(british) healthcare

[Jerome Scuggs]

Allowing your health care to be left in the hands of big box capitalists is worse than leaving it in the hands of the government.

how can you prove this if there's never been a free market?

edit: squeezer, your point has never been argued, at least not by me.

[Cops]

The term (Socialized Healthcare) is often used in the U.S. to evoke negative sentiments toward public control of the health care system by associating it with socialism, which has negative connotations in American political culture.

You know why this pisses is off, don't fucking do it.

[Cops]

how can you prove this if there's never been a free market?

Corporations care about making money, that is their number one priority. If you believe the solution is to let Health Care be left into the hands of corporations, and let them have no government control or regulation then you're just asking to take an already bad situation and turn it into another bad situation.

This is exactly what I said about the idealogical part of this debate, you don't believe in government regulations. Your 'libertarian' inside of you tells you that the markets should be free to exist as they please and that costs will be regulated by the general public.

One problem with that...

There's already a defining class of wealth in this world, allowing them to control markets without government regulation is disastrous. Allowing a group of people to control more power and wealth without forcing them to be responsible in their business practices is the stupidest idea I've ever heard of. It's like saying, "I know you want to make money and cut costs wherever possible so don't worry about offering crappy services and hiring everyone as part-time workers, it's not like we're actually going to pay our workers".

[Kolar]

i know full and well the two are different models, which is why i asked the canadians to stop posting.

Do the same then, you're not English and have no experience with their public health care system.

when i state they will both fail, i am discussing the general ideology behind both systems, which is government intervention - the same reason the Fed's fucked up the economy and welfare has fucked up the standard of living.

You've failed so far to provide any evidence that the Canadian or UK system is on the brink of failure or providing a degraded level of service. This is called backing up your claims, merely spouting ideas then calling everyone else and their brother a moron doesn't cut it here. It's called trolling.

as far as lew rockwell, the "shitty blog", it's actually a news site ran by, well, lew rockwell, who merely posts pieces written by scholars at the mises institute.

It's a overly bias "news" source, if you want to get any progress here stop linking to it and respond to the questions asked.

as far as the "numbers" you ask for... well, you have my hands tied. first you tell me that no free market has ever existed and then you ask me to give numbers comparing the two.

I never stated there has never been a free market. I asked you to provide some numbers, hard statical facts linking some form of a free market system to providing better care or at the very least more care. I am not asking for a link to some article about how a pure or extreme capitalistic society is functioning well. StatsCAN, WHO ect.. are places you could start. For the sake of your acedemic career you should learn this stuff, this kind of crap is not acceptable in real life.


Again you don't understand the differences between a universal system and a socialized system. The 'means of production', administration and implementation of care in Canada are owned and operated by private businesses. We have a single payer system (Medicare) which covers health expenses for public clinics/practices, hospitals. The term socialized medicine is a term used as a scare tactic/term by politically conservative figures in the US to rally their bases. In reality both here and around the world the inner workings of both private and public systems are more complex and require more observation and analysis then I think you're willing to give it. Stick to the economy or writing essays.

Edit: In a discussion or debate you have to have some hard facts, not ideologies, not theories, not ideas but something solid, something on paper which tells you if System A is working better then System B. As a SA we do that regularly by ROIs (obviously the focus is profitability) and other auditing functions to figure those things out. If the return is less then the initial investment plus the estimated profitability; 99.9% of the time the project is scraped. If we can't interact on that very basic kind of level with this issue then it's just you and Reaver telling us your dooms day opinion, telling us to fuck off if we want more and these threads being a complete waste of time for the both of us. You have to use those tools to convince people here that you're right, and don't make the mistake that I'm coming at you with some preconceived notion that a public system is absolutely better. All I have asked for is that you make the attempt to convince me and corrected you when you've gone off track. Please, consider this.

[Galleleo]

In all my Economic classes, and I have had a bunch by now, I learn one thing. Economics is nothing more than a theory, an ideology. The free market idea is nice, and other economic ideas are nice too.. but none actually work in practice.

[Cops]

I think the idea of smaller countries being able to have a free market worked because of the population size plus the lack of wealth to actually make a monopoly of the services provided in that country. I'm sure free markets are tangible and great ideas, just not in any country we exist in. On a global scale free markets are a pipe dream.

Letting your healthcare be monopolized by corporations with little to no government regulation is a time bomb waiting to explode. This isn't a solution.

[Epinephrine]

I thought people realized the 'free market' wouldn't actually work after the 19th century. I mean, if you have an unregulated capitalist system, you have people doing whatever the hell they want. Since humans are not 'perfect' by any means, the free market cannot be perfect or the answer to everything either. Humans are by nature selfish, self-serving, greedy, and in many ways could care less about other people. In fact those who seem to do the best in an absolutely free market system tend to be even more cutthroat than the rest. As well, the ideal free market system also relies on everyone having equal access to and the ability to process information perfectly. This is absolutely never the case, and without regulations and laws to protect the average person, they can be easily fooled by greedy people who will do anything to make a buck.

This is why until the US actually started putting in some regulations, the country went from boom to bust to boom to bust. In the end people tend to always take things too far, and without at least some attempt to reign in the most absurd who are pushing the envelope, then they might ruin everything for everyone else.

If you want a modern example, the fact is we have a shadow banking system right now, where wall street investment banks and hedge funds do things which are absolutely beyond any regulations. They do whatever they want to do, and those within this system profit handsomely. This include things like making up stock advice to dupe investors, creating extremely complex investment vehicles and then rating bad loans as AAA thus leading to the current economic crisis which has started from the subprime mortgage crisis but threatens to be so much more.

Or you can just take a look at China, where there is very little regulation in everything from pharmaceuticals to environment, to land, to food. Tainted food, after tainted drug after illegally seized land from corruption, to ruined environment by people who will stop at nothing to make money for themselves and enrich themselves.

In the end, the ideal 'free market' that Jerome wants to exist will never happen, thus it's pointless to even consider that such a thing will actually exist for healthcare and to strive for that. We should try to make the best of what there is, and instead of calling universal healthcare 'socialist' (which invokes images of the USSR and dictators) and just claiming that somehow the free market 'works better', actually trying to improve systems that exist now with real-life practical solutions is much more useful.

[Ephemeral]

Free market, while not perfect, seems to me to emulate several successful natural mechanisms. Competition, survival of the fittest, and natural selection all seem to be attributes that a free market approach copies. What happens in nature when a plant or animal gets too greedy in its particular niche? It exhausts its resources and either dies back/dies out or finds another method or resource to take advantage of.
Simply put, how many people are willing to step up and carry the load of the other people in society? Before there was insurance, people HAD to rely upon their family, neighbors, church, and local community when disaster struck. Insurance has largely removed this dependency, providing a way for people to gamble on their health. People still have the option to rely upon other options. Making personal choices such as not smoking, making less risky life decisions, or simply working hard to ensure that you have enough money to pay for the level of health care you desire are all within reach to people.

[Galleleo]

The Free Market theory assumes that people are fully rational.

So I will just point you towards Simon, H. (1976) Administrative Behaviour (3rd edition). New York: The Free Press

[Doc Flabby]

The reason healthcare does not work in a free market is you cannot put a price on health. Essentially there is no restiction on demand. Increasing prices does not lower demand for healthcare.

If i had to give up all my money and possessions for life-saving treatment I, and most people would. At the end of the day possessions/money can be got back, your life cannot.

[Epinephrine]

Free market, while not perfect, seems to me to emulate several successful natural mechanisms. Competition, survival of the fittest, and natural selection all seem to be attributes that a free market approach copies. What happens in nature when a plant or animal gets too greedy in its particular niche? It exhausts its resources and either dies back/dies out or finds another method or resource to take advantage of.
Simply put, how many people are willing to step up and carry the load of the other people in society? Before there was insurance, people HAD to rely upon their family, neighbors, church, and local community when disaster struck. Insurance has largely removed this dependency, providing a way for people to gamble on their health. People still have the option to rely upon other options. Making personal choices such as not smoking, making less risky life decisions, or simply working hard to ensure that you have enough money to pay for the level of health care you desire are all within reach to people.

Eph, you have to understand Jerome's extremist views. When I explained to him earlier that private insurance companies are in many ways no different and in many ways less accountable than a government run system (they too set standard prices on care, limits on care, and refuse treatment all the time), Jerome merely answered with a 'well I don't agree with insurance companies existing at all either'.

Jerome's basic view is that healthcare should be like shopping for groceries. You go to wherever you want to go when you need it and pay whatever you want. You have cancer? Alright, then you look up a few doctors, shop around and find the price you're willing to pay. Of course if you want better treatment and you don't have money that's your problem.

If you're too poor to afford even basic treatment for your problem, there will be more than enough doctors willing to give free healthcare (like Ron Paul heroically giving free healthcare to anyone that wanted to) that it's not even a problem. Just as how Wal-Mart cashiers sometimes work for free so that your shopping can be cheaper, doctors will actually pay for expensive drugs for you, so if you are poor philanthropy will help out.

And if you're too poor to pay for expensive treatment, that doesn't matter either if you die because that's your problem if you die because you were too lazy to work hard and have a million dollars. 200 years from now medical science will have the answer to your problem for much cheaper thanks to the free market because countless millionaires paying as much as possible for their health would have guaranteed that you'd get your share, just as how crossing the atlantic is no longer a 3-month journey because long ago kings and rich merchants decided they wanted to go a bit faster.

In short his view is extremely heartless, based on theoretical models that don't apply in real life, and leave out a vast amount of people a priori because simply put I don't think he actually cares about other people that much.

[Cops]

Would any person I'd want to be treating me working in any sort of system like that? Fuck no. Assuming that if markets were free that it would solve the healthcare problem isn't a solution, it's stupidity. It also makes me shake my head at the fact that he believes that corporations do not need any government regulation.

We've played this game before, it comes down to his idealogical views on government regulation and free market ideologies. Once you break the core of this debate you see that Jerome is very callous, heartless and down right disgusting. If you want to see the real Jerome read his posts about how he wouldn't care if millions died in the name of capitalism, and how caring for anyone besides yourself is viewed as nothing more than being a socialist. I'm saying this about a guy I use to like, a lot. He's completly backwards in his views on humanity and how the world actually works, if millions die so money can be made then that is what must be done.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Allowing a group of people to control more power and wealth without forcing them to be responsible in their business practices is the stupidest idea I've ever heard of.

this is all i needed to hear from you, thanks. now please read my first post.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Eph, you have to understand Jerome's extremist views. When I explained to him earlier that private insurance companies are in many ways no different and in many ways less accountable than a government run system (they too set standard prices on care, limits on care, and refuse treatment all the time), Jerome merely answered with a 'well I don't agree with insurance companies existing at all either'.

quite the contrary. it is a fundamental law of economics - the only way to TRULY lower prices is to increase supply. that is the one core concept socialized healthcare does. (kolar: if i'm heartless, then your system is socialist. deal.)

government-run healthcare will never truly lower price - they can SAY a price is lowered, but ignoring the economic aspect (as you continue to do) will not make it go away (as we continue to see). the only way to lower price, in the long run, is to increase supply. socialized healthcare does not do that. want to argue? read. original. post.

this 'extremist' view of mine is a nobel-prize winning view. it's also, as eph pointed out, a very 'natural' view. is darwin an extremist too?

edit: and what bugs me about all of this, is... you guys have forgotten the original post. people are being left out to die by a government, and suddenly i'm getting called out for being some sort of monster. and noone's even been decent enough to provide some counter-examples.

[Jerome Scuggs]

At the end of the day possessions/money can be got back, your life cannot.

so your solution is to give your life to the government?

good luck getting it back