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I wont respond to the rest of your response, but it has been pretty clearly demonstrated by people smarter than you or I (at least in their respective professio

by sets13 14y ago

I wont respond to the rest of your response, but it has been pretty clearly demonstrated by people smarter than you or I (at least in their respective professions) that free markets aren't always the most efficient solution to a problem, particularly when the desired solution is not just to come up with a price that is profitable for for the seller. http://www.basiceconomics.info/market-failures-and-externalities.php http://www.basiceconomics.info/market-failures-and-externali...

pdonis 14y ago
it has been pretty clearly demonstrated What has been clearly demonstrated is that free markets don't always reach the optimal solution. That is not the same as saying that governments can do better. In cases where there are market failures and/or externalities, very often there is no way to get to the optimal solution. The real question is, which has worse failure modes, free markets or governments? I'm going to go with governments on that one.
- sets13 14y ago
  I guess I would disagree with you on that. Given that the U.S. is basically the only first world country that still has private healthcare and it is typically rated somewhere between 15 and 40 world wide on most healthcare metrics, it seems like a number of countries have figured out a way to do public healthcare better... (and more cheaply) http://www.businessinsider.com/best-healthcare-systems-in-the-world-2012-6?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/best-healthcare-systems-in-th... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranking_of_health_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranki... http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/23/us-usa-healthcare-last-idUSTRE65M0SU20100623 http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/23/us-usa-healthcare-...
  - pdonis 14y ago
    it seems like a number of countries have figured out a way to do public healthcare better... (and more cheaply) "More cheaply" if you only look at health care, perhaps. But not if you look at total government spending: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending But the real point is that all of those numbers have been increasing over time, and will continue to increase until the governments and countries collapse under the deadweight costs of centralized control. And on the way, we get to have laws bought by special interests and government regulations written by the companies that are supposed to be regulated.
    - sets13 14y ago
      I don't see any facts supporting your assertion that the countries will spontaneously collapse due to the size or spending of their governments... What I do see are a long list of countries with higher tax rates, budget surpluses or much smaller deficits than the USA, and much higher ranked healthcare systems (You point at Greece, I will point at Germany, Norway and Sweden. Let's just get that out of the way). Let's leave it at this, I am not going to say that a public healthcare system (or a single payer system) is the only right way of doing things. What I will say is there are a lot of other countries out there that are able to provide a better health care system through that route while still remaining financially stable. Maybe that is just not something that is in the cards for the USA though, maybe the trade off is that you have lower taxes, but a lower life expectancy if you are not wealthy. I certainly am not going to pretend to know all the answers, but I do think refusing to learn from other countries because they are not doing it the "American" way (read: with a free market) would be a silly reason to accept having one of the worst healthcare systems in the first world.
      - pdonis 14y ago
        I don't see any facts supporting your assertion that the countries will spontaneously collapse due to the size or spending of their governments... Soviet Union. they are not doing it the "American" way (read: with a free market) The US does not have a free market in health care, and hasn't since at least World War II, when employers started providing health benefits to attract workers because they were unable to offer higher wages (wages were regulated by the government during the war). A free market would mean everyone sees all of the costs of the health care they receive, and weighs the costs against the expected benefits, and only buys health care for which the expected benefits exceed the costs. Nobody that participates in employer-provided health care (which is most workers in the US) does that; the only costs they see are their portion of the premiums and their copays, so they want whatever health care has a benefit to them that exceeds those costs. The provider side of the US health care system is not a free market either; a person can't just decide to be a provider. Doctors, nurses, x-ray technicians, etc., etc., all have to be licensed by the government. That is supposed to help guarantee that they are competent, but it also helps to keep costs higher by restricting the supply of providers. (To some extent there are now private clinics trying to end-run around this for basic services like blood pressure or cholesterol screening; but they are limited, and mostly serve people who don't have employer-provided insurance.) In short, the US health care system is not an example of a free market system that achieves less optimal outcomes than a government system; it's an example of a bastardized part-government part-private system that achieves less optimal outcomes (by some metrics--by others, for example wait times for critical surgeries, it achieves better outcomes) than a government system.

by sets13 14y ago

pdonis 14y ago

it has been pretty clearly demonstrated What has been clearly demonstrated is that free markets don't always reach the optimal solution. That is not the same as saying that governments can do better. In cases where there are market failures and/or externalities, very often there is no way to get to the optimal solution. The real question is, which has worse failure modes, free markets or governments? I'm going to go with governments on that one.

sets13 14y ago
I guess I would disagree with you on that. Given that the U.S. is basically the only first world country that still has private healthcare and it is typically rated somewhere between 15 and 40 world wide on most healthcare metrics, it seems like a number of countries have figured out a way to do public healthcare better... (and more cheaply) http://www.businessinsider.com/best-healthcare-systems-in-the-world-2012-6?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/best-healthcare-systems-in-th... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranking_of_health_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranki... http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/23/us-usa-healthcare-last-idUSTRE65M0SU20100623 http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/23/us-usa-healthcare-...
- pdonis 14y ago
  it seems like a number of countries have figured out a way to do public healthcare better... (and more cheaply) "More cheaply" if you only look at health care, perhaps. But not if you look at total government spending: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending But the real point is that all of those numbers have been increasing over time, and will continue to increase until the governments and countries collapse under the deadweight costs of centralized control. And on the way, we get to have laws bought by special interests and government regulations written by the companies that are supposed to be regulated.
  - sets13 14y ago
    I don't see any facts supporting your assertion that the countries will spontaneously collapse due to the size or spending of their governments... What I do see are a long list of countries with higher tax rates, budget surpluses or much smaller deficits than the USA, and much higher ranked healthcare systems (You point at Greece, I will point at Germany, Norway and Sweden. Let's just get that out of the way). Let's leave it at this, I am not going to say that a public healthcare system (or a single payer system) is the only right way of doing things. What I will say is there are a lot of other countries out there that are able to provide a better health care system through that route while still remaining financially stable. Maybe that is just not something that is in the cards for the USA though, maybe the trade off is that you have lower taxes, but a lower life expectancy if you are not wealthy. I certainly am not going to pretend to know all the answers, but I do think refusing to learn from other countries because they are not doing it the "American" way (read: with a free market) would be a silly reason to accept having one of the worst healthcare systems in the first world.
    - pdonis 14y ago
      I don't see any facts supporting your assertion that the countries will spontaneously collapse due to the size or spending of their governments... Soviet Union. they are not doing it the "American" way (read: with a free market) The US does not have a free market in health care, and hasn't since at least World War II, when employers started providing health benefits to attract workers because they were unable to offer higher wages (wages were regulated by the government during the war). A free market would mean everyone sees all of the costs of the health care they receive, and weighs the costs against the expected benefits, and only buys health care for which the expected benefits exceed the costs. Nobody that participates in employer-provided health care (which is most workers in the US) does that; the only costs they see are their portion of the premiums and their copays, so they want whatever health care has a benefit to them that exceeds those costs. The provider side of the US health care system is not a free market either; a person can't just decide to be a provider. Doctors, nurses, x-ray technicians, etc., etc., all have to be licensed by the government. That is supposed to help guarantee that they are competent, but it also helps to keep costs higher by restricting the supply of providers. (To some extent there are now private clinics trying to end-run around this for basic services like blood pressure or cholesterol screening; but they are limited, and mostly serve people who don't have employer-provided insurance.) In short, the US health care system is not an example of a free market system that achieves less optimal outcomes than a government system; it's an example of a bastardized part-government part-private system that achieves less optimal outcomes (by some metrics--by others, for example wait times for critical surgeries, it achieves better outcomes) than a government system.