Health Care 10.06.07 And The Pandora Prescription

[Epinephrine]

If I weren't such a nice guy, I would like to see Jerome's family get cancer or something super expensive and then he'd have to live on the streets because he realizes that his family can't pay for it and has to sell everything because their private insurance doesn't cover everything lol.

Jerome, you have absolutely no idea how the medical system works, and all the dribble that you spout off is pretty laughable at best. You talk about how 'socialized medicine' is so bad, but yet you provide no alternative. I suppose in your personal 'government and regulations are bad' train of thought, the best way to provide medicine is to have doctors out there do whatever they want for whatever price. To have drug companies just release any drug they want with any claim they want... because hey the market will sort itself out. After millions of people die, people will stop using a drug right?

Universal healthcare isn't perfect, nothing is. But then again, America is the only industrialized nation with such a privatized level of care and guess what? In almost every health indicator, America fares the worst of every developed country! More than that, Americans spend FAR MORE per capita than anyone else in the world for their healthcare. That alone should tell you that universal healthcare is CLEARLY the better system. But then again, since you are completely blind to facts it's pretty pointless to argue with you.

This is the problem, when people who know absolutely nothing about medicine argue how medicine should be offered. It's like how Bush thinks that medicine is free because you can just go to an emergency room anytime LOL.

[Jerome Scuggs]

I gave examples from a legitimate and working social democracy, my experiences with it. Sense you and Reaver seem to not understand that Capitalism is an economic philosophy, not a political philosophy. I told you that I have never heard of Somaliland. As for Somalia being turned to shit by communist, that is not true.

Check your premises. Communism != "economic planning", which is, at the moment, the de facto system in these failing states.

www.lewrockwell.com From Wiki: LewRockwell.com (LRC) is a paleolibertarian web magazine run by Lew Rockwell, Burton Blumert, and others associated with the Center for Libertarian Studies. Clearly a political publication, not an unbiased resource of media.

So you're disqualifying articles which present facts, make logical associations in deducing cause and effect, because it's biased? Unless you show where their warrants they make are flawed, then bias has nothing to do with it. Taking that stance justifies never arguing again, since the arguments you're making are biased towards one side, and my arguments, the other.

Google "subjectivism", "praxeology", "methodological individualism", "pragmatism".

Subjectivism, because you need to know that every human perceives a different, subjective world,

Praxeology, because that is the science which my framework of ration was based on,

Methodological individualism, which is the breakdown of "complex" human action into its parts (ie analyzing the parts of the whole),

and Pragmatism, the school of thought which places emphasis on looking at real-world impacts and results.

I was a Communist for two years, an anarchist for one, and have subscribed to the free market school of thought for over six years. Far from reading a "Few books", I have built my system of belief from the ground up. It started with the realization of government failure and its rejection, and then as I read more authors (Nietzche, Hayek, Rothbard, etc), I came around to the free markets.

You accuse me of not knowing "politics" from "economics". If that's what you got from the course of my reading, then either I have been faulty in providing the burden of research and didn't mention that, or you didn't read my argumentation. And you've admitted to not reading my "wall of text", so how can you then even pretend to have authority over what I'm saying? I've read every bit of text you have typed out, would you want me to start calling you out on where you're stupidly ignoring things?

Well, I'd have to only bring up one, because this is the argument I seem to be getting the most shit from. And every time I come up with an answer (and believe me, there are a few), they go unanswered and, thus, conceded.

But you so blindly assume that your way is better because you care about people.

Have I not made it abundantly clear that good intentions does not equal good outcome? I'm pretty sure Cops even quoted that phrase or something like it.

At the point where my Pragmatic framework is untouched, and you spend no effort arguing otherwise, then you have to evaluate free market versus social institutions not on idealistic grounds, but in concrete, pragmatic results.

And, simply put, in the real world, no one will ever recieve "equal" health care.

I also give you an article stating how the free markets are solving the Socialism crisis. How private medical centers are illegally helping Canadians, rich and poor alike, get health care. How your "compassionate" State Beauracrats are so selfishly turning a blind-eye to this, because it's actually making the perceived stats for "social" healthcare better.

Is that your ideal Socialism?

No, but it's my ideal free market. Because the second someone noncoercively exhanges goods (a patient giving money to a doctor he chooses, to get prompt treatment that he paid for) - it works. That's one less person who will die because you so blindly ignored practical reality that you thought it possible to provide equal, universal, unlimited health care. While you toss rhetoric around about equality before freedom, your own brethren in Canada, the ones who actually need health care, are finding out that the free market solution is the most realistic, efficient, and cost-effective way of doing it.

You can deny the reality around you because of as much "bias" and "non-compassion" as you want.

But people are still dying because of your system. They are dying, not by accident, but by law. Your system guarantees that people will die, because you do not efficiently ration out your healthcare. And so waiting lines develop - in other words, reality kicks in. Economic concepts like scarcity come into play. Google "scarcity", and I dare yiu to deny it. I'll pay you $5 if you even dare call the concept of scarcity a "bias" or a "philosophy".

I understand your concern, Kolar, I do. What I do not like is how you can accuse me of being a "textbook libertarian", especially considering a majority of this debate has been me versus myself with a few "you're not being compassionate"s from the brothers Canada. Because, you see, I think I have made it very obvious that I have done the research. I have looked at results. I have considered human action first and foremost. And all you do, repeatedly, is wave the flag of altruism around, as if by magic it will repel everything I say on moral principle alone.

But I feel I have made it obvious where your only real framework in this debate - the concept of altruism, equality before freedom - is lacking, and doesn't actually help anyone, not in the way Capitalism does. Unless you want to "wall of text", which I feel you probably don't, I consider the one argument you have ever really used consistently to be of zero value, whatsoever.

[Epinephrine]

No, but it's my ideal free market. Because the second someone noncoercively exhanges goods (a patient giving money to a doctor he chooses, to get prompt treatment that he paid for) - it works. That's one less person who will die because you so blindly ignored practical reality that you thought it possible to provide equal, universal, unlimited health care. While you toss rhetoric around about equality before freedom, your own brethren in Canada, the ones who actually need health care, are finding out that the free market solution is the most realistic, efficient, and cost-effective way of doing it.

Again you have absolutely on idea how the medical system works. First of all, almost everyone with serious ailments will get prompt treatment. They will get bumped ahead in the lists because it's recognized that they have priority. The people who are further back on the lists, are those with problems which aren't life threatening. Yes it's easier to get a boob job in America, but if that's what you think healthcare really is, you're completely mistaken.

Secondly, people paying doctors to demand health care doesn't make for better health care, nor does it help everyone. Not only are there MANY people who can't afford to pay for healthcare (something like 47 million Americans or 1/6 of your country is uninsured, and they are likely poor so they in fact recieve next to ZERO healthcare), the people who demand services might not actually know what is best for them. Sure people see advertisments about treatments that they think they need... it doesn't mean they actually need them, nor does it mean they actually require such elaborate treatments. Just because something costs money doesn't make it better.

For instance, whenever people have colds, they believe they need medicine. The truth is colds resolve on their own, and medicine does nothing. Yet it doesn't stop people from demanding antibiotics and so on. This is just a very simple example, but patients always demand treatments they don't need nor are medicially warrented (i.e. getting a prophylactic full body MRI). In a public system like Canada's, it would be reasonable to refuse these people. In a private system, if they are paying... why not give it to them? It's not like it necessarily does HARM, but then again it doesn't do anyone any actual good. But yet in fact it may actually do harm. Overprescription of antibiotics have allowed endless strains of resistant bacteria to evolve very quickly. Just as well, any serious physician worth their salt will tell you that unwarrented tests (like full body MRIs) will always bring up incidental findings that may look strange but even if you didn't find it, it would mean nothing to your overall health. For instance, people with prostate cancer over 80 are basically not treated, because hey... it will take them 25 years to die from the cancer, so chances are, they'll die from other causes first. If they were PAYING for it though, why not do it if the price was right? And what if they die due to complications from the treatment? Hmm... maybe it wasn't the best idea in the end to let money decide the treatment.

But people are still dying because of your system. They are dying, not by accident, but by law. Your system guarantees that people will die, because you do not efficiently ration out your healthcare. And so waiting lines develop - in other words, reality kicks in. Economic concepts like scarcity come into play. Google "scarcity", and I dare yiu to deny it. I'll pay you $5 if you even dare call the concept of scarcity a "bias" or a "philosophy".

Everyone dies in the end. No system isn't going to make people NOT die. The simple fact is, people die in America much earlier than people in most other developed countries. You have the highest neonatal mortality rate despite having the most neonatologists per capita, you have the lowest life expectancies despite having the 'benefits' of private health care.

[Epinephrine]

Many people see socialized medicine as the ordering of a naturally chaotic free market system. But what's more chaotic... paying thirty bucks for a checkup... or filling out insurance paperwork? Hell, I'll stake my subspace username and password on this one: if you charged poor people $50 more per visit... but, in return, there was no insurance paperwork, I think every single person would pay (or, if they didn't have the money, seriously consider donating a little sperm). (Though, if there wasn't third-party payment options, I guess poor people would be paying less than $50 for a single checkup. Oh well.)

This is probably the absolute most ignorant paragraph that Jerome has typed in this thread. That's saying a lot, considering most of what he said was dribble.

First of all, there is basically no insurance paperwork in Canada. The only time you'd need paperwork is to originally get your health card... one form, like getting a driver's license.

Secondly, if you started to charge $50 for a visit, people would just not go unless the problem was extremely serious. And as with all things in medicine, by the time things are extremely serious, it's probably already too late. It's a pointless barrier to treatment that serves no role in a serious modern democratic society.


Jerome bases his entire discussion on the basis of something like fixing your car. If you really cared, you pay to fix your car right? Or else you just... don't drive.

Well if you really cared (or had tens of thousands of dollars extra) you'd see the doctor in the perfect system, or else... why not just go ahead and die? Who cares that everyone aside from the top 5% could reasonably afford a treatment for a serious ailment without forcing their entire family from living on the streets right? Because hey, it's personal responsibility people!

[Jerome Scuggs]

If I weren't such a nice guy, I would like to see Jerome's family get cancer or something super expensive and then he'd have to live on the streets because he realizes that his family can't pay for it and has to sell everything because their private insurance doesn't cover everything lol.

We switched to a family clinic that does not deal with insurance, HMO's, medicare, or medicaid.

I had eight cancerous tumours removed from my back, a condition known as melanoma. It cost me $550.

My aunt died of melanoma and related cancers. In the end, couldn't afford the insurance. Huh.

Might want to actually check your premises before you so stupidly shoot off your mouth. Venturing unsolicited opinions will often have to cause you the embarassment of finding out the exact value of your opinion the the listener.

Jerome, you have absolutely no idea how the medical system works, and all the dribble that you spout off is pretty laughable at best.

Opinion. Next

You talk about how 'socialized medicine' is so bad, but yet you provide no alternative.

Lie: I provide the free market. Next

(edit: technically i don't "provide" it, it's already happening in Canada.)

I suppose in your personal 'government and regulations are bad' train of thought, the best way to provide medicine is to have doctors out there do whatever they want for whatever price.

Don't even dare try to act condescending when you obviously have no idea of the laws of Supply and Demand are.

To have drug companies just release any drug they want with any claim they want... because hey the market will sort itself out. After millions of people die, people will stop using a drug right?

I can play the bullshit game, too, bro. Here's where your bullshit is bullshit: because that's not what happened before socialized medicine. In fact, I'd say it will be the opposite, given a few years and a few more airheaded politicians with your "train of thought".

Universal healthcare isn't perfect, nothing is.

Welcome to the What I've Been Saying This Entire Goddamned Time boat, please, stay awhile. Perhaos you'd like some literature?

Coming into this thread, I was well aware that no system is perfect, but Capitalism is the system that provides accordingly and adjusts for maximum efficiency.

But then again, America is the only industrialized nation with such a privatized level of care and guess what? In almost every health indicator, America fares the worst of every developed country!

If you think our system is a free market, privatized system, I know a few people (read: any economist worth his salt) who would like to point at you and laugh for awhile. Considering the American Government has sunk money into over 45% of the medical means of production, I'd say we're at least 45% socialist, healthwise.

More than that, Americans spend FAR MORE per capita than anyone else in the world for their healthcare. That alone should tell you that universal healthcare is CLEARLY the better system. But then again, since you are completely blind to facts it's pretty pointless to argue with you.

Read the articles on the first page in which people alot smarter than you explain quite the opposite. If you won't read what I've provided, I'm not going to burden myself even more because you were too lazy to do your effort.

This is the problem, when people who know absolutely nothing about medicine argue how medicine should be offered. It's like how Bush thinks that medicine is free because you can just go to an emergency room anytime LOL.

Once again... the Leading Socialist Doctor in Canada has seen the effects of universal healthcare and backtracked, urging Canada to de-regulate. Stop being retarded, and learn to read. Jesus. Here's the quote if you don't want to do any clicking.

Another sign of transformation: Canadian doctors, long silent on the health-care system’s problems, are starting to speak up. Last August, they voted Brian Day president of their national association. A former socialist who counts Fidel Castro as a personal acquaintance, Day has nevertheless become perhaps the most vocal critic of Canadian public health care, having opened his own private surgery center as a remedy for long waiting lists and then challenged the government to shut him down. “This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week,” he fumed to the New York Times, “and in which humans can wait two to three years.”

[Epinephrine]

I also give you an article stating how the free markets are solving the Socialism crisis. How private medical centers are illegally helping Canadians, rich and poor alike, get health care. How your "compassionate" State Beauracrats are so selfishly turning a blind-eye to this, because it's actually making the perceived stats for "social" healthcare better.

Private clinics do nothing to 'solve' healthcare in Canada. By having doctors charge on average $2000/year to take 1/4 of the patient load when we're already facing a doctor shortages helps NOBODY. And if you're talking about the Cambie clinic, they are still billing the public insurance system, they just pay for their own building with that billing.

[Jerome Scuggs]

First of all, almost everyone with serious ailments will get prompt treatment. They will get bumped ahead in the lists because it's recognized that they have priority.

That's not equality. At the point where your own system does not justify or represent the values it rests on, it becomes a contradiction and a potential harm to mankind.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Private clinics do nothing to 'solve' healthcare in Canada. By having doctors charge on average $2000/year to take 1/4 of the patient load when we're already facing a doctor shortages helps NOBODY. And if you're talking about the Cambie clinic, they are still billing the public insurance system, they just pay for their own building with that billing.

You're still not reading any of the literature I've provided.

Goddamnit.

[Kolar]

Check your premises. Communism != "economic planning", which is, at the moment, the de facto system in these failing states.

What states?

So you're disqualifying articles which present facts, make logical associations in deducing cause and effect, because it's biased?

Yes and you should understand that site's bias, nor should you never use it as a resource. I've quoted the WHO and an independent study comparing our two health systems.


I have read most of your writing here.

But you so blindly assume that your way is better because you care about people.

Uhh yeah I do actually. I believe that if we are to live in a moral and just society our laws should reflect our values. And I will call you and people like you on it when you promote the opposite.

Have I not made it abundantly clear that good intentions does not equal good outcome? I'm pretty sure Cops even quoted that phrase or something like it.

And I've made it clear that both compassion and common sense must be taken into account on this issue.

I also give you an article stating how the free markets are solving the Socialism crisis. How private medical centers are illegally helping Canadians, rich and poor alike, get health care. How your "compassionate" State Beauracrats are so selfishly turning a blind-eye to this, because it's actually making the perceived stats for "social" healthcare better.

There is no crisis within the Canadian health care system. It is not perfect and I believe if people wish to remove themselves from the public system they are entitled too at their own expense. There's always room for improvement in both the private and public sector.

No, but it's my ideal free market. Because the second someone noncoercively exhanges goods (a patient giving money to a doctor he chooses, to get prompt treatment that he paid for) - it works. That's one less person who will die because you so blindly ignored practical reality that you thought it possible to provide equal, universal, unlimited health care. While you toss rhetoric around about equality before freedom, your own brethren in Canada, the ones who actually need health care, are finding out that the free market solution is the most realistic, efficient, and cost-effective way of doing it.

Our system is not unlimited, again you haven't read a fucking thing I said. 30% of our system is in the private sector. We pay for drugs, dental services ect... on our own. The issue is not about equal care, it's about providing the best care to the people who need it. I haven't been sick enough to need medical treatment for well over a year but lets say I break my leg tomorrow. I won't have to drop out of school to pay for it. I'm not paying thousands of dollars a year to some company that may or may not screw me over, I don't know maybe they don't want to shell out for it or think I'm cheating the system, they're not exactly responsible to me or anyone only to their bottom line. I pay my taxes, and when needed I can get treatment, and those I vote for both locally and federally are directly responsible to provide a system for me or they're done away with.

But people are still dying because of your system. They are dying, not by accident, but by law. Your system guarantees that people will die, because you do not efficiently ration out your healthcare.

And people are still dying under your system but for a more pointless reason. Not by accident, not because they're bad or evil, but because they don't have the resources to pay these astronomical amounts of money no middle class person will ever see in their lives. How fucking pointless is that?

We have the resources to provide care for every person in this country, don't give me that scarcity bullshit. We spend less then half you do and close to the same as other post-industrialized nations. This isn't about being told you can't have something, this isn't about saving lives. You just don't like Government intervening in the private sector. It doesn't matter; facts, studies, rational debate. It's meaningless to a person so wrapped up in this bullshit that lives don't matter anymore. Only some idealogical debate.

[Jerome Scuggs]

I noticed you guys are targeting my more weak arguments, so let me reiterate what you have not argued, and therefore, must consider true.

Do you see what I mean? It's one thing to act compassionate, but it's another to, I suppose, be compassionate. If universal health care were physically possible - nanobot android supercomputing tamogotchis that could convert raw mass and matter into actual molecular structures, a la Supreme Commander, then... yeah, I guess I'll throw my hat in for the Social Welfarists. But for now, the best form of distribution of service is the doctors themselves. When doctors aren't being fucked because of malpractice insurance, and having to sigh as they pile through tomes of regulations, trying to find out WHY the new anti-cancer drug can't be on the market NOW because the FDA has to make sure it's good, by testing it for 600 years, "for the good of the public", when that sort of thing goes away, I think, to be honest, they'll cheer up and hell, maybe give free, comprehensive checkups on the house... ah, altruism. A luxury reserved for people rich enough to afford it.

You cite a perfect example of how competitive, non-regulated services (LASIK) brings low prices... what's preventing that sort of hands-off approach to the other medical sectors?

Here's what I'm saying: if you can get it perfect, if you can predict the economic status and income for every single citizen of a State, factor in every single factor (new diseases, new treatments, new techniques), and otherwise read the future, and develop a set of regulations that then allow for every single possible infinite variable... then yeah. Let's see it.

But the sad fact is, things aren't static like regulation. A regulation can become obsolete - and that's assuming it doesn't actually cause harm - a few hours after it's passed. To change that regulation takes... weeks, at best.

If you just look at raw data, empirical data, history leans in favor of the free markets. And where it does fail, it's the result of regulation and socialization. Ideally, yes, I completely agree - socializing the means of production would be a great, equal, fantastic thing to do, if it could be done. But it's been tried, and it fails, and where it doesn't outright fail, the free markets are one-upping it. Why? All my libertarian bullshit aside, it's because it's how reality goddamn works. Resources are finite, the only certainty is uncertainty, and people are greedy. To say otherwise would to speak in the face of quite a bit of basic physics and science.

The free markets evolved out of human action, that is, decision-making, economizing, and the tendency to make the most efficient choices. The free market is a proven choice of mutual cooperation.

Socialism is an "expirement", an expirement on living by an altruist, moral code of mutual cooperation. It has failed. Why? Because the free market is the embodiment of a natural human response. Why, when marijuana is not legal and therefore untouched by government, does an ounce cost $90 in Shreveport? Because of economics. $90 is a naturally evolved price - an equalization effect occuring when the seller and the buyer reach agreement. When such exchanges are on a massive level, the complex system of exchange is called the free market.

So... in conclusion, no, the free market is not a "social expirement". When free markets are discussed, positive statements ("we should end unemployment") are replaced with normative statements ("minimum wage has, statistically, increased unemployment"). I don't deal with the world of utopia, I deal with what's happening right now. And that's why I detest social institutions: because I have weighed the real-world, pragmatic impacts, and Socialism loses out, time after time after time, because of its disregard of reality in favor of goals and ideals.

Let me put this as stonerishly as I can: stop living in the Now, dude.. You look at NOW and see things that the supposed "rich" have and you feel that this is some sort of injustice. Do you not realize that in all probability, you will own whatever that product was in a few years? Look at iPods, RAZRS, even cars.

And look at yourself now. Did Pierre Trudeaux pass a law forcing people to build houses, invent the toilet, invent a sewer system, invent the car? No. These things came from capitalists, self-proclaimed or not. And where did they get the money, and perhaps even the idea? The wealthy. Unlike Socialism, which deals with the status quo, capitalism not only readily adapts but then mass-distributes new technology.

I mean, in Soviet Russia, everyone was "equal"... but dude, here's the thing: people have individual tastes. Yeah, maybe one Russian wanted a State toilet, but I'm pretty sure a few million more wanted... I dunno. Food? See, equality is NOT welfare. When you're so wrapped up in making sure everyone has equal everything, you kinda forget that, well, not everyone needs equal everything.

So basically, you're trying to prove that history is wrong and that you are right. Unless you want to argue empirics and real-world data, you're basically trying to convince me that reality isn't real. And I believe everyone is free to their own opinions, but if it were up to the Government, in the "public interest of safety", you'd probably be in a State-run mental ward, getting electro-shock therapy because that's what the Regulations forced every State Doctor (who aren't getting paid because of their ability, but because they are obligated to satisfy the right to healthcare) to use, and they don't have any incentive (or brains) to develop new technology, so happy frying!

Alright. Let's save the planet. From now on, all car manufacturers must meet X miles to the gallon.

Businesses say fuck that, because to sell hybrid cars right now would be unprofitable and innefficient on a mass scale.

But mileage does get better, because car companies, unable to invest money in wise investments that will make hybrids profitable, instead start using lighter metals, smaller frames.

Statistically, this has led to an extra 2,000 Americans a year dying. That sounds very unequal.

But I guess we planned, right? The future is saved?

Joe Capitalist sees cars with better mileage and buys one... and now, he can do MORE things on less gas, which means that he still uses 40 gallons a week. Statistically, the regulation has had no effect on cutting gas consumption, there is no real, definite bend in the curve.

But you're right about one thing: politics is a double edged sword. Which is why I have been arguing, for quite some time now with apparently no effect whatsoever, that we should get rid of political institutions. Because I, like you, am against violence.

Dude, you know when I talk about the benefits of healthcare and what Capitalism has done for healthcare... I'm talking about history, right? And real data? Like, I look at the general welfare of people during a period when the healthcare sector was more free-market, and see a period where prices were low, new technology was always being pioneered, perfected, and packaged for the masses at affordable prices. I see that people died, yes, but such is life. A million laws won't stop a heart attack, and "Accidents" are called "accidents" because things didn't MEAN to happen. I then compare the data with today, and see people paying more money, waiting longer for even routine checkups, and more people dying specifically because of a law, regulation or other such intervention.

[Epinephrine]

I noticed you guys are targeting my more weak arguments, so let me reiterate what you have not argued, and therefore, must consider true.

Well really, you didn't address any of my points at all, except that I didn't read your article. Article or not, I believe I know far more about private clinics in Canada than you do.

[Jerome Scuggs]

What states?

once again, i'll do the work for you.

Look at the countries who "economically plan": Tanzania, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Sudan and Algeria. Especially Ethiopia: isn't it weird how we always talk about what should be done, nothing ever gets done?

Yes and you should understand that site's bias, nor should you never use it as a resource. I've quoted the WHO and an independent study comparing our two health systems.

Unless you have any arguments against the authors themselves (Lew Rockwell.com usually aggregates independent authors into one blog, with occasional writing by Lew himself) this point, academically, is a non-issue.

Uhh yeah I do actually. I believe that if we are to live in a moral and just society our laws should reflect our values. And I will call you and people like you on it when you promote the opposite.

What?

I believe in a moral set of values. I've made that clear. I have spent quite a bit of my time showing the flaws and contradictions in your moral code.

There is no crisis within the Canadian health care system.

And that's why people are dying. Because you believe so ignorantly that you're right, that you won't pause to see what's killing them.

I haven't been sick enough to need medical treatment for well over a year but lets say I break my leg tomorrow. I won't have to drop out of school to pay for it.

Pavement has broken a leg and an arm. He's still in school and had same-day, immediate treatment. Like I said, we don't deal with insurance and third-party bullshit. It's cheap as hell.

And people are still dying under your system but for a more pointless reason. Not by accident, not because they're bad or evil, but because they don't have the resources to pay these astronomical amounts of money no middle class person will ever see in their lives.

I'm middle class. I have had surgery, multiple surgeries, for the cancer growths on my back. Pavement plays soccer, he has broken many bones. My father has a heart condition. My mother is on god knows what medications.

We afford it all. So stop generalizing all people into some "social" class. Because we're not.

We have the resources to provide care for every person in this country, don't give me that scarcity bullshit.

Prove to me that not a single person has died because of your healthcare and I will believe you. Now, you're just lying.

You just don't like Government intervening in the private sector.

It took you two pages into this thread to realize that? That explains alot, I suppose.

It doesn't matter; facts, studies, rational debate. It's meaningless to a person so wrapped up in this bullshit that lives don't matter anymore. Only some idealogical debate.

Wow. You contradict yourself. First you say "real facts" don't matter when I use them, then you say I'm an "idealist". And I know I've made it clear (please, read above), that I am summing up the facts and evaluating socialism/capitalism on the basis of how many lives will be saved. I have repeatedly stated that end-all be-all, capitalism saves more lives. I have shown where capitalism is saving lives that couldn't be saved under your flawed system.

If you truly did not want an idealogical debate, then you would have just let me post in this thread without arguing. Because that's all you have, Kolar. Ideal, "moral" justifications. I have the power of research on my side. Capitalism works.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Well really, you didn't address any of my points at all, except that I didn't read your article. Article or not, I believe I know far more about private clinics in Canada than you do.

You are free to your opinion, but I am not compelled to respect it. Kolar and Cops are keeping it semi-logical, you're just throwing bullshit and assumptions at me and quite frankly, I'm not going to waste time on it

[Cops]

ways to save dying argument

1) look for group consensus: failed
2) publically attack someone: Kolar
3) state credentials: you use to debate?
4) point stronger arguments and hope they are debated?: done

Realizing Epinephrine knows about health care than all of us, Priceless.

[Epinephrine]

Do you see what I mean? It's one thing to act compassionate, but it's another to, I suppose, be compassionate. If universal health care were physically possible - nanobot android supercomputing tamogotchis that could convert raw mass and matter into actual molecular structures, a la Supreme Commander, then... yeah, I guess I'll throw my hat in for the Social Welfarists. But for now, the best form of distribution of service is the doctors themselves. When doctors aren't being fucked because of malpractice insurance, and having to sigh as they pile through tomes of regulations, trying to find out WHY the new anti-cancer drug can't be on the market NOW because the FDA has to make sure it's good, by testing it for 600 years, "for the good of the public", when that sort of thing goes away, I think, to be honest, they'll cheer up and hell, maybe give free, comprehensive checkups on the house... ah, altruism. A luxury reserved for people rich enough to afford it.

This was just a complete random rant.. it isn't a point at all, it's more like a bunch of random thoughts squished together.

For some reason you think drug regulation is a bad idea... yes perhaps we should just release drugs with no idea about their side effects into the public. Did you know that Vioxx was one of those 'fast tracked' drugs out there where the FDA was pressured to approve it quickly?

Secondly, you have some weird rant about robots... I have no idea what you're getting to here. Public or universal healthcare is about providing healthcare to everyone, leaving the prioritizing to doctors instead of to whomever has more money.

You cite a perfect example of how competitive, non-regulated services (LASIK) brings low prices... what's preventing that sort of hands-off approach to the other medical sectors?

I addressed this point already. It's nice that LASIK is cheap (it's private in Canada too), although it's not really cheap.. it's like $5000 if your eyes aren't merely very mildly not 20/20. Not to mention that the best laser eye centers are in Canada. Not to mention that no one ever died from not having LASIK, which is like how no one ever died from not getting a boob job. This stuff isn't health care, it's just cosmetic surgery that people CHOOSE to have, and thus rightly isn't part of Canada's public health care program.

Here's what I'm saying: if you can get it perfect, if you can predict the economic status and income for every single citizen of a State, factor in every single factor (new diseases, new treatments, new techniques), and otherwise read the future, and develop a set of regulations that then allow for every single possible infinite variable... then yeah. Let's see it.

But the sad fact is, things aren't static like regulation. A regulation can become obsolete - and that's assuming it doesn't actually cause harm - a few hours after it's passed. To change that regulation takes... weeks, at best.

If you just look at raw data, empirical data, history leans in favor of the free markets. And where it does fail, it's the result of regulation and socialization. Ideally, yes, I completely agree - socializing the means of production would be a great, equal, fantastic thing to do, if it could be done. But it's been tried, and it fails, and where it doesn't outright fail, the free markets are one-upping it. Why? All my libertarian bullshit aside, it's because it's how reality goddamn works. Resources are finite, the only certainty is uncertainty, and people are greedy. To say otherwise would to speak in the face of quite a bit of basic physics and science.

I have no idea what you were trying to say here. I don't know why you think that universal healthcare somehow tries to have a magic formula to give some equivalent amount of healthcare to everyone according to income levels or something strange. It's just a means to have a big pool of money so that everyone can get the healthcare they need (as determined by... doctors imagine that!) for FREE. Yes, even people who don't pay taxes but live in the country can use our system.

The free markets evolved out of human action, that is, decision-making, economizing, and the tendency to make the most efficient choices. The free market is a proven choice of mutual cooperation.

Socialism is an "expirement", an expirement on living by an altruist, moral code of mutual cooperation. It has failed. Why? Because the free market is the embodiment of a natural human response. Why, when marijuana is not legal and therefore untouched by government, does an ounce cost $90 in Shreveport? Because of economics. $90 is a naturally evolved price - an equalization effect occuring when the seller and the buyer reach agreement. When such exchanges are on a massive level, the complex system of exchange is called the free market.

Actually the free market is an 'experiment' too. Remember all those products and companies that failed because they didn't find the correct formula or best way of presenting a product? Well, medicine shouldn't be like this. You shouldn't be experimenting with people's lives outside controlled and safe medical research experiments. When you have companies just randomly throwing out treatments out there to the highest bidder, yes eventually the best drug gets found out, but not until thousands die prematurely (case in point, the thousands who likely got premature heart attacks thanks to Vioxx). Try telling the relatives of all those people who died that their loved one died so capitalism could march forward.

So... in conclusion, no, the free market is not a "social expirement". When free markets are discussed, positive statements ("we should end unemployment") are replaced with normative statements ("minimum wage has, statistically, increased unemployment"). I don't deal with the world of utopia, I deal with what's happening right now. And that's why I detest social institutions: because I have weighed the real-world, pragmatic impacts, and Socialism loses out, time after time after time, because of its disregard of reality in favor of goals and ideals.

Healthcare isn't like any other aspect. A lot of the time it's life or death. Or living well or living in very poor health. It's a very important part of human rights. Unless you absolutely don't believe in human rights, and the rights to live a healthy life (which is part of it), you should support public healthcare.

Let me put this as stonerishly as I can: stop living in the Now, dude.. You look at NOW and see things that the supposed "rich" have and you feel that this is some sort of injustice. Do you not realize that in all probability, you will own whatever that product was in a few years? Look at iPods, RAZRS, even cars.

Seriously, so what if they have to cut off your leg cause you can't afford the antibiotic to stop the infection and cutting off the leg is easier? Who cares? In the far future we'll all have robot legs thanks to capitalism!!!

And look at yourself now. Did Pierre Trudeaux pass a law forcing people to build houses, invent the toilet, invent a sewer system, invent the car? No. These things came from capitalists, self-proclaimed or not. And where did they get the money, and perhaps even the idea? The wealthy. Unlike Socialism, which deals with the status quo, capitalism not only readily adapts but then mass-distributes new technology.

Trudeau. And completely straw man argument. Trudeau didn't invent universal healthcare (Tommy Douglas did). This was just a very pointless argument.

I mean, in Soviet Russia, everyone was "equal"... but dude, here's the thing: people have individual tastes. Yeah, maybe one Russian wanted a State toilet, but I'm pretty sure a few million more wanted... I dunno. Food? See, equality is NOT welfare. When you're so wrapped up in making sure everyone has equal everything, you kinda forget that, well, not everyone needs equal everything.

Again I have no idea what you're talking about here. We're not talking about toilets here... we're talking about health care. Medical boards will make sure that the gold standard of care is always used. That's where the funding goes, to the best treatment as shown by scientific evidence. If you REALLY don't want the best treatment but pay whatever you want for something else, all the power to you... but don't deny everyone else treatment because you believe in homeopathy.