Okay. I don’t think the ends (good healthcare for all) justify these specific means (classifying the right to healthcare as a natural or human right). Can we agree to disagree?
~Max
I think all posters here agree that capitalism generally works better. I don’t think we have command control communists here. So since we agree on the general principle, what is unique about health care delivery that would make health care an exception to the general rule?
Because it is a necessity and people will die without it? Why not have a National Food Insurance Program where you go to the store and pick out what your family needs and it is all government paid for through taxation? Or why doesn’t the government provide a house for every person, fully paid through taxes, you know, to cut out the “middle man”-- those real estate agents and their inefficient profit making?
All of the things typically mentioned—police, fire, roads, street lights, etc. have unique circumstances where it is impossible or at least impractical to have a privately provided system.
Another poster opined that in health care, you never know how much you will need and when you will need it. I never know when my house will burn down, when the engine will blow up in my car, or when some drunk without insurance will crash into me. None of those circumstances demand a top down government approach.
To answer your question, though, it would “work” in the sense that all government programs work—mediocre, slow shitty service, a thousand forms, and inefficient resource allocation. As we agree generally, why not let the free market provide a better service? What is the constraint that prevents it?
Of course. I suspect this disagreement comes from what the phrases “natural rights” and “human rights” mean to us – it means nothing to me (just another human-derived classification we slap on concepts for various reasons) beyond what it can be used for (generally trying to protect people and improve their welfare), while it appears to mean something much more special and significant to you.
We’re already past this question – the free market is totally failing to deliver good health care to all Americans. Millions get bad health care or none at all, and millions more risk bankruptcy or insolvency due to health care costs. You can ask “why” if you want, but I’m more interested in actually fixing the system, using the knowledge we have in systems around the world which vary in quality.
So we already know how the free market does it – it sucks. Sucks really bad. And we can look at other countries to see how various levels of government control and involvement do – and they do a lot better. So that’s all I’m suggesting – we recognize that our system is really bad, and we copy those systems around the world that do things much better.
As said before, we have irrefutable evidence that the system isn’t working well for anyone. There’s still millions with tenuous access to health care, and everyone who has access to health care is overpaying by absurd amounts. I mean, do you LIKE how much more you’re paying for health insurance than a few years ago?
Because the market-driven food and housing system works pretty well (in the first case) and decently enough (in the second) whereby it is a question of whether additional regulations are needed, and also solutions to address the problems of the quite poor, and with that, the system works pretty well for most people.
As I’ve said before, education is probably a better analogy than those public services. Do you have a problem with guaranteed childhood education?
Wait, are you describing government services or my health insurance plan?
We’ve tried it. It is inferior in virtually every respect to countries that do it another way. What experience do you have with a national healthcare system in any other country?
No it doesn’t. Declaring something to be a right doesn’t mean I can walk up to you and take your money. That’s just nonsense.
Declaring something a right means the government is supposed to provide it to everyone. And will then pay for it through taxes just like every other government service.
I might agree with you if we actually had a free market in health care. We have mandated so many inefficiencies into this supposed free market to make it at best a hybrid system.
But like any government system, there are unanticipated consequences. Nothing is free. Just one example. Do you think that pharmaceutical research will continue at its current pace if there is no longer any money to be made in the United States? If everyone in the world is paying peanuts for medicine, why does a company invest millions into R&D? Medicare and Medicaid themselves would be grossly more expensive if it were not for private insurance subsidizing them by allowing doctors to keep their doors open. If every patient was Medicare or Medicaid, no doctor could survive at those reimbursement levels.
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As I said before, the problems with the current U.S. healthcare are all traceable to overregulation and the lack of a free market. My premiums went up in part because as a male I have to pay for contraception and yearly mammograms at the same rate as a woman. That is absurd beyond belief.
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So let’s get rid of the regulations and let health care operate like food and housing.
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I am in favor of education. However our government controlled model is a great reason why we don’t want to expand it. How many people, when their local school is completely free (when I say free I mean at the point of sale, nothing is really free) take money out of their own pockets to put their kids in a private school? When charter schools open, there is a lottery system because so many parents want their kids out of their poorly performing shitty school. Public education is an absolute embarrassment. I’m not sure why you would put that as a shining example to follow.
And it is certainly not from a lack of funding. Over half of my state’s budget goes to education. Note I said education, not schools or teachers or supplies. They go to the bloated bureaucracy that in the end does little to nothing about teaching little Timmy about the Battle of Gettysburg. They go on conferences and hold meetings and pass emails back and forth.
4-5) We have not tried it. We do not have a free market in health care. No competition, no price transparency, third party payment, a monopoly on who can become a doctor, government regulations requiring certain coverages and permitting only certain people to do things, drug laws which require me to get a doctor’s note to get a drug that I already know I need.
Just that last part—I know I need a certain medication. I still have to pay an expert in order to write a prescription to get it. Nothing else is that way. I can put a new toilet in my house without a plumber’s permission
The free market (which is distinct from capitalism but that’s another whole topic) works fine when you have competing sellers and the buyers are free to choose between them - or choose to forego buying the product entirely.
You want to buy a car? Ford, GM, and Toyota will all compete to sell you one. You think all of their cars are too expensive? Don’t buy a car.
But if your child is sick, choosing to not pay for their treatment is not an option. When the choice is “Buy my product or your child dies” you don’t have the option of refusing to pay. It’s no different than the proverbial gun to your head.
As for competition, there’s none of that. Prices for healthcare services in this country are set by the AMA. There’s a committee that meets every year and offers “recommendations” for what prices medical services should cost. And then medical service providers charge those prices. The only competition is between different medical specialties negotiating who gets the biggest slices of the pie.
It was not any better (and in my understanding, much worse) before these various regulations. Show me an example of a successful free market health care system, if that’s what you want.
There are many examples of successful government systems – we should emulate those. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel – just do something pretty similar to Canada.
There could still be millions to be made – give a royalty to the inventor in perpetuity. Or cash to the inventor/innovator. Or something else that rewards innovation. Right now, they can charge enough to bankrupt people who need it – and that’s bad for our society.
Somehow similar systems work in Canada and elsewhere. Copy them.
It’s called Food Stamps.
Okay, technically it’s called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But it’s been a thing since 1939. If you can’t afford to pay for the food you and your family need to live then the government gives you money to buy food.
Seriously, you didn’t know this?
It’s the same thing. It’s just that health care is a more ineleastic market. But like any market, there reaches a point where people simply cannot afford to pay for the product or service.
I’m about 90% sure that the AMA doesn’t have anything to do with setting the price of health care.
Costs for a particular service are set through a complex and convoluted set of interactions between medical providers (doctors and hospitals) and insurance companies. There is little competition because most people’s insurance is determined by their employer.
Also, you can’t reframe “socialism” as a “basic human right”. It interferes with another basic human right of “not having your shit taken from you”. The best you can do is frame it as "there are certain services that we as a society believe should be available to all (at least at some minimal level) and can’t be provided as such by the free market.
No, natural human rights such as life, liberty, property, and self defense do not require enslavement of any one because the only require people not to infringe on them, not to provide them.
Most pharma companies spend almost as much, if not more, on marketing their drugs than they do on developing new ones. Why can’t they just cut back on the shitty ads all over TV?
Do you… know how insurance works…?
Do you… know how healthcare works…? Next time you have major surgery, just ask how much it is going to cost. I dare you. You will not get an answer from anyone.
Can you name any places that have a better model of education that does not involve government funding compulsory education?
Listen to me: if there’s a better model for education, I’m all ears. I know there’s a better model for heathcare. Many people refuse to believe it exists because of a grudge against government, especially successful government programs.
I can screw in a new lightbulb in my house without anyone’s permission; but that doesn’t mean I should be able to buy ten grand worth of oxycodone without someone saying I need it.
Not paying for food or housing is not an option either. Your last paragraph illustrates my point. Since third parties are paying for most medical services, the AMA gets to set the prices. If I was paying out of pocket, and had five doctors in town and two hospitals and I could look on their website to compare prices, do you think prices would come down, regardless of what the AMA says? I sure do.
Of course. And we also have Medicaid. So problem solved right? Universal health care means everyone is in the government program, not just the poor. Universal Food Insurance would mean that Bill Gates gets his grocery bill covered just like people on food stamps. Terribly inefficient.
What? Marketing is what every business does to try to sell their product. If it didn’t bring in more money than what the costs of marketing was, they wouldn’t do it. They aren’t pissing money away anymore than Ford is by trying to sell me a car.
Of course. People pool money for possible, yet unlikely risks that would be financially devastating to them if it occurred. Some peoples’ homes burn down. Certainly not everyone and not close to everyone. If my home burned down, I could not afford to rebuild it. So, me and my neighbors all pool a little bit of money together and the handful of people whose homes burn down use that pot of money to rebuild.
As I have no use for contraception or mammography, it is unclear what I risk I am pooling against. And it is silly for women to risk pool against known events, no more than a driver should have car insurance which provides for gasoline and oil changes. Known expenses are not something to insure against: you know that they will happen, so just pay for them outright. Don’t pay for them indirectly by having a company hold your money, take its profit, and then pay the doctor.
That’s the problem. No price transparency and third party payment. I don’t give a shit how much the hospital charges for major surgery because I pay my deductible and that’s it. Above that deductible, the hospital can charge my insurance company a hillion jillion billion dollars for all I care. Which cripples any pretense of a free market system.
Nobody has tried it because it is politically impossible. We could at least start by making our public schools like these private and charter schools that parents are lining up to get their kids enrolled in. But nope, government and teachers unions fight it all the way. Better to keep our 19th century model in place than demand that government employees change.
Bah. That’s hyperbole. Sure you can have a law against buying $10k worth of oxycodone, but why prohibit it in small medical amounts without an expert? I can suck down a half gallon of whiskey a day without government nanny state supervision, why can’t I treat a medical condition?
I see I didn’t respond to Little Nemo’s first post above because of timeout issues.
There is a big difference between the government deciding as a matter of charity to provide health care to the poor and an individual stating that he or she has an enforceable right to the property of another in order to pay for his or her health care.
In the first instance, the government is using its sovereign power to enact a social welfare program. In the second, the individual is stealing from another individual using the coercing power of the sovereign state as an intermediary in this theft.
To the extent that there are any similarities, it merely highlights the impropriety of government being involved in social welfare instead of solidifying a right of people to the property of another.
Bottom line: If I have a right to your bank account, that means we are living in socialism, however you want to spin it.
I’m not talking about profits, but rather total spending. There’s a huge amount of additional administrative overhead that insurance companies introduce into the total spending equations, and while they manage to bring in enough money to cover it and what they pay providers and facilities plus 3.3%, it doesn’t mean that it’s not spent in the first place. And who pays for it? The general public, in the form of copays and premiums.
So if you knocked out whatever percentage of that extra spending for insurance administration, utilization review, medical necessity review, etc… then you could make a good case that total costs to the public would go down.
I think this is an opinion that is unsupported by the facts.
Systems in other countries that are directly run by the government are providing better quality healthcare at lower costs. Meanwhile the American healthcare system is producing huge profits for private healthcare providers.
So the problem with high costs seems to be that we don’t have enough government control, not too much of it.
Well, then, just to clear up that point, let me go on record as saying that I feel a public healthcare system should be paid for via taxation. I would oppose the idea of people taking money directly from other people.
I didn’t think I needed to say that before now because nobody has proposed such an idea and no program like that has ever been enacted.
And speaking of weird ideas that seem to come out of nowhere, I would also oppose any public healthcare system that involves enslaving doctors and nurses.
Oh yeah, and I’m against death panels too. I oppose the idea of a healthcare system that kills patients.
Seriously, have you guys ever considered not listening to right wing media sites?
Shodan has already mentioned that the existence of police forces is justified in order to protect the natural right to life. (I’m guessing the natural right to property is in there also.) So are police officers enslaved?