Well, they’re like the Australians, too drunk to get sick.
I’m not so sure. I think what you’re overlooking here is that one of the chief things that makes markets more efficient is their ability to provide a wide range of products in a wide range of prices for a wide range of budgets. But that ability is much less important to most people when it comes to health care than in other goods and services.
For instance, in the market for restaurant meals, multimillionaire Seth Upscale can spend $150 per entree at Le Pavilion while blue-collar Joe Blow and family go out to the local pasta restaurant or even McDonalds. Seth can drive an expensive new Jaguar while Joe nurses along his old beater for another year, and so forth. Nobody (except out-and-out socialists) really objects to this inequality in consumption. Let the market do what it does best in providing its incredible variety of consumer goods and services to suit all tastes and budgets.
But most people, whether rich or poor, are much less willing to accept such steep inequalities in medical treatment. Our democratic societies simply do not agree that if Seth and Joe both lose fingers in an accident, say, then Seth is entitled to get more of his fingers reattached than Joe is, because he can pay more. Most people would find such an attitude disgusting and immoral.
Similarly, nobody wants the fire department to put out fires only or mostly for rich taxpayers, or the military to protect only rich neighborhoods, or the police to catch only criminals preying on the rich. It’s our conviction that these services are there to serve everybody, irrespective of how much different individuals can afford to contribute to pay for them.
Commercial markets are fundamentally about providing a huge range of different goods to consumers based on what they can afford to pay. Health care, on the other hand, is more like police or fire or postal service than like a commercial market. Its chief objective is to provide the same services to all who have the same need for them.
That is an objective that markets frequently have a hard time meeting—which is why we don’t have for-profit fire or police departments. It’s intrinsically very difficult to make money off the task of providing universal and equal services to everybody regardless of ability to pay. So in fact, a government-run system to meet such needs is generally more efficient and successful than a for-profit private system.
True, in the UK’s system it would cost a lot less. But the idea that we have a worse health care system than the UK because we don’t take care of injured people who can’t afford to pay for it doesn’t seem at all ludicrous to me.
Every comment of this sort is like money in the bank for the universal-healthcare movement, IMO. Even people who are initially uneasy about the idea of “socialized medicine” tend to be more receptive to it if confronted with this sort of (frankly rather shocking) callousness as the alternative.
You said that there’s no evidence universal health care would reduce costs. But there is plenty of evidence that it would–other countries. The claim that those countries aren’t evidence is a claim that America is somehow exceptional. If they can do it, we can do it.
Now, the argument that you just don’t wanna, that’s different. Callous and repulsive, sure, but different.
Okay, I’ll accept that you think people don’t have a right to life, given no extraordinary circumstances. True everyone dies, but the fact that your baby will eventually die is not an excuse to not take it to the hospital.
What I don’t understand is why you believe that food but not basic medical care is a humanitarian right. Food keeps us from dying (it will take a few weeks,) as will medicine. Why one and not the other?
As for rights, I’ll accept that you think Scrooge was a sentimental old fool at the beginning of the book, and that the Grinch’s heart was a few sizes too big. Me, I think some of these things are rights, based on the fact that we are all humans and that misfortune can or could have happened to any of us except for luck.
BTW, I agree that health care must be rationed in any feasible society. We do it today. We could do it more rationally. Is it really wrong that someone has to wait for elective procedures so that someone else can get to critical ones sooner? Does it really make sense to spend the resources that could make 100 babies healthy to prolong the life of a 95 year old for a few weeks?
At least Martin is consistent in his beliefs. He’s quite prepared to leave a dying man to bleed to death in the street. He also rejoices in folks being crippled.
I was under the impression that shooting innocent people was bad, but not Martin
As Frank said so eloquently in the other thread
No further comment.
Due respect, but I don’t think that’s the commonly understood meaning. Something is free if it doesn’t cost anything. I think using free to mean “pay for this so I can have it” is rather jejeune in its conception.
Obviously you aren’t paying attention.
For further clarity: in the end I had to go to my father, who maxed out a credit card with nearly $3k of the bill – a small fraction of the total due. I was already in debt; now I’m in more debt, both to my father and to the hospital, the doctor, and the anesthesiologist, all of whom have bills and all of whom want their thousands of dollars now. I don’t have any way to pay them, and I’m a damn sight luckier than anyone who doesn’t have a rich dad.
Because I had no insurance, the hospital refused the procedure unless I could give them $3k up front. Refused. My doctor was willing to defer payment and put me on a plan, but the hospital would not allow their facility to be used unless I paid them more than I make in two months. I lost my apartment because I couldn’t afford rent, utilities, or anything else if I was going to have my operation. I was damned lucky to have somewhere to go. I’m privileged and this has been and continues to be a great hardship.
Heh. This is almost as annoying as Wendell Wagner’s insistence on using Usenet formatting conventions is his posts.
Well, Liberal, within the context of what Fuji was saying, it was very obvious that Fuji meant that they were using the term ‘free’ to mean "I don’t have to pay for it.’ That’s by far the most common use of the term. For example, if your company has an employee appreciation day, and provides “Free snacks and drinks in the break room all day” everybody unherstands that that means they don’t have to pay for them, and they know that they WERE paid for, didn’t spring out of the air from nothing, and if asked to guess most would say the money came out of the HR budget.
Reasonable people understand that meaning of “free.” You didn’t. And that’s your problem.
Little Plastic Ninja, you’re just being too negative. Sure, your operation has been a great hardship for you because of its economic consequences. But it hasn’t been a problem at all for Martin Hyde or Liberal. No problem for them. The system worked perfectly – for them. And that’s why they favor it.
And the person cited earlier whose spouse has to work at a job they hate because of the employment benefits. Once again, no skin off Martin Hyde or Liberal’s nose, so the system is WORKING! Working, if not for the good of all, at least for them! And in this case there’s a double benefit because some evil corporate bastard has a SLAVE now! Could life possibly be better?
If you’d just stop and look at the bright side, which apparently consists entirely of how human misfortune works to the advantage of total bastards, you’d be a much happier person!
Oh, lordy. The only thing worse than an extreme leftist is an extreme leftist who thinks he knows your problems. Your tag-team partner wasn’t talking about a company picnic; he was talking about health care, which the whole fucking civilized world knows is anything but free. It’s one thing when candy bars are voluntarily paid for from the company till. It’s quite another when a 70-year-old’s hospital bill is involuntarily paid for by a 69-year-old. The unfortunate thing is that your financial immaturity and ignorance is everybody’s problem.
Hmmm.
What do expect from an extreme lefist publication like the OED?
Liberal, do you think there exists anything that is “free” using your definition? Note: You didn’t say “cost” = “money”.
The best things in life?
There are dozens of definitions of “free”. It isn’t the publication that is leftist, but the person choosing the definition. Let me know when you’ve looked up “equivocation”. 
No. Nothing.
Martin Hyde, although I strongly disagree with your position on this issue, I appreciate that at least you have responded to me with a degree of respect.
So please allow me to respectfully enunciate my position as best I can.
Now, on some level, I do in fact agree with you that, in my father’s case, the Republic of Ireland probably* lost money by deciding to fund my father’s healthcare expenses for the last 8 months of his life. However, I think that you are severely underestimating the benefits that redound to the individual from societal investments. Some of these are quite intangible and hard to quantify, but are nevertheless quite real and significant.
With the case of “free” elderly healthcare (as commonly, but not universally, understood), even if you never have to make any use of state resources, you still benefit from living in such a society because you do not have to live in fear and anxiety of having to personally shoulder the prohibitive cost of such care. That “peace of mind” is a definite and real benefit, as I’m sure you can imagine, even if you philosophically are opposed to its funding. (It could even be argued that by not having to plan for such outlays, that the individual will be able to actively utilize a larger proportion of their personal capital, as opposed to keeping it in reserve in static or relatively non-productive assets. This would have tangible and quantifiable benefits for society as a whole, though I’ll leave the detailed mathematical analysis to someone else).I would argue that it is similar to the benefit an individual receives by living in a society which effectively enacts “law and order”. Even if you personally are never directly victimized by another’s criminal actions, I doubt that you could tell me that you would not reap a real benefit from living in such a society, as opposed to an anarchic and violent one.
A more fundamental problem that I have with your line of reasoning is that you presume to have accurate foreknowledge of an individual’s net benefit or cost to society as a whole. In my father’s case, what if he had invented a new, superstrong, lightweight epoxy at the age of 78? Would this not then significantly affect your calculus of his societal worth? (And please don’t tell me that this is a ludicrous example, as my father was indeed a plastics engineer for approximately 30 years.) You just can’t tell who is going to end up a net “plus” or “minus” ahead of time (except in the most extreme cases).
I mean, should the US have allowed Mohammed Atta and his pals to meet and plot destruction in secret? Objectively viewed, focusing solely on them after the fact with 20/20 hindsight, of course not. But the thing is, as enshrined in the 1st Amendment, US society as a whole sees great benefit in permitting individuals the Right of Assembly, even though obviously, in many individual cases, observing that will effect a net loss to society. This analogy is admittedly tortuous, but I hope you can understand the point I am trying to make.
*I say “probably” because, were it not for Ireland’s relatively generous healthcare system, it is very unlikely that my parents would have relocated to Ireland in their old age, bringing with them a significant amount of capital that was used to invest in a brand new house. I’m sure you can see the upside from the ROI’s point of view of having large capital influxes from abroad into their housing industry.
Yeah – and the only thing worse than a rude asshole is a rude, presumptuous asshole.
I mean really, dude – do we know each other or something? Considering that I’ve only been here for around 50 posts or so, I’d say it’s pretty fucking cheeky of you to arrogate to yourself an understanding of my political philosophy. Or whether or not I’m an imbecile, as you seem to want to assert.
So let me get this straight. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” right? Gee, where have I heard that before? Hmmm… oh – that’s right. 7th grade Social Studies class. I GOT IT. You condescending prick.
“Jejuene”? “Financial immaturity”? “Ignorance”? Oh, but you’re the paragon of reason with your batshit crazy hyperbolic assertions of 69-year-old slave workers toiling in the salt mines of County Cork. Right. So by your line of reasoning, I guess, we need a few Harriet Tubmans to lead the benighted masses of American drones to the Promised Land. After all, I’m sure at least a few kiddie rapists have a problem with being forced at gunpoint to contribute to the maintenance of a criminal justice system that doesn’t serve their interests. Fight the power, man!
Oh wait – that’s right. I forgot. If 99% of society agrees to forcibly fund a certain course of action that you approve of, then that’s hunky-dory. Fuck the deviant who doesn’t want to play by the rules. But if you’re forced to contribute to a policy that 99% of society wants to do, but you disagree with, then the program is funded by “slave labor”.
See? I can be presumptuous, too. Asshole.
(And thanks, Evil Captor, for lending a newbie a little support.)
In being such, you seem to have confused either me or yourself with someone else. Because of your novelty, my post to you was prefaced with explicit respect and did not mention your political philosophy, whatever it may be.