4 ms·

> Somebody else's sickness has no effect on me in most cases. And in the ones in which it does, the CDC is there to help. Nobody would suggest that the governme

by walterk 18y ago

> Somebody else's sickness has no effect on me in most cases. And in the ones in which it does, the CDC is there to help. Nobody would suggest that the government doesn't play an important role in protecting against epidemics, which is most analogous to your fire metaphor. In most cases, someone else's fire has no (direct) effect on you either, so I'm not sure what the relevance of that assertion is. Nor am I talking about the spread of disease, but rather the socioeconomic effects of having an untreated medical condition, which may not affect you very much, but which can have serious effects for a family and their ability to contribute to the economy. See Gladwell's The Moral-Hazard Myth: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/08/29/050829fa_fact http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/08/29/050829fa_fact and Uninsured in America, a book which Gladwell cites in the article. I'm also not sure how you got the impression that I think the public should "protect people from all of the bad things that can befall them." What I believe is that an entity capable of making a credible threat on the public's behalf must ensure that market incentives are properly aligned with the public good, when they are demonstrably not in alignment. That entity tends to be the government. If there's another entity that can do the job more effectively, that's great. I don't entertain any sort of dogma about the "proper" role of the government. I don't see how tort reform counters the inefficiencies of the health industries. And diet certainly is a problem. But I'm not sure how the fact that there is a cultural basis to many of our health problems bears upon the problem of misaligned market incentives in the health industry. No one is saying that government is the sole force in ensuring the public health. People who think the government might have a role to play typically don't think that individual judgment goes out the window.

mattmaroon 18y ago
If we didn't have fire departments, other people's fires would have direct effects on me. Hell, every time someone drops a cigarette in California hundreds lose their homes. That's not true of health insurance. Tort reform and caps on payouts for malpractice suits are necessary. Every time someone wins a $50m suit because a doctor accidentally amputated their pinky, the costs are passed back onto the rest of us. I'm all for aligning incentives, but that does not necessitate public health care.
- walterk 18y ago
  I've been talking about indirect effects. Direct effects are what you injected into the conversation by way of talking about epidemics. You are indeed indirectly affected by the poor state of health care in this nation as a result of the lost economic productivity, and any cultural decline that can ensue. My analogy to fire control is simply to point out that we are affected by the well being of others. Tort reform is a solution to a completely different problem than what I've been talking about, so again, I fail to see the relevance. We clearly disagree on what would improve the public health, and our disagreement clearly stems from ideological differences which haven't surfaced here. That's fine, but nothing that we've been doing amounts to an actual debate over the issue in question.

by walterk 18y ago

mattmaroon 18y ago

If we didn't have fire departments, other people's fires would have direct effects on me. Hell, every time someone drops a cigarette in California hundreds lose their homes. That's not true of health insurance. Tort reform and caps on payouts for malpractice suits are necessary. Every time someone wins a $50m suit because a doctor accidentally amputated their pinky, the costs are passed back onto the rest of us. I'm all for aligning incentives, but that does not necessitate public health care.

walterk 18y ago
I've been talking about indirect effects. Direct effects are what you injected into the conversation by way of talking about epidemics. You are indeed indirectly affected by the poor state of health care in this nation as a result of the lost economic productivity, and any cultural decline that can ensue. My analogy to fire control is simply to point out that we are affected by the well being of others. Tort reform is a solution to a completely different problem than what I've been talking about, so again, I fail to see the relevance. We clearly disagree on what would improve the public health, and our disagreement clearly stems from ideological differences which haven't surfaced here. That's fine, but nothing that we've been doing amounts to an actual debate over the issue in question.