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As a supporter of Single Payer that grew up in a hyperconservative home, this sort of article completely misses the point for those that oppose it. To a conser
by saosebastiao 10y ago
As a supporter of Single Payer that grew up in a hyperconservative home, this sort of article completely misses the point for those that oppose it.
To a conservative opponent, getting high quality care at a low out-of-pocket cost is a result of health care being a redistributive social good, and "social good" is just code word for "shirking individual responsibility". They look at this situation and this author like they do their proverbial welfare queen...a beneficiary of their taxes.
If we actually want to convince them, we have to prove to them that Single Payer is an objectively more efficient system than insurance. In other words, were the total incurred costs lower than they would be in a our system? Because for them, that's an argument that matters.
Unfortunately even I, a strong proponent of single payer, would find a cross country comparison here to be disingenuous. Because it doesn't matter how efficient the French are at administering health care. What matters is how efficiently we would be at administering it. And hands down, we suck at government administration. Whether it is infrastructure, military, health, or whatever...everything we do costs more and takes longer than other governments doing the same thing.
And this is the major reason why our politics suck IMO. We have one side of the table that is 100% more government because government is awesome, one side that is 100% less government because government sucks, and nobody is arguing that we should be making government more efficient. And so we never get nice things.
- zo1 10y ago"And this is the major reason why our politics suck IMO. We have one side of the table that is 100% more government because government is awesome, one side that is 100% less government because government sucks, and nobody is arguing that we should be making government more efficient. And so we never get nice things. " Well, that'll continue happening as long as you force it to be one giant pie. If you let people choose in the first place, then you can have your nice things. You just have to pay for them yourself along with those individuals that agree with your viewpoint. And the rest of us will have to choose to either join you, or do it some other way. All arguments eventually lead to choice. Freedom and consent are fundamental properties of a libertarian belief system. We don't get to throw those out just because it'll be efficient. You could argue that it's efficient to just execute all repeat-criminals, but we don't do that because of fundamental human rights that are completely separate to the concept of pragmatism and efficiency.