Drug patent regulation != price regulation. Patents are a different aspect of the conversation than price regulation. I’m generally in favor of patents for things, including drugs, to a certain degree though not unlimited. I think the patent and copyright system exists to promote the creation of new things, and that generally is a good thing. Not sure how that’s related to universal health care, but there it is.
Well, all I know is that the american drug market is completely screwed, and the cause of that can be traced back to two factors: limited suppliers, and price fixing. Well, three factors: those two and the fact that consumers aren’t really at liberty to choose to go without - which is a factor that on its own basically destroys the free market’s ability as a reasonable price determining mechanism, and renders the free market useless at setting prices for medical services in general. But getting back to the supplier issue, medical patents certainly don’t help the issue, because they eliminate competition by limiting the market to one seller, and that seller is named Martin Shkreli.
And that map is based on 2009 numbers - for example, Mexico installed UHC in 2012 so they aren’t shown on the map. The rest of the article is more accurate.
“Okay, I can accept that it’ll be cheaper, more efficient, and better for everyone. But I strenuously object with every fiber of my being to the idea of the wrong people getting access to health care” or something like that. Maybe even a reference to how much Jesus hated the poor for greater moral standing.
To be entirely fair to conservatives, the ones that actually have a coherent philosophy tend to lean towards the principle that the role of the government is to do something close to basically nothing - and if the government does anything at all, it should be to deal with threats from outside the community, via military force. And maaaaaaaaybe road maintenance, maybe.
The idea is that the small, insular communities that conservatives like to imagine are the norm are composed of members that will willingly step forward and offer their aid to those in need within the community, thus negating the need for government. They’ll actually reference Jesus themselves, claiming that the churches they attend and support already provide the social support services that people need, so government interference is unnecessary.
This all makes logical perfect sense as long as you don’t pay any attention to the world outside your door.
It’s a mischaracterization to think that the “wrong people” have anything to do with it. Ultimately I don’t believe many Republicans are utilitarians. As a result, the net utility argument isn’t persuasive. People have the ability to choose less than the most efficient means if there are other more weighted factors they value.
I actually think that views on the role of government are one of the fundamental differences that separate conservatives and liberals. I think it’s important to actually identify the real differences, rather than caricatures.
I have to agree that’s not fair. I agree they’re wrong but “wrong people getting access” is not the general issue. I played golf with a gun totin’ UHC hatin’ Texan last year and he was quite certain UHC was the thin edge of the wedge of government intrusion.
As in, “if at first we let the government improve everyone’s health, next they will be taking our guns” type of wedge?
As in, once we depend on government for healthcare then they’ve got us by the balls forever.
Ah. I figured they already do anyway, might as well have them check for testicular cancer while they are there.
You know, it’s easy to scoff but distrust in government is core to America’s foundation and deep in the American psyche. You aren’t going to win the sociological war by assuming the people worried about government intrusion and control are all nutjobs.
I’m Canadian and frankly, a few of his comments took me aback. But he wasn’t some street crazy. He clearly had a good job and money in the bank.
I’m not sure I was scoffing or calling anyone nutjobs, but I see your point.
What are you referring to as a necessary condition? I’m not clear on that.
You appear to be another who thinks that the ‘free’ market is the panacea of all ills. (Literally, in the case of health care.) But the bottom line is that competition, supposedly the factor that will ensure lower costs, isn’t doing so when it comes to pharmaceuticals, for a number of reasons. (Nor, I’d argue, with the health care industry in general.) Pharma companies are protected from competition.
The necessary condition was referring to externalities when it comes to the question of government interceding.
Perhaps you missed post #28 and the part where I indicated some of the weaknesses of the free market in health care. In any event, im not opposed to UHC, depending on the details. I just know that efficiency and outcome arguments are not typically on point because they don’t address Republican opposition.
…how many bankruptcies are caused by medical bills or lack of health insurance outside of America?
I think if you look at that metric alone then the differences between America and the rest of (the western world) becomes clear. I live in NZ: and we don’t have catastrophic medical bills here. I was in hospital for a week last year. The only money I paid out of pocket was for the taxi trip back home.
They don’t have catastrophic medical bills in Australia, they don’t have them in the United Kingdom, they don’t have them in the EU. Getting sick doesn’t mean selling your house to pay for your operation. The specifics of each system aren’t important. The goal is to spread the burden across society so that everybody has access to affordable healthcare: and that is what “universal healthcare systems” do, and for the most part they do it very very well. That isn’t the case in America.
By covered: do you mean the hospital will give you a heart-bypass operation, and then give you a medical bill that is orders of magnitude bigger than what the typical person makes in a given calendar year? Or would you not even get the heart-bypass operation, but they would stabilise you, wish you all the best, and then still send you a massive medical bill?
Many folks on the right who worry about “government intrusion and control” tend to be very selective about how that is applied. They are often just fine with government intrusion into people’s bedrooms, decriminalization of certain drugs and what type of decisions women should be allowed to make about their bodies, just to name a few.
And to spread the burden across every individual taxpayer’s lifetime, from the times when they rarely if ever need medical care to the times when they do.
The nicest thing I can say about them is that they’re on about the same intellectual and moral level as the people who refuse to vaccinate their kids because they think it would make god mad. A principled objection to doing things in a way that saves a great deal of suffering and generally works much, much better at very little actual cost is not a principled objection, it’s a mental pathology.
Could you give an example of negative externalities created by free-market health care? The immediate thought that comes to mind is “poor people dying of easily treatable diseases”, but I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing.
But the real differences are depressing. It implies that one part of the American system is based almost entirely on fantastic principles that it will not budge from, regardless of how much better things would be if they did. That they are not interested in government solutions to problems, even if the government clearly and evidently does it far better than anyone else ever could. With the apparent exception of the military and justice system.
The same is not, by the way, true on the other side of the aisle. Oh, sure, there are a handful of communists whose philosophical underpinnings direct them to see the government as the solution to every problem, but it’s in no way systemic. If democrats are presented with a free-market solution to a problem and a government solution to a problem, the answer will usually be, “whichever one works better”.
Why make this a Rep vs. Dem argument? That already biases everyone to their own point of view and invalidates even the idea of UHC in the US.
The greater problem, whether it is one of the two parties, or even an alien space-man party, that proposes UHC in the US, is that the US federal government is simply to slow, ineffective, and corrupt to implement such a system. Other countries developed their UHC with guidelines that actually put the citizenship first. The US government only has the guideline of “Stay In Office, Maximize Power and Influence”.
Would you REALLY want the federal government managing your health care?
Consider the current state of the infrastructure. Consider how often they manage to actually pass a budget on time. Or how often that budget is balanced. Consider the amazing level of waste and cronyism that exists in procurements…
And yet, Medicare still seems consistently better than private insurance. This idea that the government is hopelessly incompetent seems kinda silly to me. It can and does often do great things.
Also, you say “don’t make this about parties”, but even the problem of gridlock and corruption is not quite as bipartisan as one might think. Since the classic article “Let’s just say it: the republicans are to blame” was published in 2012, things have not suddenly gotten better on the right or worse on the left. The left has stayed more or less where it was, and the right has decided that voting for Donald Trump to run the highest office in the land is a great idea, and also Merrick Garland, who’s Merrick Garland? The problem is not “the government is corrupt, gridlocked, and inefficient”. The problem is that the republican party insists on making the government corrupt, gridlocked, and inefficient.