I’m not interested in suffering or dying out of some abstract devotion to capitalism for its own sake, no.
And you keep talking about “other people’s money” as if private health care companies spent their own money instead of money they get from others.
[What you don’t get is health care providers chasing ever growing quarterly returns. Wages can be controlled and set by the agreed rebate system, I would also point to other countries that spend less per capita on health and have better outcomes.
Figures below are from WHO and are for 2009.
Australia:
total population 23,050,000
Gross national income per capita (PPP international ) 38,110
Life expectancy at birth m/f (years) 80/84
Probability of dying under five (per 1 000 live births) 5
Probability of dying between 15 and 60 years m/f (per 1 000 population) 80/46
Total expenditure on health per capita (Intl , 2011) 3,692
Total expenditure on health as % of GDP (2011) 9.0
Cuba:
Total population 11,271,000
Gross national income per capita (PPP international ) not available
Life expectancy at birth m/f (years) 76/80
Probability of dying under five (per 1 000 live births) 6
Probability of dying between 15 and 60 years m/f (per 1 000 population) 119/75
Total expenditure on health per capita (Intl , 2011) 430
Total expenditure on health as % of GDP (2011) 10.0
USA:
Total population 318,000,000
Gross national income per capita (PPP international ) 48,820
Life expectancy at birth m/f (years) 76/81
Probability of dying under five (per 1 000 live births) 7
Probability of dying between 15 and 60 years m/f (per 1 000 population) 131/77
Total expenditure on health per capita (Intl , 2011) 8,608
Total expenditure on health as % of GDP (2011) 17.9
well at least we have clarity on where we differ. nice talking to you. 
It’s definitional. If it is a private company, then they are spending their own money. that is THE difference between a public and private company.
I buy the US/Australia comparison, but not Cuba:
Exactly. All businesses are spending “other people’s money” by cornopean’s logic.
Seriously, do you really think an administrator at a public hospital would just say “fuck it, we can always get more from taxes” instead of looking around for a better price on tongue depressors? And a person in the same position at a private hospital would go the extra mile so someone they’ve never met can make a few bucks?
Just saying “government = inefficient” isn’t going to convince anyone, especially when nearly every country with public heath care provides better care for less.
And the government is spending its money.
I dunno, it gets a truly impressive and saddening amount of mileage. Our newcomer is just one data point.
By the way, Wall Street firms and banks? Private firms that were foolish with other people’s money, but were great at giving out bonuses, the bonus process magically transforming “their money” into “our money”.
Then why do people have others invest their money? If I can spend and allocate my own money more efficiently than my financial planner, then why do you think I am paying him? Why do billionaires, people who should theoretically know better, invest in hedge funds if they could spend their own money more efficiently? The whole investment banking system exists because professional investors can typically spend other’s money more efficiently than they can. If they couldn’t no one would pay for the privileged to be screwed bankers.
Essentially, you are arguing that every single person in the US, from sophisticated MDs at banks to the crackhead on the corner is a better steward of their money than someone else? How could that possibly make sense to you? If you agree that that some people are better with money than others, then there must exist someone who can, for example, theoretically spend my money more efficiently than I could BY DEFINITION. Do you really think people like Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson were really better stewards of their own money than someone like Warren Buffet would have been? Do you really believe that?
Unless your argument is that said person will simply do worse because they care less about my money than their own, then I disagree with your premise. Most people have a modicum of integrity and pride in their work. More importantly, the government, banks, most financial professionals, and almost every other institution that handles money or sells goods, has a vested interest in demonstrating good stewardship of that money as much as humanly possible because there is a personal cost to not doing so. Accounting scandals and waste get people fired in both the private and public sector. Does that mean they never fuck up? No, but to assume that a given person can do better than the government in every circumstance is just foolish.
I’m fairly sure from his/her rhetoric that cornopean is one of those people who thinks that taxation = theft. Therefore professional investors and the like don’t count because they aren’t using “stolen” tax money.
Regarding Universal Health Care
One of the strengths of a federal republic of a union of states is that each state is allowed a certain amount of discretion in how they govern. Many of the states have already implemented different kinds of supplemental coverage for the uninsured citizenry. The variations and their reported results are interesting and notably variant enough to form some sort of statistical model about how the administration and implementation of healthcare for the citizenry affects the welfare of the citizenry.
Regarding the health of our common populace from these multiple experiments among the states, we the governed, who elect the governors, might somehow be able to discern patterns of governance that are more efficient, and based upon the common altruism that is sorely lacking in the debate of these times. I reject the concept that a body politic acting for the benefit of each individual therein is inherently less efficient than a system based upon the personal acquisitiveness and avarice of a few individuals.
So, we should use the expertise of the various state systems to synthesize a way to make health care universal to all of the citizens using a known federal model as a template at the very least. The newly reformed VA and the Medicare systems are viable candidates to be implemented. There are those who oppose this from the emotive basis of a deep-seated revulsion of Government, and it is difficult to reach anyone who has such an aversion. We see this, in these days, manifested in the citizens who carry the banner of the Tea Party.
A few but powerful members of this party are intransigent, ideologically driven and have decided that they wish to subvert the current paradigm to install their own radical plan for a return to the morass of imagined days of yesteryear from which we, as a culture, in the real world have overcome. They wish to undermine by methods that are heinous (and yet legal), the very structure of the governance of our nation. And, for many of us, we feared that they would succeed in their lemming-like love of the abyss, taking us all with them on their quest for the perfect society where nobody was beholden to anyone else and all lived for themselves.
Nevertheless, the majority of the populace and electorate are aware, on a personal basis, of the significance of this issue. The current jury-rigged system is remarkably inefficient and could easily be described as dysfunctional in many cases. In a perfect world we could all craft a better solution, but we live here so perhaps, maybe just perhaps, we could all stop concentrating on our own personal concerns and actually think about everyone else. Just for a moment. Remember, you are not alone.
But, until that idyllic future, we have to deal with the mechanisms that our forebears left us. The GOP led House just did something really horrible (by most accounts) and yet it was completely constitutional and legal. So, the way we are supposed to handle this is to come out in significant numbers to vote these people out of office, or at the very least, vote out the miscreants who have aligned themselves with this core of benighted fools. Cackling in glee as they throw us all under the bus because their candidate didn’t win an election.
Well, I meant amongst people who are more concerned with facts than ideological purity.
Mods can close the thread now. We have the answer. It is impossible. The reason is simple.
It’s just an axiom … and I thought you guys were math whizzes? :smack: You can look it up in the original Zermelo-Fraenkel paper. Right between Regularity:
∀x[x≠∅ → ∃y(y∈x & ∀z(z∈x → ¬(z∈y)))]
and Replacement Schema:
∀u1…∀uk[∀x∃!yφ(x,y,û) →
∀w∃v∀r(r∈v ≡ ∃s(s∈w & φx,y,û[s,r,û]))]
you’ll find
Dem lazy gummint teat-sucklers with dair so-called yoonyuns and gun-stealing Prezzy cain’t nebber outpefom no MacBurger guy with the fear and respet of de Job Creeaters in 'im.
Perhaps the OP should propose a compromise. Keep the VA but turn its function over to capitalists not suckling at the Chinese bond-buyers teat, e.g. Wackenhut Private Prisons or Blackwater Worldwide.
Let’s say a private company owned the street lights and roads. I decide I don’t want to use the street lights and roads. How do you keep me from seeing the illumination out my window or sitting in my yard? How do you keep me from buying products at the store (assuming I walk there) and benefiting from the transport system that got those goods to the store?
You could pass a law mandating that I pay the private company, but then we’ve introduce a horrible market inefficiency whereby the company can provide pothole filled dimly lit streets but I still have to pay because I don’t like jail.
Some things, and very few in my mind, don’t lend themselves to free market principles. The military is a good one. Do we want, say, five different private militaries and I as a consumer can choose which one protects my home?
The govt has no money of its own. The only money it has is money it has first taken from individuals.
I don’t think all taxation is theft. But when the govt takes money from one person and gives it to another person, that very quickly becomes theft.
You raise some good points. I should think, however, that a street could be paid for with tolls. Today’s technology can easily bill people for street use without the booths and toll collectors. Then we can stick as close as possible to the principle that as far as possible, services should be paid for by the people who use them most.
but people are going to choose to use the streets that are best maintained. and for the private company to keep their contract, they are going to have to do a good job or the local govt can fire them and hire another contractor.
Would you agree that services like snow removal and trash pickup are better performed by private companies?
Agreed. The military has to be govt run. This is one of the few things IMO that only the govt can do. I am not a total anarchist.
Where do you think private companies get their money? They do not generate it. They get it from customers who expect to get something back for it. Therefore, the company is not “spending its own money,” it is spending the money of other people.
Where we are they are done by the same people.
Sanitation collection is a dirty dangerous job with undeservedly low social status. Giving those workers, in return, stable middle-class wages seems fairer to me than handing collection to the lowest bidder.