And eyt we also get these kinds of (exceedingly vague) benefit from lots of other things. And most of them aren’t provided by government, for good reason. Particularly in the case of police and fire, we face a lot of spillover costs if things go badly.
And in some cases, such as vaccination, I would not object terribly to public provision (though I would also warn that numerous groups, from anti-vaccers to drug companies to doctors would try to control the process, and their influence WILL affect things substantially) and certainly not to a requirement that those using some public facilities be vaccinated.
With healthcare, we face the trouble that good healthcare is heavily dependant on factors the healthcare providers do not control, period. Further (and this is absolutely critical) people know what care they need far better than bureaucrats in Washington. They can and wil screw anything you do, along with any other
I hate to point this out lest this thread be bogged down into a side issue.. but public education is a disaster, and for many of the same reasons public healthcare is poorly spent. In short, everyone has a voice except the consumer, and the process is measured on the inputs: schools beg for more money no matter what, teachers unions demand more pay, superintendents shout for more controls and audits, and even the damn janitors have a voice. In fact, everyone except the parents manage to control the process. The system works for the people with power. The result is that in states which favor teachers unions and the like, you tend to get expensive education - and it has no impact whatsoever on the student’s performance. None. Effectively correlation. You have schools with no money and schools with lots at both end so the performance range. What this does tell us is that culture matters. We can in fact show that teachers do matter, though teacher’s unions do tend to kneecap that. This is not a matter of opinion: it’s provable mathematically, whether we like it or not.
A great many liberals believe sincerely that if they can just get control fo the proces, they can make things smooth. Yet is hasn’t worked. It never worked in the last century. Things always bog down because they’re trying to run a machine with the wrong fuel while blindfolded. This is one huge reasons I support vouchers: same great taste, half the calories. And much like healthcare, it’s a fierld where outcomes aren’t very well correlated to inputs.
And that is a key problem in both healthcare and education. We measure based on inputs, and not outputs. As annoying as the No Child Left Behind Act was, it actually did aim where improvement was needed: by providing an objective answer. It can’t solve the problem on its own, but it can provide a start.
We don’t care about corporations. We care about good business. We have hardly ignored the fact that so many of the most powerful corporations heavily favor our opponents, nor that they always make out like bandits the more regulation you pass.
It’s nice to be told by a liberal that he doesn’t think I’m evil. I get kinda down when I come onto the board and see a dozen people declare so authoritatively how I obviously hate (in no particularly order) blacks, women, poor, teachers, gays, hispanics, professors, etc.
What you fail to se is that they’ll win no matter what. They are already insiders; more regulation, more control? it just means they have a guarranteed income stream. Corporations love complex government regulations because it locks down the market and prevents entry. of course, this is often foolish because it can and does hurt them in other ways - look at Detroit. But noone ever said they were all geniuses.
I would definitely argue with that for several reasons.
*First, it’s not just costs which are going up. People are deliberately choosing to spend more on healthcare. They’re getting something out of it. Whether or not you think that’s worthwhile is not really relevant.
*Second, are you really arguing we’re not benefiting from new drugs and treatments, whicha re being created for the American market?
*Third, we must always consider our inputs. For a variety of reasons, America has a significant underclass which does not invest in healthcare and in fact opts to use the most expensive services. They could in fact do otherwise, but they don’t. This will not change without ultural change, not passing some law.
But here is my big point: if Ye Liberal Ones are so sure you can do this… why haven’t you? Why si is that the closer you come, the worse and worse things get, both with outcomes and financially, when these were supposed to improve health and reduce costs? Why do you keep demanding a national system when you haven’t shown once that you can run an effective system? I’m sure you’d like to claim that we evil Republicans are always sabotaging you… but can you argue with a straight face that’s the case in Massachusetts? Romney was totalyl on-board, yet it’s a dismal failure. Same with the Democrats’ Tenncare here in tennessee. We finally had to scrap big chunks of it to keep from going broke. if the plans are so great, why can’t you fix Medicare and Medicaid?
These are hardly trivial objections, and I think we’re entitled to a little suspicion. The big progressive programs have a bad habit of collapsing in on themselves.
Dunno. Is there something about your brain which cannot recognize or try to correct the failure of all similar progams here, or recognizing the deep problems of some of those much-vaunted healthcare plans, before trying out some new scheme?
My solution? Simple. We let people decide if the drug is worthwhile, or not. The FDA should do it’s own testing, and much faster about it. They should publish their own literature and let doctors and patients decide whether the risks are worth it using simple probability. If people fail to understand, or choose poorly, it’s their problem and they can live with the consequences. But my solution is somewhat irrelevant and I don’t want to discuss it here. I would be happy to talk about it somewhere else.
So why not try to do this first? Frankly, this is my big, huge, absolutely-will-not-compromise issue. If all you can say is “We’ll have an international conference!”, then you have nothing to say. We have no bargaining power, and negotiations are, and always have been, about bargaining power. They’re not going to start taxing themselves more to take the burdern off Americans.
I suppose we could then try to have the government pour money into the pharmas. Of course, then it would be trying to pick winners and losers, and the costs would increase dramatically, and be subject to much more politicking and interference than today, and then there’s the yearly budget wrangling…
But no, your wrong about something. “Big Pharma” (and there ain’t enough rolleyes in the world for how childish your economics are if you even use that kind of nonsense term) isn’t upset. Ultimately, they’ll make money. What you’ll do is shift the profits from making new worthwhile drugs to delivering old ones cheaply. Great… if you need an old drug or treatment. Sucks if your life is the one saved or improved by a new drug or treatment.
In short, I consider you ignorant for one simple reason: you see only the obvious. It’s no great stroke of genius to say, “Damn! Healthcare costs are too high. We must do something!” But you ignore all tradeoffs and the actual complexities of implementation. You ignore the fact that you’ve (you plural) failed time and time again to deliver workable systems. When it comes down to it, your argument is not about the benefits of healthcare, but about whether we shoudl trust you or not. And there’s no good reason to do so. I’m sure you mean well. But you seem to think you can solve intractable problems you’ve failed before time and time again simply by really, really meaning it this time.
