4 ms·

Free? It's paid for by taxation and national debt. Funny thing is, you probably couldn't even calculate the cost, because prices are heavily distorted or even i

Free? It's paid for by taxation and national debt. Funny thing is, you probably couldn't even calculate the cost, because prices are heavily distorted or even incalculable in socialized markets. ``...pricing systems in socialist economies were necessarily deficient because if government owned or controlled the means of production, then no rational prices could be obtained for capital goods as they were merely internal transfers of goods in a socialist system and not "objects of exchange," unlike final goods. Therefore, they were unpriced and hence the system would be necessarily inefficient since the central planners would not know how to allocate the available resources efficiently. This led him to declare "...that rational economic activity is impossible in a socialist commonwealth."'' http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

DanBC 13y ago
Your post makes some weird assumptions and errors. The UK system has competition. For example: an NHS trust might provide drug and alcohol services. When the contract is renewed a charity might win that contract. Your post also makes the weird assumption that supplies (medication, medical devices, dressings etc, beds and sheets and food and everything) is all also owned and provided by the government. They are not, they are made and sold by private companies to other companies - some of those are private companies, some of them are foundation trusts. Modern health provision is much much more complex than "the government does it". You should investigate the NHS because it's fascinating,even for people ideologically opposed to this model of health care provision.
- whatevsbro 13y ago
  > Your post makes some weird assumptions and errors. No it doesn't. > The UK system has competition. For example: an NHS trust might provide drug and alcohol services. When the contract is renewed a charity might win that contract. The competition is a sham. The contract goes to whoever is the chummiest with the right people in power. > Your post also makes the weird assumption that supplies (medication, medical devices, dressings etc, beds and sheets and food and everything) is all also owned and provided by the government. His post did contain the word "socialist", but that doesn't mean he's assuming what you described there. I believe he just wanted to make a point about "socialist" policies, like public healthcare. Sure, the word can be defined in various ways, but healthcare is what we were talking about. The lesson here is that it's just inevitably going to be worse run than a business would be. The Mises quote wasn't directly related, but it's a good idea to read whatever Mises had to say. You might learn something about how economies really work.
  - jedmeyers 13y ago
    The competition in the US is also a sham.
- programmarchy 13y ago
  > Your post also makes the weird assumption that supplies (medication, medical devices, dressings etc, beds and sheets and food and everything) is all also owned and provided by the government. They are not, they are made and sold by private companies to other companies - some of those are private companies, some of them are foundation trusts. There is a matter of degree involved. The more the healthcare market is socialized, the more prices will be distorted. The goods you listed may still have rational prices, still being provided by the market, but the prices of services will be distorted since there's no actual trade involved (hence no price signals) so it has to be centrally planned. And yes of course health provision is complex, which is exactly why the prices cannot be rationally decided by central planners. They simply don't have the necessary information to make rational decisions that depend on the millions upon millions of price signals that are disseminated on a daily basis in a distributed fashion in real markets. A good illustration of this is that communist planners in the Soviet Union had to rely on world prices (i.e. capitalist world prices) as guidelines for the pricing and allocation of resources.

DanBC 13y ago

Your post makes some weird assumptions and errors. The UK system has competition. For example: an NHS trust might provide drug and alcohol services. When the contract is renewed a charity might win that contract. Your post also makes the weird assumption that supplies (medication, medical devices, dressings etc, beds and sheets and food and everything) is all also owned and provided by the government. They are not, they are made and sold by private companies to other companies - some of those are private companies, some of them are foundation trusts. Modern health provision is much much more complex than "the government does it". You should investigate the NHS because it's fascinating,even for people ideologically opposed to this model of health care provision.

whatevsbro 13y ago
> Your post makes some weird assumptions and errors. No it doesn't. > The UK system has competition. For example: an NHS trust might provide drug and alcohol services. When the contract is renewed a charity might win that contract. The competition is a sham. The contract goes to whoever is the chummiest with the right people in power. > Your post also makes the weird assumption that supplies (medication, medical devices, dressings etc, beds and sheets and food and everything) is all also owned and provided by the government. His post did contain the word "socialist", but that doesn't mean he's assuming what you described there. I believe he just wanted to make a point about "socialist" policies, like public healthcare. Sure, the word can be defined in various ways, but healthcare is what we were talking about. The lesson here is that it's just inevitably going to be worse run than a business would be. The Mises quote wasn't directly related, but it's a good idea to read whatever Mises had to say. You might learn something about how economies really work.
- jedmeyers 13y ago
  The competition in the US is also a sham.
programmarchy 13y ago
> Your post also makes the weird assumption that supplies (medication, medical devices, dressings etc, beds and sheets and food and everything) is all also owned and provided by the government. They are not, they are made and sold by private companies to other companies - some of those are private companies, some of them are foundation trusts. There is a matter of degree involved. The more the healthcare market is socialized, the more prices will be distorted. The goods you listed may still have rational prices, still being provided by the market, but the prices of services will be distorted since there's no actual trade involved (hence no price signals) so it has to be centrally planned. And yes of course health provision is complex, which is exactly why the prices cannot be rationally decided by central planners. They simply don't have the necessary information to make rational decisions that depend on the millions upon millions of price signals that are disseminated on a daily basis in a distributed fashion in real markets. A good illustration of this is that communist planners in the Soviet Union had to rely on world prices (i.e. capitalist world prices) as guidelines for the pricing and allocation of resources.