Bizarre Health Care Reactions

[Cops]

Yeah, you'd be an awful teacher. If you want to see how taxes can be used towards the betterment of society then you need to look outside your own borders, I was making a point that almost all western societies have seen taxes equal some sort of service(s), usually at a lower price then if it was offered through the private sector.

Taxes don't make you a better person, they generally work towards making your country a better place. This differs from country to country, of course. I get your points about how American governments have a long history of corruption and misspending, but you can't shoot down the notion of taxes because one country hasn't had a decent government in decades. I'm not responsible for the citizens in your country, if you think it's responsible, or even ethical to let people who can't afford to see a doctor go without medical treatment then that's your decision - and more so your countries decision.

Europeans pay a lot more taxes than you or I. In fact I probably pay a lot less taxes than you, and if you studied Canadian politics you'd know I have access to a lot more services than you. The problem I see is gross misuse of funds, there's a lot you can do with the amount the government currently receives, yet it refuses to be fiscal in their approach to economics. This isn't just an Obama bash, Bush was much worse.

I believe humans try to be good and selfless, yet we tend to be self centered and greedy, thus a lot of people looking to the government for help would be stranded without the support they receive. Are you going to pay for your neighbor to see a doctor if he's sick? Are you going to loan him some money so he can get some medicine? Probably not, and if you are then I believe this to be a rare instance. I don't expect most people to do this, thus the only option for many individuals is the state.

Governments can't solve everything, but they can make a major impact on solving a lot of crises domestic, and abroad. In short, paying taxes that support those less fortunate doesn't make me compassionate, it makes me a contributing member of my society. I've heard one too many soup kitchen stories to know that the person bragging about it is doing so just so just so he can brag about it. A person who is sincere about what they do require no thanks or approval, because he or she knows what they're doing is a good thing - thus why do they need to be thanked? Dropping that shit on an internet forum then pointing fingers is nothing more than you being a douchebag.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Yeah, you'd be an awful teacher. If you want to see how taxes can be used towards the betterment of society then you need to look outside your own borders, I was making a point that almost all western societies have seen taxes equal some sort of service(s), usually at a lower price then if it was offered through the private sector.

one of my possible thesis ideas is actually picking up a thread left by rothbard before he died, which is a study of European countries' socialized sectors. He theorized that post-war economic policies distorted markets, which caused the need for more regulation or the creation of social programs, until at some point it became simply cost-benificial to completely socialize certain industries. (Similarly, the United States is doing this with healthcare, an industry it first intervened upon 45 years ago.)

Yeah, being a history major is awesome. One of my professors is really into Napoleon and the French Revolution, which was a fascinating period that, according to your worldview, could never have happened.

Taxes don't make you a better person, they generally work towards making your country a better place. This differs from country to country, of course. I get your points about how American governments have a long history of corruption and misspending, but you can't shoot down the notion of taxes because one country hasn't had a decent government in decades. I'm not responsible for the citizens in your country, if you think it's responsible, or even ethical to let people who can't afford to see a doctor go without medical treatment then that's your decision - and more so your countries decision.

I think it's unethical for a group of people to forcibly act upon another. I think it's unethical to lie. I think it's retarded to suppose the solution to decades of government intervention will be more government intervention. I think it's economically unfeasable to insert a third party into the doctor-patient relationship and expect that prices will somehow go down. I think its immoral to cloak this in the name of a "greater good", when it only serves a few at the expense of all. I think it's not "insurance" if it's used as a first-dollar payment. I think it is ethical to do everything in one's power to save someone whose life was in danger; so do doctors and they will never refuse a patient if his life is threatened. I do not think it is ethical to force someone to do the same. I think it's not 'moral' if there is no moral decision being made. I think an action can only be moral if it is the result of making the moral choice. I think robbing people to pay people who you force to treat other people who you further prohibit from using alternatives is a concept completely devoid of anything resembling morals or economic sense.

Europeans pay a lot more taxes than you or I. In fact I probably pay a lot less taxes than you, and if you studied Canadian politics you'd know I have access to a lot more services than you. The problem I see is gross misuse of funds, there's a lot you can do with the amount the government currently receives, yet it refuses to be fiscal in their approach to economics. This isn't just an Obama bash, Bush was much worse.

I have just one question: do you canadians have access to proton lasers? Sweet Jesus.

I believe humans try to be good and selfless, yet we tend to be self centered and greedy, thus a lot of people looking to the government for help would be stranded without the support they receive. Are you going to pay for your neighbor to see a doctor if he's sick? Are you going to loan him some money so he can get some medicine? Probably not, and if you are then I believe this to be a rare instance. I don't expect most people to do this, thus the only option for many individuals is the state.

don't listen to my theories and ideas; simply compare the number of private charity organizations with tax rates and government size. Intervention discourages the very generosity which you say is lacking. remember that most social programs got their start after particular government actions displaced populations - whether it be devastation by war or devastation by central-banking policies.

And of course, the program won't operate as you claim it will. Supply and demand will always be imbalanced - and the fatal flaw is the very taxation which will create the need for more people to begin using the 'free' or subsidized program. There is a shift as taxpayers increasingly become tax consumers. Eventually the wealthy (comprising of different people but including producers) will be burdened with a high tax demand that discourages the very innovation and production sought after in the particular market - which is why the rest of the world looks at the US for medical innovation.

Governments can't solve everything, but they can make a major impact on solving a lot of crises domestic, and abroad. In short, paying taxes that support those less fortunate doesn't make me compassionate, it makes me a contributing member of my society. I've heard one too many soup kitchen stories to know that the person bragging about it is doing so just so just so he can brag about it. A person who is sincere about what they do require no thanks or approval, because he or she knows what they're doing is a good thing - thus why do they need to be thanked? Dropping that shit on an internet forum then pointing fingers is nothing more than you being a douchebag.

which crises have been solved? how goes the war on terror? poverty? drugs? homelessness?*the government only creates markets for these very things.

as far as the last part, I can see you take the business of looking compassionate pretty seriously. i am indeed a douchebag for using a personal story to illustrate a point.

[Cops]

About every history professor I've met is obsessed with the French revolution and the Napoleonic era, what's your point? Was it necessary for you to mention your major or some bullshit about what you're studying, could you for once stay focused in a god damn conversation. I swear to fucking god its like talking to someone who tries to have six different conversations at once.

Society has developed and changed, and if you want to talk about historical references in terms of taxation you are straying away from the argument. It was obvious that I was talking about present day society when I said most western nations have seen benefits from taxes; I wasn't referring to hundreds of fucking years ago. This is going nowhere. I'm done, you can wave your degree at someone else and try to browbeat the fuck out of them. Considering Epinephrine has the patience of a saint, I'll let him try to take your backwards theories and try to explain why you constantly contradict yourself.

[Kolar]

I think it's economically unfeasible to insert a third party into the doctor-patient relationship and expect that prices will somehow go down.

But private insurers are already a third party. Under our medicare system, as far as I know, there is no process which requires a doctor to validate whether the "system" (or in your case, a pool of insurers) will cover a medical procedure. Epi has already explained this in great detail but private practices and hospitals bill our single payer system for everything from checkups to knee surgery, nothing more and nothing less.

[Izor]

Has anyone named a socialist program that has had success in the US yet?

[Jerome Scuggs]

I swear to fucking god its like talking to someone who tries to have six different conversations at once.

I know you probably didn't mean it in that way, but I consider this a compliment. My brain has a way of getting ahead of itself all the time.

[Jerome Scuggs]

But private insurers are already a third party. Under our medicare system, as far as I know, there is no process which requires a doctor to validate whether the "system" (or in your case, a pool of insurers) will cover a medical procedure. Epi has already explained this in great detail but private practices and hospitals bill our single payer system for everything from checkups to knee surgery, nothing more and nothing less.

I would argue, as I said earlier, that a program that serves as "first-dollar" payment, isn't insurance. At one point, the doctor-patient relationship prevailed, and insurance served as an actual "last-resort" emergency fund - but even then, the insurance company would merely act as the payer of services.

As government increasingly forced insurance companies into the equation, they had to begin adapting to the circumstances in order to turn profits - which is where "discrimination" amongst insurance policy-holders really began to take off. Of course, most states have enacted laws that prevent these companies from discriminating - and these laws allow individuals to purchase insurance right before, say, they need a serious surgery. The logic behind insurance is that a group of people pay a small fee, and in the event that a serious situation occurs, the small accrued fees provide a pool of funds to draw from. But when you create a system which allows people to purchase insurance regardless of prior condition - then people can, in short, pay a small fee in order to pay for an expensive service. It's as if drivers could purchase insurance after an accident and expect his repair bill to be paid. Of course, that will drive insurers to raise their premiums in order to plan for those types of situations.

Everytime I post on this topic, I tend to bring up a different example of why American insurance/healthcare is fucked up. I'm not trying to hop from explanation to explanation - I think they all, when you add them up, would account for the reason that our system is in the rut it is in today.

Milton Friedman studied the American system and noted that in 1910, 56% of hospitals were privately run and for-profit. By the 1980's, after years of government intervention and subsidies, the number had fallen to 10%. In 1965, when the medical industry began to undergo serious reform towards government control, expenditures rose 224% while the number of beds available to patients fell by 44%. His conclusion: the more money thrown at healthcare by government, the less quality of care is available. (He also found that in the State of Washington alone, there are more MRI scanners than there are in the entire country of Canada.)

I'm looking at a report by the Fraser institute right now (http://www.fraserinstitute.org/comme...urturn2008.pdf). Waiting times in Canada have actually increased from 1993-2008, by 86% (to be fair, the objective of the report was to look at the length of waiting times for the past year - and from 2007 to 2008, waiting times have actually decreased. But even in the "best" provinces, waiting times are still roughly 20% higher than the "reasonable" waiting time. Is there are particular reason for the decrease from 07-08?)

Now that I have a computer, I'm going to try to sit down and look at Epi's post on the canadian healthcare model, which was pretty indepth. The only problem is, it's hard to really show the "what could have been" world. Today, my friend forgot his wallet and so he couldn't by cigarettes, even though he goes into the store every day and knows the dudes - they had to follow the law and not sell to him. It was an example of the "third-party" intervention into the buyer-seller relationship by government, and I thought, well... that is five bucks that wasn't spent, so the company made $5 less, and the GDP will be $5 smaller.... and then I thought about how the millions of times when people couldn't by smokes because they didn't have their ID, and how that has negatively affected the GDP and therefore the standard of living... but I can't prove that. Likewise, analyzing Epi's post and trying to argue how it could be better would be tough. Since the system does, in fact, seem to be chugging along, anything I said about it would probably be theories of the long-term problems that may arise.

But that system isn't our system, and to model our system after yours would completely turn the industry on its head - the insurance industry would flip shit.

[Epinephrine]

I'm looking at a report by the Fraser institute right now (http://www.fraserinstitute.org/comme...urturn2008.pdf). Waiting times in Canada have actually increased from 1993-2008, by 86% (to be fair, the objective of the report was to look at the length of waiting times for the past year - and from 2007 to 2008, waiting times have actually decreased. But even in the "best" provinces, waiting times are still roughly 20% higher than the "reasonable" waiting time. Is there are particular reason for the decrease from 07-08?)

Just to explain, there's been a lot of grief in the media lately about how waiting times really suck in Canada, and as such it's been a priority for governments across the country to fix. Same with the number of MRIs and many other programs. Government is sometimes slow to respond, but once there is the political will, things do get changed quite dramatically.

As for prices going up 224%, one also has to consider the availability of different medical technologies and vastly increased number of different things that can be done now compared to 1910. I'd imagine that under ANY system costs would have risen by quite a bit.

The thing is, as people live longer and as the bare necessities become cheaper and cheaper, there will naturally be a higher premium associated with everyone wanting to spend more money to prolong life.

I think ignoring these changes and just looking at the pure dollar value is disingenuous.

[Kolar]

I would argue, as I said earlier, that a program that serves as "first-dollar" payment, isn't insurance. At one point, the doctor-patient relationship prevailed, and insurance served as an actual "last-resort" emergency fund - but even then, the insurance company would merely act as the payer of services.

So you see no merit in insurance at all? You want people to pay cash to doctors directly? Wasn't the point of private insurance meant to stem the cost of health care? Personally I don't pay all that much in taxes being a student but I know whenever I need it, I can goto my family doctor and any hospital I choose without bankrupting my family. But I rarely if ever need too being a young and mostly healthy person, once this year alone if my memory serves me which is something like 90$ without being a Canadian citizen and the antibiotics were covered by my parent's plan at work. As I get older my use of it will eventually expand, but until then I don't see the problem paying for it as I could break a leg tomorrow, be in a car crash or something else horribly unpredictable. I don't see the need in adding 30-50k+ debt on top of something like that.

I think there's enough universal health care systems around the world "chugging" along just fine not resulting in your envisioned over-utilization.

[Cops]

The problem with wait times is that people usually find themselves in need of a doctor after the hours that a general walk in clinic would be open, thus they figure it's the emergency room or nothing. The province of Ontario is working right now to address these problems by creating alternatives for people who find themselves in the emergency room unnecessarily.

If you end up waiting several hours in an emergency room, chances are you shouldn't even be there in the first place. Unlike my healthy brother I have made it a point to fuck up my body in many different ways, all resulting in receiving treatment much faster than others. I was in the ER last year, and there was twenty people who seemed like they had been there for several hours, yet I was seen in less than an hour for something that may or may not have been that serious. If you show up with a cold or a broken finger - expect to be bumped to the back of the line.

Epinephrine can probably go into more detail but we constantly immigrate immigrants to this country, a lot of which don't necessarily speak English; This can lead to misinformation and people going to the ER when they should have gone to a walk in. Nothing seems to piss the people off more at the hospital than a sea of people who show up with something they don't need treatment for, then to expect immediate medical attention.

This notion that doctors are not accessible is absurd. I can take a bus to my doctors office tomorrow after school and just wait to see him, which should take around twenty minutes. Or I could call him tomorrow morning, make an appointment and see him right when I get there after school. Or I could go see the multiple doctors that work out of my University which is the most convenient and easiest way of seeing someone.

[Cops]

I thought about how the millions of times when people couldn't by smokes because they didn't have their ID, and how that has negatively affected the GDP and therefore the standard of living...

i laughed, a little.

[Jerome Scuggs]

So you see no merit in insurance at all?

No. I do not believe that a first-dollar payment system is insurance. Insurance is a fine concept, when it is insurance. A system that merely allows one to pay a small price for a service that is shouldered by the rest of society is not insurance, it is an entitlement program.

These insurance reforms ideas are flawed. They are based on the assumption that health insurance companies can charge premiums to a pool of policyholders, predict and pay for a large loss triggered by an event outside the control of the policyholder, and make a profit. But sickness combines risks that are uncontrollable with risks that are indeed controllable by the policyholder (eating, exercise, preventative habits, and adherence to treatment plans, for example) and the provider (selection of diagnostic tests, specialists and hospitals, for example). As a result, insurance companies are left with tools of rationing via higher premiums, deductibles, copayments and utilization controls placed on providers, which have a tendency to create nonrandom groups of policyholders and providers. Health insurance companies are more instruments of income redistribution than risk managers, and they are left with only one option: to charge healthy individuals enough to subsidize sick individuals. Eventually, when the impact of the redistribution on individuals is high enough, many either opt out or are priced out of the market, creating the 50 million uninsured individuals.

In the vein of Epi's comprehensive post on the Canadian market, a few of us who post on the forums at the Mises institute's website put together some articles in one place for a look at what "my" view boils down to. It's got two articles that illuminate the history of healthcare reform in America, which should be the basis of any informed discussion of such a skewed and misunderstood subject.

In particular is an article discussing the free-rider problem in ER care, which is what most of the heat on the free market solution seems to boil down to. The article concludes the poor and underprivileged would actually have more options (and their dignity) in a market left uninterrupted by government policy.

[Jerome Scuggs]

http://walmartstores.com/HealthWellness/7613.aspx

We’re making it easy for customers to take advantage of convenient and affordable basic health care services. We lease space in our stores to independent health clinics, where customers can receive preventative care or basic medical care for as little as $40 – with no appointment necessary. The cost of every service the clinics offer will be clearly posted, bringing much needed price transparency to the health care industry.

Our retail clinics are an especially valuable resource for individuals without health insurance. Nearly half of all clinic patients report that they are uninsured. Many visitors have said that if it were not for our clinics, they wouldn't have gotten care — or they would've had to go to an emergency room. By visiting one of our clinics, patients receive the care they need and at the same time reduce overcrowding in emergency rooms and eliminate the costs of unnecessary hospital visits.

Here is an example of voluntary "subsidization" - the people who shop at WalMart fund the health clinics operated by the store. Looking at the effects of their program, it reads almost like a list of Obama's aims for healthcare.

Microsoft and even Google are also looking at ways to venture into healthcare. As you can see, the nature of the industry is already shifting, away from the broken model that Obama wants to cement into our lives. Society is always a step ahead of the government.

[Cops]

cleanup on aisle five will have a brand new meaning

[Jerome Scuggs]

In exactly the same way, the right to medical care does not mean a right to medical care as such, but to the medical care one can buy from willing providers. One's right to medical care is violated not when there is medical care that one cannot afford to buy, but when there is medical care that one could afford to buy if one were not prevented from doing so by the initiation of physical force. It is violated by medical licensing legislation and by every other form of legislation and regulation that artificially raises the cost of medical care and thereby prevents people from obtaining the medical care they otherwise could have obtained from willing providers. The precise nature of such legislation and regulation we shall see in detail, in due course.

This then is the concept of rights, and specifically of rights to things, that I uphold. One's rights to things are rights only to things one can obtain in free trade, with the voluntary consent of those who are to provide them. All such rights are predicated upon full respect for the persons and property of others. This is the concept of rights appropriate to rational human beings living in a civilized society. Henceforth, I shall refer to it as the rational concept of rights.

In sharpest contrast, the concept of rights held by the great majority of our contemporaries, especially the great majority of today's intellectuals, is a concept characteristic of savages, that is, of people who have not grasped the principle of causality and the fact that wealth must be produced, who believe instead that wealth appears as though by magic, and that they have a claim to it by the mere fact of needing it or wishing for it. This concept of rights I shall refer to as the need-based or wish-based concept of rights. It exists in full contradiction of the rational concept of rights and entails the complete violation of all rational rights. It is a concept of rights whose literal meaning is "I want it and therefore I'm entitled to take it."

According to this concept, people do have rights to jobs, houses, and medical care as such, just by virtue of needing or desiring them. Since a job entails the payment of money by the employer to the employee, and typically the provision of the use of part of the employer's premises to the employee, the notion of a right to a job as such – that is, with or without the employer's consent – implies an alleged right to take an employer's money against his will and to occupy his premises against his will, that is, an alleged right to trespass on his property and to rob him. Similarly, since a house, or any other material good, is a product of human labor, the right to a house as such implies a right to compel other people to build one a house, whether they wish to or not. It is tantamount to claiming a right to forced labor on their part. Finally, in exactly the same way, the alleged right to medical care as such implies an alleged right to force others to pay for one's medical care against their will or to force the providers of medical care, such as doctors and hospitals, to provide it against their will. It thus implies an alleged right to medical care as a right to steal and enslave. All such alleged need-based or wish-based rights are a contradiction of genuine, rational rights, which exist precisely as a moral sanction of the individual's freedom from such outrages.

-taken from a very detailed analysis of clinton's healthcare plan.