (the UK) operated without significant problem for at least 30 years after WW2. That period saw the lowest ever unemployment, a rising level of output, slightly higher growth rates than in the subsequent 30 years, increased number of doctors, widened access to medical care, and a rising life-expectancy.

 

 

Nothing is a pre-existing condition if you go back enough in time. Just insure your newborn baby for life (at what will be the cheapest rate he could ever conceivably get) and you’re set. 

Otherwise, pay from you own pocket, sell your house or car.

Otherwise, charity.

A child is a distinct human being, an individual. Why should I have to be deprived medical care if I was born with a condition that my parents did not insure? Why should I suffer the consequences of what my parents chose or were unable to do, when there are other options out there for how society is organised?

Not everyone can afford a house or a car. Chronic medical conditions are the major cause of poverty, and poverty prevents a person from aqcuiring such property in the first place. 

I don't believe that charity will be enough to ensure people get the help they need.

 

 

I don't believe that charity will be enough to ensure people get the help they need.

And so the answer is violence??

Youre looking for some sort of guarantee, some certainty that government, nor any man, cannot provide. It is just not possible. What is possible is sustaining your proposed system for some amount of time, but not indefinitely, a system where others live at the expense of others with the threat of violence against life, liberty, and property used to coerce.

If that is what you consider humanitarian or moral, fine, we are all entitled to believe what we want. But don't masquerade it as something it is not; your proposed solution is violence.

You seem to be trying to say that since the subjects with pre-existing conditions are humans and not trees, that a group of humans should steal from other humans to provide something that *MIGHT* mitigate the eventual effects of the pre-existing conditions (provide welfare through the apparatus of the State).

Here, you assert that the responsibility for taking care of someone with a pre-existing condition falls squarely on the shoulders of those without the pre-existing condition, and further assert that the means to *maybe* mitigate the eventual effects should be taken by violence or threat of violence, as you posit that government will provide these means. 

Yes, I am saying exactly that. And I don't know why you emphasize the word 'might' so much; it's not as if the welfare state is some fancy new theoretical construct that has never been tested. Welfare states have been implemented successfully in a number of countries over the past century.

How does the free market provide ANY good or service to any individual(s)? There must first be an entity that produced the good or service, i.e. there must be supply (there are doctors and hospitals that produce the service in question already); next the consumer must show demand (this is money, something that will be exchanged for the service or good); if supply and demand aren't exactly equal, the price mechanism works its magic, moving to attempt to equalize supply and demand; and VIOLA! The free market provides a service or good that gets consumed which is valued by the consumer and which the producer is willing to provide at some compensation he deems appropriate.

But see this is the thing; medical providers/insurers would not provide care to people with pre-existing conditions unless it was for very high prices. High prices would often not be affordable to those with illnesses that cause poverty. Hense, privatised systems would leave many people with no access to healthcare whatsoever. Supply might very well coordinate with effective demand, i.e. desire to purchase that is also backed up by ability to pay; but it does not follow that supply will coordinate with medical demand, i.e. the needs of an individual in regards to their health.

Again, private charity did much to provide for the needy before the effects of legalized plunder had become so deeply rooted. People weren't dying out in the streets in America before Medicaid or before the massive insurance bureaucracies of today. To say otherwise is dishonest or ignorant. Doctors do want to help people out. At least they did more so when their actions were completely devoid of coercion from the State.

There a few things here I agree with, and some that I don't. It is plausable, and I would say likely, that charity would increase if taxes were reduced, but I would not trust that it would be enough. This leads onto the second point you make; maybe in America people were not dropping dead in the street back then, but I doubt that is the case considering people even today in the US die from curable diseases because they are not covered by insurance. My opinions, however, are formed from the experiences of my own country in the period before universal healthcare was introduced here. Victorian England was an awful time and place for the working class to live, and plenty of people died in the street. Whilst there were the Mutual and Friendly Societies etc, it was not enough to ameleorate the problems of that day, and this led to the introduction of the welfare/healthcare system.

 

What is your definition of a "properly-run welfare state?" Is it one in which government intervention into the market is thorough enough to distort prices and profits, or supply and demand until the population is worse off than before the government interference? Is it one in which the means to achieving large-scale welfare is forcing ever-increasing sums of debt onto the population until the currency has lost enough value so that even more subjects require State-assistance to live? Or is it some hypothetical that has yet to be demonstrated?

It is one in which all those who are in need of healthcare, education, housing, and food, get exactly those things at all times. As I say, it is not a hypothetical system 'yet to be demonstrated'. It is a system that worked in my country very well for 30 years, and has even survived the subsequent 30 years of Neoliberal attempts to tear down those institutions.

 

 

 

 

 

And so the answer is violence?

Youre looking for some sort of guarantee, some certainty that government, nor any man, cannot provide. It is just not possible. What is possible is sustaining your proposed system for some amount of time, but not indefinitely, a system where others live at the expense of others with the threat of violence against life, liberty, and property used to coerce.

If that is what you consider humanitarian or moral, fine, we are all entitled to believe what we want. But don't masquerade it as something it is not; your proposed solution is violence.

I don't know of anyone that has been shot or beaten up because they did not pay their National Insurance stamps. It is coersion for sure, but 'violence' is stretching it quite a bit.

As for me looking for certainty that cannot be provided, I will once again point you to the example of history. Welfare states have been implemented successfully for years in lots of different countries.

As regards to morals; yes, we clearly have a different set of them, but I am not masquerading as anything. I've stated exactly what I believe and have not hid a thing.

 

Yes, I am saying exactly that.

 

As regards to morals; yes, we clearly have a different set of them

Right; your set of morals allows the threat of and use of violence against unaggressive individuals who are no more responsible for a random calamity than anyone else, and mine does not.

Why not just legalize theft and extortion for those individuals that need welfare? As in, if someone is poor enough by government's standards, make it legal for him to walk into a grocery store and take what he needs himself, and if the owner or the employees attempt to stop him, give the poor man the right to use force, deadly if necessary, to abscond with the food? If a woman has a disease that can be treated but cannot afford to pay for it, why not let her enter the hospital and demand, at gunpoint of necessary, that the doctor see and treat her? Just give all the needy identification, and a gun if they deem it necessary, and with the flash of the badge they can let producers of goods and services that their plunder is government sanctioned. After all, this would at least cut out a lot of paperwork and middlemen, thus saving the society time and money.

 

Consumariat:

You make some very good points, and I agree with you about decentralized systems being fairer, less bureaucratic, and more efficient. However, all of these can be implemented within a system funded by tax. I like your idea of hospitals acquiring their funding according to how many people choose to walk through their doors, however, I do not believe it should be voluntary for a person to pay their tax or not. If it was completely voluntary, then the funds would not be enough to provide sufficient care to those that need it.

That's awesome, if people were trying to fight for a welfare system like that then I'd be much less antagonistic about it.

Putting aside the moral issues I have with taxation, from a purely utilitarian perspective non-voluntary taxation is not the best method of funding.

There's a linchpin to this whole story, and that is this: We are assuming that when people are forced to pay for welfare, they will put that money where the caretakers are providing the best care.

The incentive for the caretakers (Insurance companies, hospitals, assisted living, etc) is to return value to the taxpayers, and not to the patients.

So for example, a hospital might give a free video game to taxpayers that choose to fund them, spending perhaps a million dollars on this advertising campaign pulled directly from their budget for caring for welfare patients. This scenario and similar ones would be a constant problem.

How much advertising is excessive? When does cozying up to taxpayers cross the line? How do we enforce it? How much money should be taken from the welfare tax to fund enforcement of regulations? Who should decide and how much decision making power should they have?
This would be such a nightmare to try to fix that it would actually be more efficient to just let the hospitals waste money appealing to taxpayers than to try and fix it. (You're probably not going to believe me here, but anywhere that regulation is tried, budgets get out of control, lobbyists get involved and the whole thing just gets messy. It's just not worth it.)

So in this system of decentralized independent caretakers funded by a set portion of citizens income and directed by those citizens, we would eventually end up in the following scenario:

Taxpayers that care very little about helping welfare patients will fund caretakers to provide them with vouchers and giveaways and discounts.

Taxpayers that care about helping welfare patients will fund hospitals that provide the best care.

Markets would adjust with exacting precision to have budgets to cater to this proportion based on the desires of taxpayers.
Providing care : Providing extraneous fluff.

So let’s say 70% of the budget would be used to help welfare patients, and 30% is spent on the useless fluff to get the caretakers’ total budget. (The actual ratio is irrelevant)

So we aren't gaining anything from the taxpayers that are paying more into the system than they want to, so by making the welfare tax voluntary we can cut out the nonsense and be left with 70% of the budget that was actually being used to help welfare patients.

So just doing this we would be spending less on IRS agents, accounting, and oversight, and allowing caretakers to focus on helping welfare patients rather than diverting resources into unrelated fields.

So now the elephant in the room is this: Would 70% of the budget still remain, or better, when it is coming completely voluntarily?

We can only really speculate at this point, but looking at the charity given in the United States, even in the presence of all of the welfare programs and tax burden, is pretty impressive. A completely voluntary system doesn't require a third party (the government) to enforce so even if the budget is smaller it's possible that it could be effectively larger.

http://www.charitychoices.com/chargive.asp

2.6% of incomes couldn't possibly cover all of the serious issues people have in the United States, I'm certainly banking on the idea that if people were taxed less and the government wasn't expected to take care of people we could see much larger voluntary donations and that private entrepreneurs are much better at motivating people than government bureaucrats.

Edit:
Also! It's not the welfare patients that should decide what gets funded, but the taxpayers/donators, very simply because people have unlimited wants so if a patient decides what is getting paid for they will always choose the most expensive operation without regard to cost even if it has even slightly better results. If one operation costs 10 times more than another but yields 2% better results, a welfare patient would choose the higher cost nearly every time.
This is not only a cost consideration. We live in a world of limited resources so if we have welfare patients taking up all of the most expensive operations and medications then other people that might need that medication or operation more may not be able to get it or might end up at the back of a gigantic waiting list.

 Well the system I describe is the one that my country (the UK) operated without significant problem for at least 30 years after WW2. That period saw the lowest ever unemployment, a rising level of output, slightly higher growth rates than in the subsequent 30 years, increased number of doctors, widened access to medical care, and a rising life-expectancy.

Without significant problem? This period is primarily characterized by the decade-long phenomena frequently referred to as "staglfation," where there was simultaneous double-digit inflation and unemployment and which ultimately lead to the end of traditional neo-Keynesian analysis (at least, theoretically speaking). In fact, the stagflation crises was much worse in the U.K than it was here in the U.S (unemployment exceeded 20%), which is why labor lost and Thatcher won.

If you look at the data (from 1960-1980) you see that the U.K grew at an average of 2.32% (annual) with an inflation rate of 9.14% (annual). 9.14% inflation for 2.32% growth does not sound like the type of utopia you're describing. 

Seraiah. You seem to be proposing your own version of a healthcare system and then criticising it without me even having to enter the conversation. That's all very well, but I'm quite happy with keeping the NHS as it is and gradually improving elements of it if needed. I don't really know what else to say other than that, tbh.

If you look at the data (from 1960-1980) you see that the U.K grew at an average of 2.32% (annual) with an inflation rate of 9.14% (annual). 9.14% inflation for 2.32% does not sound like the type of utopia you're describing.

Going by Google World Bank data here, UK GDP per capita, constant terms. Here's an annualization calculator.

2.05% annualized growth from 1960 to 1980. (1980 was the start of a recession peaking at 12% unemployment.)

2.02% annualized growth from 1980 to present. (Start/middle? of a recession with 8% unemployment.)

And this is just looking at GDP. Not poverty, wages, and inequality, which sucked after Thatcher.

UK child poverty rates:

Source: http://www.leftfootforward.org/2012/06/iain-duncan-smith-child-poverty-target-deficit/

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/dec/05/oecd-ineqaulity-report-uk-us

Source: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2011/12/05/theres-plenty-of-money-its-just-been-put-out-of-reach/

 

Without significant problem? This period is primarily characterized by the decade-long phenomena frequently referred to as "staglfation," where there was simultaneous double-digit inflation and unemployment and which ultimately lead to the end of traditional neo-Keynesian analysis (at least, theoretically speaking). In fact, the stagflation crises was much worse in the U.K than it was here in the U.S (unemployment exceeded 20%), which is why labor lost and Thatcher won.

If you look at the data (from 1960-1980) you see that the U.K grew at an average of 2.32% (annual) with an inflation rate of 9.14% (annual). 9.14% inflation for 2.32% does not sound like the type of utopia you're describing. 

 

 

Well lets have a look at the numbers in a bit more detail.

 

 

So in regards to unemployment, even throughout the 70's it stayed at enviously low levels compared to what we expect these days; inflation was a significant problem particularly from 1974 onward, but this is down to the oil crisis and not the welfare state. If you disagree on this, please explain how the welfare state suddenly caused prices to skyrocket in 1974. Growth was actually slightly higher in the post war era than it was in the past 30 years.

I would also add that wages kept up with inflation throughout this time, and so the problem was not felt as harshly as it might first appear by looking at the inflation numbers only. I have a chart showing this in a book, but could not find an online picture of it. I will scan it if you like though.

Once again, I would be interested in hearing an explanation of why you believe the economic problems that existed in that era (problems that were different from, but by no means greater than, the ones we have faced since) were the result of the welfare state. I'm not being confrontational, btw. I'm honestly interested in hearing your thoughts.

Oh, and notice how we have been running deficits pretty much non-stop since we abandoned the policy goal of full employment. So the post-war consensus was also more sustainable for the budget.

Consumariat:

A child is a distinct human being, an individual. Why should I have to be deprived medical care if I was born with a condition that my parents did not insure? Why should I suffer the consequences of what my parents chose or were unable to do, when there are other options out there for how society is organised?

Tough luck than. I value freedom form coercion above health care for some who couldn’t afford it.

Of course, in the long run a state-run or even state-subsidized heath scheme will stymie care development and everyone will be worse off, since a score of new, inexpensive treatments that would have been created in a free market will be lacking. Just think whether Mr. Fleming would have given the world penicillin if he’d been employed in a tedious government job.

Also, somewhat higher inflation can increase real wage growth by facilitating wage bargaining. So inflation is not always bad for real wages.