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Are you under the impression that funding healthcare services via Medicare has even the slightest resemblance to capitalism? I can't think of any industry that
by CWuestefeld 4y ago
Are you under the impression that funding healthcare services via Medicare has even the slightest resemblance to capitalism? I can't think of any industry that is farther away from this. I mean, Medicare is be definition run by the government, and the way that the service providers deal with it is highly controlled by the government. This looks absolutely nothing like a free market, it's entirely the product of socialist control (if I can define "socialism" as "government controls the means of production" rather than outright "owning" it).
- whitemary 4y agoMedicare was enacted as an alternative to the nationalized universal healthcare systems proposed by socialists at the time. The capitalists in charge preferred Medicare because it could appease enough of the domestic population while preserving opportunities to exploit working Americans for a profit. It's as simple as that. And no, your so-called "free market healthcare" fantasy was not considered an option because it was in fact the problem to solve.
- CWuestefeld 4y agoSo, again, is it your position that the results we see from Medicare - where the payer is the government itself, and the provider side is operating under extremely tight rules dictated by the government, can be considered representative of how things might play out in a free market? You haven't come out and said so, so I apologize if I'm putting words in your mouth. But it seems like you're arguing toward a position: because we can see that government control of the market has resulted in the mess that we call Medicare, we should therefore stomp out any further vestiges of the market and put the government in control of that as well. This doesn't seem like a sane position.