Yeesh, you have a different opinion than me, and when I don’t automatically change my mind to agree with you after reading one of your posts, you think I’m a mindless ideologue. Which one of us is being stupid here, now?
That would be you. Glad I could help. 
Also, I didn’t say one. I was talking about how no number of posts can convince you of something. Because you don’t want to allow for the possibility that what you’ve decided is true might be wrong.
This is just my reading of you, of course. I could stand to be corrected. I doubt I will be though.
The role of government can be quantified on a scale from 0 to 9. What number to pick is not obvious.
This is not a good argument. What you are suggesting is that we do some comparative statics between countries that have high and low governmental intervention in HC. The “comparative” part holds, but the “statics” part doesn’t. It requires that all things be equal between the comparanda except the variable of interest, government involvement in HC.
As it turns out, all things aren’t equal. A comparison such as this does not yield valid inferences because the perceived effects, differences in provision of HC, do not necessarily flow from government involvement but could from other factors.
When you find a country that looks exactly like the US (or close enough for government work) but has high governmental involvement in HC, then we will have an experiment.
I agree that you could not look at countries and draw a statistically valid conclusion about what the “right amount” of government support of healthcare would be for all countries. You are correct in that there are far too many variables.
However it is a good exercise for “hard” libertarians like Rand Rover, who appear to put the role of government at “0” on a scale of 0 - 9 for healthcare. It could illustrate that there are few countries that have a value of “0” , and those that do are not really that pleasant to live in.
While this is true, it would not tell us that these countries would pick anything other than zero even if they were more pleasant places to live on all other dimensions.
If all countries where the government is involved in healthcare at high levels (7,8,9) are nice places to live (rated by various factors - you can look up surveys on this), while all countries where government is not or minimally involved in healthcare (0 or 1) are shitholes…
I suggest that this gives us some valid information about the topic of government involvement in healthcare. In this, very real, practical dimension
Look, I don’t actually disagree with you that the government has a role to play in healthcare that is probably above 6. But the point I am trying to make is that this cannot be inferred from making straightforward comparisons between countries. I can cook up a bunch of metrics lots of countries with high qualities of life have in common that aren’t even prima facie stupid. But it doesn’t make them valid inferences or, dare I say, true. In this very real, practical dimension.
:dubious: The polls show the voters want a plan that goes a lot further than the one on the table.
Detroit local news just ran a health story. A former weatherman for the station quit to spend more time with his family. He gave up the health coverage. His doctor said he needed a colonoscopy. He priced Detroit places and it ran from 3500 bucks to over 9000 for a person without insurance.
He went to Costa Rica for it. The cost was 350. He paid for a vacation . Did some golfing and tourism. And came back way, way ahead. The Costa Rican doctor attends 3 American seminars every year. They use the same equipment.
A heart valve operation was 200,000 in the US. He could get it for 2 grand in India. Our system is robbing us blind.
Costa Rica: Come for the camera up your ass, stay for the experience!
That was December 3rd, when the majority of voters polled still said they wanted Coakley in the Senate.
If your theory is correct, Congress would have done it. The reason Congress couldn’t be forced into line was the voters’ push-back.
What voter push-back? That had nothing to do with healthcare and everything to do with Martha Coakley being ignorant about Boston sports.
And running a horrible campaign. She seemed pretty disinterested.
Our medical system model is fundamentally flawed. A for profit health care system will result in higher costs and less care available. There are no forces to bring down costs. Increasing profits is achieved by denying coverage, increasing prices and getting the cheapest help possible. Doctors are part of the management and get way overpaid. Insurance companies suck as much money as they can out of it too. There is no competition. We pretend we love competition in America while we allow merger after merger, until we have few companies providing services and products. The end result is skeleton crews, doing more and more work for less and less pay. Soon we will offshore medical care. They will ship your sick butt off to a 3rd world country to get a larger profit margin. They are not blind to how much cheaper other countries can provide care.
Ummm… If they did that, why would people not just cut out the middleman and arrange it themselves for a lot cheaper, thus cutting severely into their profits? Folks do it right now already.
What’s your evidence for that proposition?
How Red Sox Nation seized control of the Martha Coakley-Scott Brown race | masslive.com It was a national story.
Oh. Seems to me that young fellow ran on health care reform, did pretty well for himself, too. Was in all the papers. But now the voters are “pushing back”? They didn’t mean it? Didn’t realize it meant a socialist agenda, but now that they are shown the true horror of the thing, they flee in panic?
Don’t suppose all that money the industry spent had anything to do with it? Don’t suppose that the fact that they own all the Republicans and half the Democrats has any bearing?
Uh, he ran on being the 41st vote. The Dems even tried to use it against him.
He also ran on being the proud driver of a pick-up truck. Why would you conclude one contributed more to the success of the campaign than the other?