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jrodefeld posted:Isn't price competition one of the main factors that drives down costs in a market economy? I know that you have trouble with basic economic concepts, but in a market with low elasticity no, price competition does not drive down costs so well. And what about the countless examples of collusion and price fixing that we have? What about market-made trusts and monopolies? What about costs of entry? Really, do none of these things have any effect on your opinion of the idea of an infallible free market?
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Nov 9, 2014 02:20
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jrodefeld posted:You didn't say anything about "hording wealth", being greedy or uncaring or uncharitable. You said that "wealthy people are mostly decadent and stupid" which is a ridiculous statement. And, as others have noted, your classification of what wealth is, who is wealthy and what amounts to "hording" are arbitrary. To a starving African, YOU are unbelievably wealthy. Every time you splurge on some luxury instead of donating money to feed the poor could be seen by someone poorer than you as an indication of a pathological mind, of someone who is greedy and uncaring. Heavy neutrino didn't say that at all actually, Sedan Chair did.
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Nov 9, 2014 02:36
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jrodefeld posted:You didn't say anything about "hording wealth", being greedy or uncaring or uncharitable. You said that "wealthy people are mostly decadent and stupid" which is a ridiculous statement. And, as others have noted, your classification of what wealth is, who is wealthy and what amounts to "hording" are arbitrary. To a starving African, YOU are unbelievably wealthy. Every time you splurge on some luxury instead of donating money to feed the poor could be seen by someone poorer than you as an indication of a pathological mind, of someone who is greedy and uncaring. You're making too many assumptions -- first, that I actually said "wealthy people are mostly decadent and stupid" (the wording is silly, and I don't give a poo poo about decadence or stupidity; I only care about negative outcomes for the weak and powerless) and second, that I'm not donating to the local and global poor (that's wrong). There's also nothing arbitrary about my definition of wealth: if you can buy all the necessities of life, spend a little on entertainment and save a little for the future and still have millions left over (I'm generous), you're opulent. I don't particularly care about the "philanthropic" rich, whose record is checkered at best, and whose domestic, class-based political activity inevitably causes more misery than their philanthropy could possibly heal, but we're getting side-tracked here, and someone's moral evaluation of rich people doesn't have a whole lot to do with prescriptive social policy (people should get help even if they're jerks, and people should be forced to help even if they're angels).
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Nov 9, 2014 02:41
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Jesus agrees with Sedan Chair and Heavy neutrino about rich people just fyi.
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Nov 9, 2014 02:43
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Hans Hoppe via jrodefeld posted:Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health-care personnel. Their supply would almost instantly increase, prices would fall, and a greater variety of health-care services would appear on the market. Even just this point, in that insane babble from Hans Hoppe, is terrifying. I wouldn't want anyone to live in a world where someone can take two classes and advertise themselves as able to do open heart surgery or treat highly infectious diseases like Ebola. You can't claim that we statists are thinking about a utopia when this kind of crap is clearly utopian thinking. How the hell would something like Ebola be handled when you've got hundreds of different doctors and health care workers who have wildly different training and knowledge? It's hard enough with some standardization that we have now. These lifeboat scenarios can occasionally be goofy and silly, I'll give you that, but many of them are REAL WORLD scenarios. They happen on a daily basis, and our societies have developed ways to deal with them, maybe not always efficiently or perfectly. Your libertarianism sounds like you just want to stand back and hope it works itself out. That's why many call libertarian ideology insanity.
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Nov 9, 2014 03:34
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Heavy neutrino posted:By pure tautology. Markets are the best way to produce and allocate resources [citation needed], therefore markets would be the best way to produce and allocate healthcare "resources" [citation needed]. Remember, we're in the realm of Praxeology here, where objective reality and empirical evidence are meaningless because we all know, in our heart of hearts, that the Free Market solution is the best one. What's that, actual evaluation of healthcare in the USA versus other nations reveals that making the government more involved in paying for healthcare drastically decreases cost with no appreciable downside? BEGONE SATAN YOU SHALL NOT HAVE THIS SOUL WITHOUT PAYING A FAIR MARKET RATE FOR IT, FOR IT BELONGS ONLY TO THE FREE MARKET!
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Nov 9, 2014 04:17
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Okay, there be words here people. I'm not going to go line by line because I value sanity, but I'm going to refute in blocks this time.jrodefeld posted:No need to do that so long as people understand the exhausting nature of debating one against twenty or more and the fact that if I don't respond to every critique that is made against me that does not mean that I don't have an answer. Not to come across as stalkerish and or helldump you, but considering you use the same name over a variety of forums, it is pretty easy to show that you typically get the same response everywhere you go that isn't a libertarian hotspot. After you got banned in November last year I googled you and found about four separate forums that treated your ideas not all that dissimilar from ours. I think the only thing really all that 'unique' about Something Awful is the number of recovered libertarians we have post 2008. Or so I'm told, I pretty much missed the whole thing when I joined. quote:I also have to mention that when I post here, I usually describe a coherent philosophy of rights, of ethics, of politics. And the rest of you try and nitpick and find holes in the belief system I am defending. That is not to say that such criticisms are not valid and should not be answered, but it is far easier to sit back and pick holes in a proposal that someone else offers, especially when you are not asked to defend an alternative. The reason for this is that you are the one proposing radical changes to the status quo. People like Eripsa who propose massive changes in favor of socialist based ideas catch the same sort of flack that you do, because most D&D goons tend to understand that upending the entire system and replacing it with one that is frankly not all that well designed/thought out/studied is not really all that much of a good choice. When you have brought up substantive, current issues we have been more than happy to defend them. For example, we are currently having a grand old time discussing healthcare and in addition to pointing out why your proposed system is wrong, I'm also working to explain why public healthcare is better, and to defend what you see as flaws. Frankly speaking it is actually much more difficult to defend something like universal healthcare than your hypothetical free market utopia because mine actually exists, and thus I can't simply alter the terms of the discussion on a whim or make arguments to air about how "The market" will make everything perfect without backing it up by anything more than a century old economic philosophy. Part of the reason we propose lifeboat scenarios, or environmental issues, or externalities or court systems is that we want to nail you down to a specific topic of discussion. Using the healthcare example, I'm constantly harping on the access to care angle because it is really hard to argue with thin air and ephemeral concepts. I use the US market as an example because it is the closest real world example to the system that you are proposing. I certainly don't like to claim that I've won an argument by pointing out these situations, merely that in many cases I don't think you've provided any substantive answer that negates my concern. Externalities are a real concern. If your system were ever implemented it would have to deal with externalities, and considering the various examples of how it struggles with such things I think it is as fair a criticism as we can make to point that out. quote:The State is like the default answer to all social ills for non-anarchist leftists. They are constantly on the lookout for supposed "market failures" with which to justify State violence. But the State itself is not subjected to similar criticism. In fact, virtually all proposed leftist solutions involve political action. If there is an identified problem in society, a left leaning social democrat type will encourage people to vote, to run for Congress, to get involved politically to use the political process to solve any and all social ills. The reason the state is the default answer for many social ills is that it typically produces the best results. Whether you like it or not, Socialist healthcare produces overwhelmingly better results than private healthcare in every real world example we have had to date. Take your example. How would I go about providing x to society, lets say where X is... the FDA. I could go about it by creating a series of public rating agencies that somehow compete against one another for business. But then I see about fifty flaws out of the gate, including things like the fact that even in our regulated state organizations like Yelp are engaged in a bribery and extortion scandal. While I have no doubt it is possible to make such organizations, I'm a utilitarian at heart and given the choice between them and the FDA, I'm going to take the FDA. Really don't appreciate the repeat suggestions that I am 'conditioned' by the way. I rather like to believe I think for myself. In fact despite your suggestion I do frequently think like an entrepreneur... seeing as I am one.  quote:You have to work from first principles and apply a standard of ethics to human behavior. Like the North Star guiding a ship, we use first principles to guide humanity towards an uncertain future. Speaking of conditioned... do you have any idea how cultish something like this sounds like? We make a lot of jokes about libertarians being cultish in general, but it is things like this that make it feel way too close to home. Who talks like this? Who thinks like this? quote:A lot of it had to do with war and foreign policy initially, I am a younger guy so my political views were formed in the post 9/11 era. I saw what happened to America during the Bush Administration. I witnessed the Iraq War, I knew people who went over to Iraq and fought for a lie. I was in high school when 9/11 happened and for a short time I bought into the propaganda about how "everything changed" and we needed to go to war to punish "those guys". But even for a teenager the whole thing seemed to be rotten to the core and I felt like people were using this event to transform this country for the worse. An interesting read. You actually got into the deep end surprisingly slower than I did which is interesting to me, but to each his own. I do have a few follow-up questions: - Is there any Libertarian thinker who's positions you support unequivocally? You mentioned Murray Rothbard in there, and we've already discussed you don't believe in his take on selling children or the mental inferiority of the negro, but I'm curious if there is any one libertarian you look to and go "That guy gets me." Its okay if you don't have one by the by, I'm merely curious. - What, if anything would it take to change your mind about libertarianism? Are you open to the idea that you could be wrong about libertarianism if prevented with sufficient evidence that you are incorrect? I know I've asked other libertarians this but I can't' recall if I've asked you. quote:Okay, good to know. I don't consider myself an expert at most things either. I have gone to college but I never got a degree in economics (though I took several courses) nor in history or political science (I took some courses in both as well). But I think emphasis on formal education is actually not a good guide of the knowledge a person possesses anymore. If someone has a passion for something, I think they can learn as much or much more outside of the classroom through independent study. The value of formal education for me is that I was exposed, at a basic level, to a wide scope of economics, political theory and history. Make no mistake, this is just a hobby for me. Not to be rude, but frankly this is the answer I always hear from people who didn't receive formal education. I know a ton of people who posess formal education on subjects I've been interested in, such as economics, english, history and so forth. To a man (or woman) they are far more knowledgeable about the subject than I could ever hope to be through informal study, as would be expected of people who devoted multiple years of their lives to the subject. I don't say this to insult you by the by, as we've already covered I am no diferent than you, but I do worry you're suffering a bit of Dunning-Kruger, in addition to your other illnesses. Bad jokes aside, illnesses suck. While I'm sure you have a bit of specific knowledge that I do not, don't make the mistake of accepting your anecdotes on the subject as evidence as a whole, I'll go into this more... right now in fact. quote:Yes, I was referring to Canadian style single-payer healthcare. It is she, by the by, not he. Yes, she had employer provided health insurance. Owing to the fact that she had a minimum wage job the insurance was by no means good, but... welcome to the USA. Sixty percent of US bankruptcies are caused by medical bills. of those, seventy five percent had health insurance when they got sick. This is what I mean by anecdotes and evidence, your personal experience does not even remotely match with the subject under discussion, so the fact that you are arguing from incredulity doesn't mean much, if at all. The suggestion that a diagnosed cancer patient could get insurance after the fact is likewise somewhat hilarious. Surely you aware of the fact that prior to government intervention in the form of the PPACA, or Obamacare, that people could be denied access to care for such minor conditions as simply being a woman, let alone something as serious and expensive as cancer. The idea that any insurance company would take on a diagnosed cancer patient is ridiculous. In any case we're talking about 2007-2008, so it was pre-PPACA anyways. Frankly I think the fact that you would even suggest that as a solution shows a total lack of understanding of the factors at play here. The whole reason for the PPACA individual mandate was because without it people would simply wait until they got sick and then buy insurance if the insurance industry was not allowed to refuse coverage. quote:Did your friend look to charity to help pay medical bills? There are many doctors who provide some treatment for free. There are even places like the Oklahoma Surgery Center that charge far lower prices for surgery since they don't take insurance. We are still talking about thousands and thousands of dollars, but the cost is such that most people could get a loan to pay the cost and pay it off within a few years. Oh you know what? No, we didn't think of that. Stupid, stupid Caros. I mean, she was literally dying, but we didn't even consid- OF COURSE SHE LOOKED TO CHAIRITY! ARE YOU loving KIDDING ME!? Sorry if I'm taking a bad tone here, but do you realize how condescending this comes off? Do you think that people other than you are idiots? Or that she didn't fight tooth and nail in the attempt to get any sort of care possible? Do you seriously think that someone dying of an easily treatable illness didn't go "Hey, maybe I ought to really try and get treatment for this?" and instead simply laid down and died? You are seriously making an argument from incredulity here. The fact that you can't concieve of it happening is absolutely unfathomable? Well guess what Jrod, sixty four thousand people die in your country annually from lack of access to care. That is sixty four thousand people who die needlessly in circumstances just like this one because they simply cannot afford to live. It is no different from a person who starves to death, its just more common in the US because the cost for medical care when you need it is more than the cost for food. quote:Remember I am not defending the current system but as someone who has dealt with medical issues, you have to navigate this system to get the care you need. This goes back to the standard libertarian caveat that charity will somehow fill the gap. We have the bodies to prove that it won't, but you blithely continue to assert that it will. Also remember that I am not necessarily defending the Canadian system of healthcare in specific. While ours is worlds better than the US or free market, it still ranks consistently lower in many areas than other systems. If I were going to support a system wholeheartedly it would actually be the UK's NHS which is like the Canadian system, but simply much, much better. quote:I agree that whether your friend would have been cured is beside the point and impossible to prove. The question is whether he would have been treated. Christ, could you beg the question any further? Do you have any proof that the care offered by UHC countries is somehow inefficient or substandard? Do you have any empirical evidence at all? But I'm getting ahead of your guarantee:  That is a WHO study on the overall ranking of healthcare. Notice how the US is #11 (of 11), and the UK is #1? Notice how the UK consistently beats the US in every category, including Effective Care, Safe Care, Coordinated care and Patient centered care? Please do tell me how the Market Based healthcare will produce better results again. Notice how most countries beat the US in a variety of those categories? Or are you arguing that if you have effectively unlimited money you would get the best treatment in the US? Yeah I'd actually agree with you there, if you can afford to personally fly in the best doctors from around the world to treat you, you will receive the best care. Unfortunately that is no way to build a healthcare system for anyone except the top 1% of 1%. quote:Remember when Obama made the statement that if like your current healthcare insurance you can keep it? The issue under single payer systems is that it slowly destroys the private healthcare market and so people don't really have many options outside of the State bureaucracy. Now people are subject to waiting lists and rationing of care who otherwise could have simply purchased the medical care they needed. You do realize that Obama's statement that if you like your healthcare insurance you can keep it is predicated on the thing you call insurance actually being insurance? The people who were unable to keep their plans were unable to do so because those plans did not meet basic requirements and were worth nothing. If I have you pay me ten dollars a month for ten years, and then laugh at you when you get sick, you didn't really have insurance at all, did you? The plans that were cancelled were predatory schemes that called themselves insurance. Please provide evidence of additional waiting lists or rationing based on the PPACA, because I straight up call bullshit on that half of your argument here. You are either lying or simply wrong. Considering what I have seen thus far I think you're simply wrong. Please do look up and try and prove me wrong because the attempt will surprise you. quote:The reason why single payer destroys the healthcare market is that people will gravitate and overuse any service that is "free". Should I use the physical therapist that charges $80 a session or should I use the one that is "free"? People who don't understand the economics of healthcare overuse services where they would think twice if they had to pay out of pocket. Without the price mechanism, market signals and competition, the quality of care suffers. Frankly the reason single payer destroys the healthcare market is that it makes it stop being a market, which is a good thing. But I'll humor you and assume you mean healthcare system. The idea of people over-using healthcare is one that gets trotted out a lot without any data to back it up. For one thing, seeing a doctor when you're sick is a good thing. A large part of US healthcare costs come from people showing up at the emergency room for minor issues that they've let go on far too long. It is far, far less costly to treat an illness caught early on than it is to treat that same illness after it has destroyed both of your kidneys. The market system actually provides perverse incentives for people not to go to the doctor. A good example of this is actually the recent ebola crisis. There was a lot of discussion about who is going to end up paying for the quarantine etc of people who have the disease who aren't properly insured, and there is even some discussion about the worrisome possibility of people not going to seek out treatment (and thus endangering others) because they simply cannot afford the cost. We see the same thing happen all the time where people in brutal car wrecks will argue with ambulance staff who want to stop them from bleeding internally. quote:In the first place I don't know why you reduce the entire healthcare economy into transactions that involve life threatening ailments. Yes if you need insulin or else you die, your bargaining power is reduced in relation to those that are providing it. But most healthcare services offered are not like that. If a general doctor charges so more for a routine physical, you can be sure that people will see their doctor less frequently. If a doctor charges less for routine check ups then people are more likely to see them more frequently just in case. I don't reduce it, I focus on it because frankly that is what is most important to me, and that is the part that is most troublesome to your ideology. It is also, in my opinion, the most important function of the health care industry. Saving lives is important after all. More to the point, lifesaving care is almost universally the most expensive and difficult care while simultaniously being the most inelastic, which is where the problem comes in. quote:Contrary to what you say, there is plenty of evidence that many aspects of the healthcare economy are NOT inelastic, but rather that demand fluctuates wildly based on cost. This is another one of those [Citation Needed] issues. This statement disagrees with pretty much every bit of literature I've read on the subject. No doubt you have a Mises.Org link that will cover it but I'd like you to at least produce that before you say something so wildly against the grain. quote:Now regarding the truly life threatening medical problems where people will pay as much as they can possibly afford and borrow to save their life, there is STILL incentive for providers to compete for your business. If I am dying unless I receive a surgery to remove a tumor and I can choose to have it removed by five different, independent and market based hospitals, I will choose only one. Each of these hospitals will want to get my business and I am more likely to get the tumor removed by the hospital that charges less. Oh the good old reputation argument! It is a good thing that patients have all the information required to know the difference between a benign and cancerous tumor, as well as to have all the information to know not only how much it should cost for each type of surgery! It is also a good thing that the human body doesn't wildly differ from person to person, to the point where a tumor in the same place on two different individuals could have wildly different consequences. Medicine is complicated as poo poo, and people are pretty much stuck trusting their doctors for the most part, especially people in poor financial situations. Frankly speaking I would rather not shop around to make sure I get the best price on having my tumor removed, I'd just rather have my loving tumor removed. quote:This doesn't even take into account the existence of charity hospitals and mutual aid societies that will provide care for people who cannot afford healthcare they need for whatever reason. The existence of charity hospitals also would incentivize hospitals against charging too much for life saving medical procedures since if they could lose potential clients to a charity hospital. Despite making the stupid 'mutual aid' society argument multiple times, I don't think I've ever seen you answer my rebuttal, so I'll put it up again and see if you do this time. Mutual aid societies are garbage. The reason we don't have mutual aid societies in this day and age is that they were proven not to work back in the 1930's. The problem with a mutual aid society is that it is basically just unregulated insurance with a really, really small risk pool and really loose rules about usage. Your milage may vary, and it might be the best thing in the world for you, but the problem is that the bottom tends to fall out of them the moment things get bad. Mutual Aid societies in the 30's for example, utterly collapsed when the recession hit (as did charities) because people only give when the times are good. When times get bad people not only hold on to what they have, but there is an increased usage of those same societies because times are bad. This double whammy effect completely crushes them, which is why you don't see them today. Contrast this with food stamps, which actually increase automatically as circumstances get worse an it is no wonder that people prefer the latter. quote:Yes, under some circumstances, a person will pay as much money as they can possibly get a hold of if they are going to die without a certain treatment. But that doesn't mean that the market can't or won't work. There are still many reasons why prices will go down through competition. It means that the market doesn't work when people need it to work the most. So yeah, it doesn't work. quote:In a free market, health insurance would play a very small role in healthcare. Insurance would be for catastrophic accidents, unexpected healthcare problems and things like that. Like car insurance only comes into play when you get into an accident but you just pay out of pocket for oil changes and other normal maintenance issues you have with your car. If the engine dies you buy a new one. You replace the battery, the tires, the brakes and everything else out of your pocket. Insurance pays for damage when you are hit by another driver, or you miss a red light and crash into another vehicle. Unexpected, unplanned for events.  The first thing to remember is that people are not cars. If my car insurance company screws me, I am not dead. If my fire insurance company screws me, I am not dead. If my health insurance company screws me, I am dead. Secondly, your suggested system relies on the idea that prices would go down to the point that people could afford most basic medical care out of pocket, without providing any provable mechanism by which they do so. State provided healthcare is 100% third party, but our costs are significantly (half) as much as yours are, even though roughly 15% of US healthcare costs (or about 30% of our total) is out of pocket. Why is that? Single payer healthcare costs are lower because single payer systems can negotiate in bulk. This is the same reason larger insurance companies get better deals than smaller ones, and why individuals tend to get hosed. An individual person has absolutely no leverage in purchasing healthcare because they are up against an expert profession, while they themselves are at a significant negotiating disadvantage by virtue of being ill. quote:I don't see this as a valid criticism of the market. There are similar situations of unbalanced information elsewhere and the market works just fine. When you take your car to the shop to get it looked at, the mechanic could charge you for all sorts of unnecessary things and/or get you to pay for unnecessary tires or services that you don't really need simply because the mechanic knows everything about cars and you don't. 2 The analoging. The irony is mechanics frequently do overcharge people for services they don't need, just like doctors in the states frequently do overcharge patients for services that they do not in fact need.I congratulate yourself on your ability to realize that your doctor is asking you to spend money you don't need to. Why do you think that everyone else is going to be able to, or should need to replicate your success? Because I'd much rather the doctor and I both be on the same page (being interested in my health) rather than trying to screw me out of money. Maybe it is just me however. As for your assertion of the 'stupid' state, you're wrong. As just one example in the US, Medicare frequently refuses to reimburse doctors for tests that it views as pointless. As another, Canada has a review system set up specifically to target unnecessary medical expenditures. I know that it is easier to just believe the state is this big dumbo with a handfull of cash, but we're actually miserly fucks. Which is why our healthcare costs half what yours does while achieving better results. quote:But it is such an event which is precisely the purpose of health insurance in a market economy. The situation of being hit by a bus, going to the emergency room and not having the luxury of shopping around for needed medical care is entirely the reason for people to buy health insurance. The point was that you have no say in your treatment or the costs therein, which is absolutely necessary for a market. You can't make a rational decision about your care because you are incapacitated, and the fact that you bought insurance earlier on does not negate that. quote:You could make the exact argument about many different things. Suppose I am a fireman who waits until someones house is on fire and I go up to them and say "I'll put out the fire for $10,000". You might have no choice but to pay. But if he had fire insurance, he wouldn't have been put in such a situation in the first place. Or if he lived in a neighborhood where the community financed a fire fighter service in such an event, he would have nothing to worry about. He would still be screwed if it turned out that his fire insurance only covered $5,000. Too bad he didn't anticipate the fire being that bad, but now he is hosed for life. Does everyone have to have multi-million dollar health insurance policies to cover them in the case of any accident? Do you understand that once people reach a certain age (say... 65) insurance companies would happily tell them to go gently caress themselves because their risk reward models say that it isn't worth it? I'm asking specifically because prior to medicare it was almost impossible for the elderly to buy medical insurance because they are high risk. quote:How many people do you know who cannot afford ANY car insurance whatsoever? I know you have to have car insurance to drive, but isn't it true that the market provides car insurance at affordable prices to nearly everyone? And why is it so affordable? It is affordable because the insurance companies only need to pay in the event of an accident, therefore their premiums can be low. 3 car analogy with a vengenceThat isn't actually the question you should be asking, the question you should be asking is how many people would buy insurance if it wasn't mandated. The market 'provides' car insurance at affordable prices to nearly everyone because it is mandated insurance, meaning that the risk pool is 'every single driver on the road' and statistically there are not enough accidents to make that a losing proposition. Now imagine how fun it'd be to live in a world where your car insurance company could tell you to gently caress off if you've ever been in an accident. Or if you're asian because we all know how asians drive! (I don't believe this btw). Also this post shows you fundamentally do not understand how insurance works. Insurance becomes affordable primarily by having a very large base. If you have 10,000,000 people you have a massive pool of income, meaning that 5,000 people making claims for $100,000 annually doesn't break the bank. If you have 100,000 people and 50 make claims for $100,000 you might very well be in a lot more trouble. Moreover, insurance further trims down costs by reducing risk, generally in the form of charging people who are risky a lot more, or by refusing to cover them at all. In your proposed system, the insurance companies would be free to tell anyone over the age of 65 to go to hell in favor of focusing on younger, healthier people who don't actually 'need' healthcare as much. This isn't a hypothetical mind you, this is pretty much the US history of insurance, just writ large and without any regulations to ameliorate it quote:In a free society, mutual aid societies would be commonplace where poorer people would collectively pay doctors or healthcare providers in the event that if any member got sick they would be provided with treatment. Similarly, communities would see the need and value in emergency services and they would pay a fee voluntarily so that if something were to happen to you, an ambulance would show up and bring a sick person to the hospital. See, the problem with your argument is things like the bolded section. What possible mechanism is there that causes more charity hospitals to spring up out of the ether simply because the "Medical industrial complex" doesn't exist. What reasons do they have for keeping charity hospitals down at the moment. Why would charity hospitals increase in number even though the biggest incentive for charitable giving in the US (tax breaks) vanishes. How would charity organizations make a dent in the US healthcare system 18% of GDP, when charitable spending on medical care in the US in 2010 was 22 billion dollars total. Seriously, here is the break down on charitable giving in the USA: quote:Recipient Organization 2010 Contributions (billions) How in gently caress is that going to be anything more than pissing into the trillion dollar ocean? Edit: I ended up going line by line. What have I done! 
Caros fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 04:30
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I would like to point out that in 2012 12.6% of all drivers were uninsured. This is relatively low as the number has averaged about 14.3% over last 20 years. So about one in every eight drivers had no insurance. And it can't be claimed that states were insurance wasn't mandatory inflated the numbers because many states the did have mandatory insurance laws, like Michigan, actually trended higher than average with as many as one in five drivers being uninsured. Why is this? Because human beings for the most part are very bad at long term risk assessment. We almost never make optimal choices and very often make actively detrimental choices if they have short-term advantages. It is sometimes absolutely necessary to force people to do things for their own good, and one of those things is ensuring access to healthcare.
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Nov 9, 2014 05:05
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jrodefeld you supposedly read what Caros wrote about his friend, and you don't even remember her gender? Bullshit, you aren't reading or understanding. You can't read. Yet I must continue.jrodefeld posted:This is the dumbest poo poo I've ever heard. So if I give you $100, you don't have the right to keep it? Why would you? A sky man? Please don't go on a long jag about self-evident rights or natural rights or whatever tights-and-wig bullshit you're proposing to vomit up, because that just amounts to "a sky man." That's just you saying it. quote:A voluntary transfer of property title is not valid? No, of course not. Most of the land on earth came into its current ownership through illegitimate means. Why would I confer validity on that ownership? quote:
But that's not why a person is wealthy. Without exception, all wealthy people currently living on earth have benefited from public infrastructure in creating that wealth. Period. There are no counter-examples. quote:Do you understand how making a generalization like "wealthy people are mostly decadent and stupid" is not categorically different from me saying that "black people are usually lazy and ignorant". Both statements are bigoted against different groups of people. No, I don't understand because that poo poo is stupid, as outlined in many posts above (which you didn't read, because you can't read). But I understand and know many other things; true things. Jeremiah posted:Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. I know thee. When I watched the 2008 debates, I saw Ron Paul blurt out the truth. In that moment, I realized that millions of your ilk were being created; utter political infants and neophytes, who were hearing something approaching the truth for the first time in their lives. Joy and despair warred within me. Joy because, well, at least Ron Paul is doing a reasonable job of explaining the history of US imperialism in the middle east. Despair, because it'd reflect undeserved legitimacy on the rest of his crank beliefs. Long before that time, that's the trap you and I both ran into, with Harry Browne and David Bergland. I got over it though, because I can read. The truth about the Iraq War, or any imperialism, isn't hard to say; you just have to not have anything to lose. Libertarians don't need to pay lip service to the military industrial complex because they have no power or influence to lose within it. When one approaches legitimacy, they shed the truth, like Rand Paul. The Sad Truth: Libertarians were right about the Iraq War not because they were perceptive, but because they were politically irrelevant. In any case, this is boring. It's boring to talk to you because you can't read.
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Nov 9, 2014 06:07
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Pfft, I don't need to sleep tonight or anything.jrodefeld posted:These two statements are contradictory. You concede that healthcare costs have gone up massively over the last several decades but somehow you discount that State intervention and money printing had anything to do with it. I was comparing prices after adjusting for inflation, so 'money printing' had no effect on my numbers. As for state intervention, we'll get to that. quote:Isn't price competition one of the main factors that drives down costs in a market economy? So how on earth can you say that State intervention and a third party payment system where both doctors and patients don't know the cost of the treatment that is being provided doesn't artificially raise costs? Yup, in a properly functioning market economy. In an inelastic market with imperfect information and all the other issues I mentioned, no I don't think it has as much an effect as you think. And I'm not arguing that insurers don't end up raising costs, I agree that they do in fact. I just don't think that it is the primary deciding factor, especially when compared to the increased cost of innovation. quote:When the State pays medical costs, the providers of medical technology, drugs and surgeries have every incentive to charge as much as possible. Do you honestly think that an MRI would cost $6000 if people had to pay out of pocket? No chance. Another poster beat me to this, but basically... yes? If I need that MRI to determine why I have screaming headaches, or to help them find the tumor so I don't die, or for any of the other million reasons I might need an MRI? Yeah. If it cost that much I'm still going to pay that much because I need it in much the same way I need air to keep living. quote:You know your argument could be made against computers and technology. By your logic, all computers should be VASTLY more expensive than they were twenty or thirty years ago given how much more powerful and capable they are today. Yet the opposite has occurred. Its not just the technology tho, its the procedures that go along with it. Sixty years ago if your head hurt they'd take an X-ray. Now they'd take an X-ray, an MRI, maybe a Cat scan etc. They have more tools and they use more tools to make a more proper diagnosis. But even if the machines cost less and less each year (which they kind of do) there are also fixed costs. You still have to pay for a technician for each scan as just one example. Or how about Open Heart surgery. In the 1960's if you needed triple bypass? Well you were probably hosed because the procedure barely existed. In a lot of cases the best they could do is make you comfortable and it is surprisingly cheap to let someone die, especially compared to a complicated multi specialist surgery that takes hours to perform. quote:But we can compare apples to apples. A week long hospital stay in 1960 would be affordable for most families. If you don't have insurance a hospital stay that long could run over the $10,000 mark. And I'm not speaking about any surgery or medical prodecures. I am just talking about the cost to keep you in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV drip for monitoring purposes. Did you not read the statistics I presented, including the one that pointed out that a single hospital stay in 1963 would cost a family roughly $6,000 in modern money? Frankly speaking I'd like to see your source on the $10,000 hospital stay mark, because while I wouldn't be surprised to find that some hospital out there is doing it, I don't actually believe that is the average cost of a US hospital stay with no complication, especially when the average cost of giving birth in a hospital is only around that same value. quote:Or you can look at the situation where medical lobbying manufacturers get away with charges $300 for a hospital toothbrush. They are just taking advantage of the State money that they can get their hands on. Again, [Citation Needed] on your numbers, especially if you are suggesting that any UHC country pays prices like that, but I could just as easily point to the $20 single advil tablets charged to insurance companies. And no, it actually doesn't go without saying that price competition doesn't exist for state purchases. For example, one of the biggest reasons that UHC countries pay far less than the US is bulk purchases, such as for prescription drugs. The Canadian government pays substantially less than the US system when it comes to hip replacements for example, because we put out a bid for cheap, quality artificial hips. The company that can produce the best product at the lowest price gets a massive contract that outweighs the reduced cost of their produce. Likewise hospitals can't bully the government as they can with individual insurance companies or patients. quote:Sure, they'll sell you a product or service. You CAN pay for an MRI or X-Rays out of pocket, but they sure won't offer you any discount. They'll charge you the same inflated price they charge the government. You keep jumping all over the place, which is making it hard to follow. Sometimes you're talking about medicare or medicaid, sometimes you're talking about UHC and it makes it a bitch to try and figure out what you're on about. Just fyi. quote:The moral argument is that it is wrong to use violence to fund your idea of social welfare. Even putting aside who has the better argument between the two of us, the fact remains that I think that State central planning of medical care is immoral and I don't want any part of such a scheme. If YOU want to develop any sort of social experiment in voluntary socialism or finance any sort of healthcare delivery scheme you can dream up, I support your decision one hundred percent. I would never dream of using force to stop you from implementing it. However, you should NOT have the right to use violence against me to expropriate me and finance a healthcare system that I find entirely immoral. Sometimes it is really hard to talk to you, because it is like talking to an alien that doesn't understand human emotion. Its like trying to explain why war is bad to a Klingon. Your moral system is so divorced from the human norm that any moral argument we have is basically just the two of us shouting into the wind. You think morals come from universal property rights, I think morals are an expression of human decisions about what is right and wrong. As far as your statement however, I'm going to reiterate a question I made earlier. How do we fix things to make you happy? Because the vast majority of Canadians are happy with our healthcare. 92% in fact, the sort of numbers you can't get when you ask people if they think puppies are cute. To accommodate your beliefs and not use violence against you (and by the way, gently caress you at accusing me of being violent to you by wanting to keep my healthcare) we have to do... what exactly? How do we unwind our society in such a way to make room for your stupid libertarian fantasy world? Would it be okay if we give libertarians a big hunk of land? Would it be okay if we just allowed you all to stop paying taxes, be immune to all laws (and protected by none) etc? Do we just have to dissolve the government and then instantly reinstate it across the country, but with a million spotty holes where individual An Caps have their own personal fiefdoms? This is an honest question by the way, how do we move to a world where we leave an caps alone in a way that lets the vast majority of people who think you are crazy to live in peace? You phrase it like "Hey man, just let me do my own thing, and I'll let you do yours!" but for me to let you do your own thing requires me to fundamentally alter my way of life. For you to have what you want means that I pretty much cannot have things the way I want. quote:You are seriously downplaying the inefficiencies inherent in national healthcare schemes in comparison to any market or quasi market based healthcare systems. Who determines that a healthcare ailment is "life threatening" and deserves prompt treatment instead of making a person wait months for treatment? What about an elderly person who needs life saving surgery? Is it worth it for the central planners to expend resources on treating an elderly person who might only live five or ten more years anyway? These decisions are always arbitrary. Doctors. Doctors decide what health care ailments are life threatening, based on objective fact. The exact same determinations are being made in your proposed society, except that it is ability to pay and insurance companies who are making the decisions instead. quote:You cannot pretend that people don't die on waiting lists or suffer healthcare problems due to the inability to access quality private healthcare providers in a nationalized healthcare system. You are right, I don't pretend that... because I don't have to. As I challenged you earlier in the thread, I'd be impressed if you could find six annual cases of Canadians dying annually due to waiting lists or inability to access healthcare. I will place a caveat that a transplant waiting list doesn't count as it is unrelated. quote:If the issue is the cost barrier, then you should focus on steps to reduce healthcare costs, rather than seeking to overhaul the entire healthcare system, which will affect everyone who will end up being caught up in a State managed bureaucracy whether they want to or not. As I have explained, introducing price competition into the healthcare market would reduce costs as it does for every other part of the economy. The single biggest thing you can do to address cost is single payer healthcare, as evidenced by the fact that single payer systems pay half of what you do. It would also helpfully eliminate the cost barrier. And no you have not explained it or proven it, you have asserted it without any evidence. quote:The libertarian idea of a free market in medical care would be dramatically different than what we have today.  Pictured: Libertarian Healthcare System. I mean, lets ignore the fact that HHH is in favor of humanity being ruled over by a genetically superior oligarchy (I'm still waiting to hear a reply about that btw), the man's solution to fix healthcare is to totally deregulate doctors, pharmacies and everything else in the name of driving down prices. Does that not strike you as bat poo poo loving insane? How do you post something like that and not think "Yeah, this part isn't exactly great..." Or how about this: quote:Because consumers would no longer be duped into believing that there is such a thing as a "national standard" of health care, they would increase their search costs and make more discriminating health-care choices. gently caress having a national standard of health care! Caveat Emptor bitches, you better research your doctor real good to make sure he isn't actually a vet... or a lunatic with a white coat and a decent office! Or someone interested in Chakra! gently caress having regulations for insurance. I mean, its not like insurance companies historically crashed at ridiculous rates as recently as the 1980's because they didn't keep enough money on hand to actually pay the bills. Or hell, its not like AIG, the single largest insurer didn't implode as recently as 2008 primarily based on the fact that they knowingly offered insurance they had no way of paying for. What could go wrong! Oh and eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy. Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. If you give someone with a chronic genetic disease a subsidy to help them stay alive that will encourage others to themselves develop chronic genetic diseases. If you give the elderly healthcare then by god you will get more elderly wanting healthcare  That last one is especially insane. Did you even read this before you posted it Jrod? quote:All of us have the ability to understand how the market works. We see how the price system works to deliver so many vitally important goods and services to us every day in abundance and at low prices. It is only confusion and propaganda that has persuaded people that healthcare cannot be delivered efficiently through the market. You even concede that healthcare was far cheaper in the 1950s and 60s and more available, but somehow that "doesn't count" because it was a long time ago and our technology is now different (as if that means anything). I didn't concede poo poo. I said the average health care bill was less because you got less for it. If you go to the hospital and don't receive treatment that helps you, you're going to pay less for it. What part about that is hard to understand? quote:I mentioned earlier the Oklahoma Surgery Center which lists their prices for many different surgical procedures and people pay out of pocket. This is an anomaly, a free market provider amid an anti free market, third party payer, price signal distorting healthcare system. The prices charged are frequently one tenth of what insurance companies charge doctors for similar procedures. The Oklahoma Surgery Center is capable of doing what it does because it is an elective Surgery Center that is capable of taking a small amount healthy patients who pay significant amounts of cash up front for procedures, something that isn't true of your typical hospital that performs the same procedures. They have no administrative staff, and their prices increase dramatically when insurance is involved. Moreover, the actual prices between local hospitals and the surgery center are far closer than you suggest. The oft quoted $33,000 vs $5800 fee is only applicable when you are looking at the hospital's master charge sheet. No one, not even someone actually paying out of pocket pays the charge sheet price, which is typically inflated solely so that the hospital can barter with insurance companies, which is of course a problem of having multiple insurers instead of single payer. So yeah, you can have a successful surgery center when it is run by ideological libertarians who cherry pick their patients and avoid most overhead. Its the same system used to make charter schools look good. If it was as good as you suggest, it wouldn't be nearly unique. quote:Okay, I take back the insinuation. I absolutely DON'T underestimate the effect a personal tragedy can have on a persons viewpoint. Not at all. It sounds like a horrible thing to go through. I do fear that when a personal tragedy occurs it can be so affecting that it distorts your critical thinking and you are unable to look at the issue in a logical way, which is understandable. You keep saying "Well maybe she would have been treated, maybe not..." as if that even bares some loving relation to reality. Well it doesn't and it shows that your hatred of Universal Healthcare is born entirely out of ignorence. What do I mean? Well here:  That is the wait time by disease for ontario health. The saskatchewan one is similar but I can't find it at the moment. The bars are labeled, the blue bar being fourteen days, while the red bar is twenty eight days (on the same timer.) With her form of cancer she had a 70% chance of being into treatment within 28 days. Hell the goddamned Fraser Institute a group who is notoriously biased in your favor says that the typical wait time for chemo in canada is 3.5 weeks, or or about 25 days. Twenty five days. She lasted a year and a half from the time of her diagnosis, which itself took longer than it should have due to insurance fuckery. If she'd been in Canada, she would have been in treatment in less than a month, as opposed to never You are wrong. You are unequivocably wrong. quote:There are many alternate scenarios we could contemplate where your friend could have been treated and made it. I could suggest that, had price competition not been distorted and suppressed through State central planning and a third party payer, your friend could have afforded the treatment necessary and he would have survived because of the market. I didn't blame libertarianism. I looked the results and went "Gee, free market healthcare leads to people dying for literally no loving reason." and then I kind of went from there. I lost faith in the cult of the market and actually started thinking that maybe things wouldn't be so bad if we took care of each other instead of just hoping that competition would magically lower prices and give everyone access to healthcare forever. quote:The argument is not that the government cannot do anything "right". The State is, by nature, inefficient and bureaucratic and it is unable to economically plan without the price signal in the market. But all of these are side issues. The real objection to the State is, as I've said a thousand times, that the initiation of force is immoral. It violates the principle of universability of ethics. Depending on your definition of "good", government funding on occasion produces things of value. No one is denying that. If I stole $100,000 from you and developed a cure for cancer with it, the result that was achieved would have been fantastic and incredible. But the means used to achieve it would have been criminal and reprehensible. It is the means of State action that we oppose, not necessarily the results attained.[/quote] And we'd have a cure for cancer. I'm utilitarian, if I have to step on the shoulders of John Galt and keep him down while providing healthcare for all... You know I'm actually sort of okay with that. Especially when keeping him down is at best an inconvenience. quote:I'm not sure what metric you are using to determine that the US healthcare system is universally "worse" than every UHC system in the world. I would suggest that you are judging them ONLY based on access to healthcare for those that currently are priced out of the market in the United States, which means that you are stacking the deck from the outset. I'll refer you to that chart that I posted earlier where the US was solidly in the gutter or middle of the pack for pretty much every healthcare metric. With that in mind, I'll ask again, Why is the US system worse than every UHC system in the world? Or while I'm at it: Why does the US system cost twice as much as every UHC system in the world? Why is the partially market system worse than the no market at all system. Where are my bread lines? quote:I'll ask a counter question. If you have the means to pay, is the quality of healthcare received at the best hospitals in the United States worse than the healthcare offered in nationalized healthcare systems in other countries? Because even the biggest defenders of single payer concede that, for those that can afford it, you can get great healthcare in a quasi market economy. Rush Limbaugh put it great back in 2009 when he said "America has the best healthcare system in the world." Which he of course said in the private hospital where he'd had multiple world class surgeons flown to fix his heart. American healthcare is great if you can afford it. The vast majority of americans cannot afford it, and there are systems with healthcare equally as good if not better in almost every category that don't have an underclass of suffering bastards with no access to medical care. 16.3% of Americans are happy with their health care. 92% of Canadians are happy with their health care. You aren't going to get anywhere appealing to the fact that there is a small minority of wealthy people who are super chipper about what their money can buy. quote:Let me again apologize if I seemed glib or condescending about what surely was a very traumatic and affecting episode in your life. I don't mean to come across that way. I don't know the details of your friends death, I don't know what you have read or what it took for you to abandon libertarianism. I don't doubt you've seen the system up close and personal, but having spent like.. three hours replying to you, I am certain that you do not actually understand much about universal healthcare systems. I've never actually seen it up close and personal before, but you are the typical american who rails against universal healthcare based on second hand information. The fact that you keep bringing up waiting lists is a good example, because waiting lists in Canada are not a thing when it comes to life saving medical care in Canada, or in any other UHC country. Simply put I would much rather have our waiting lists for hip surgery or for my mom's sciatica than have people be able to purchase the best hip money can buy while others die of something we can prevent. I know you mean well, but I really don't think you know enough about healthcare to do much beyond parrot back the libertarian talking points. quote:I understand why healthcare is and will continue to be touchy subject for you but I can only say that I believe that you have made some errors by rejecting the market in favor of central planning. I've said pretty much everything that needs to be said about this up at the start of the thread. It frankly still boggles my mind that you feel the need to ask those questions, like they weren't options that were already considered and rejected. But then I kind of understand now, because you really don't believe that this sort of thing can happen. With that in mind I'm going to tell one more story. About ten years ago a friend of my parents who lived in denver was diagnosed with lung cancer. Unlike the friend I've been telling you about treatment wasn't nearly as much of a sure thing. Now he still had the option to try and fight the disease, with a roughly 50/50 shot at survival, but to do so would cost a lot. There goes the retirement money, maybe a second mortgage. His wife would be going back to work and to hell with inheritance for his kids. If he were in Canada, he'd have fought it and either lived or died. In the US, he cut up all his credit cards, paid every outstanding bill he had, wrote a handful of notes to his friends and family and then called 9/11 before he shot himself so that they could show up and take away his body so that his family didn't have to find it. Frankly I was too young and selfish at the time, and the relation was too distant to take the lesson from that, but it really tells the same story in my books. No one should have to make that sort of choice, and I will argue myself to death before I accept the idea that people should live or die based on their ability to buy care. Edit: I may have gone a bit overboard tonight. Caros fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 06:33
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Caros posted:Edit: I may have gone a bit overboard tonight. Speaking for myself alone, your effortposts are among the most anti-tldr I've ever read in D&D.
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Nov 9, 2014 06:49
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quote:The moral argument is that it is wrong to use violence to fund your idea of social welfare. Even putting aside who has the better argument between the two of us, the fact remains that I think that State central planning of medical care is immoral and I don't want any part of such a scheme. If YOU want to develop any sort of social experiment in voluntary socialism or finance any sort of healthcare delivery scheme you can dream up, I support your decision one hundred percent. I would never dream of using force to stop you from implementing it. However, you should NOT have the right to use violence against me to expropriate me and finance a healthcare system that I find entirely immoral. Why should violence be immoral, when your own system assumes violence is entirely legitimate whenever you feel some infraction on your imagined property rights? I find that this central axiom of your moral system is entirely subjective and fallacious. If taxation is violence than so is coercion through the use of private security or any other mechanism you could imagine for physically excluding or removing someone from the use of your property. Why should your personal justification for its use matter? E: the Healthcare stuff is all good, so don't let me derail it, but I find the idea that libertarians claim to be non-violent when their own system contains built in justifications of violence to be the most glaringly obvious hypocrisy. Political Whores fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 06:53
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Jack of Hearts posted:Speaking for myself alone, your effortposts are among the most anti-tldr I've ever read in D&D. Thanks. Good to know it is appreciated, even if I did lose about three games worth of League because someone was wrong on the internet.
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Nov 9, 2014 07:01
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Caros posted:Thanks. Good to know it is appreciated, even if I did lose about three games worth of League because someone was wrong on the internet. I would compare reading your posts to watching Chris White's legendary 3 hour Ancient Aliens Debunked movie. I probably didn't need to watch the whole thing to know he was right, but I feel like a better and smarter person for having done so.
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Nov 9, 2014 07:07
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Oh, and I forgot my favorite example of US vs Canada healthcare.
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Nov 9, 2014 07:11
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Guilty Spork posted:The issue isn't that you don't respond to every critique, it's that from where we're sitting you routinely gloss over the critiques that seem substantial if not outright fatal to your philosophy. Somewhere a man looks up from his wireless enabled tablet and feels an itch on his face. He doesn't know why, he just scratches it and moves on, he reads about dutch desserts on Wikipedia and donates $3. The world continues to turn.
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Nov 9, 2014 09:48
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This is actually exactly what we are talking about, jrod. Instead of engaging with Caros and actually addressing his strong arguments, you've decided you're going to go play softball with Heavy neutrino because you feel his statements are much easier to refute. You don't have to reply to everyone. But Jesus loving Christ, if you're going to reply to anyone, it should be Caros.
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Nov 9, 2014 10:29
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Caros posted:Do you understand that once people reach a certain age (say... 65) insurance companies would happily tell them to go gently caress themselves because their risk reward models say that it isn't worth it? Yeah this is the big one. You pay for insurance all your life while you're young or while you're employed through your company while your risk is low. Then after a lifetime of profiting off of you, when you're old and start to get sick, whooops! your insurance seizes on any chance it can to cancel you and it gets to keep all your money. Caros posted:Thanks. Good to know it is appreciated, even if I did lose about three games worth of League because someone was wrong on the internet. Yeah those posts are super good. The lack of comment on them isn't because they're unappreciated--it's because they're so thorough I really don't have much to add. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 10:47
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jrodefeld posted:This is the dumbest poo poo I've ever heard. So if I give you $100, you don't have the right to keep it? A voluntary transfer of property title is not valid? The wealthy are the negroid of the world.
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Nov 9, 2014 11:56
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Rhjamiz posted:This is actually exactly what we are talking about, jrod. Instead of engaging with Caros and actually addressing his strong arguments, you've decided you're going to go play softball with Heavy neutrino because you feel his statements are much easier to refute. This is entirely unfair to him Rhjamiz. The reason I have two giant effort posts on this page is because he has been consistently replying to most of my posts in this thread. If anything I'm actually monopolizing the debate time, which means he has to ignore others in favor of me. I mean, I don't think he did an especially good job refuting my points, but it is a lie to say that he didn't give it the good old college try.
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Nov 9, 2014 15:53
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Jack of Hearts posted:Speaking for myself alone, your effortposts are among the most anti-tldr I've ever read in D&D. Bob James posted:The wealthy are the negroid of the world.
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Nov 9, 2014 17:15
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Caros posted:Thanks. Good to know it is appreciated, even if I did lose about three games worth of League because someone was wrong on the internet. Seriously, these are great. Even if the content wasn't as solid and well-cited as it is, it's nice to see a reminder that wall-of-text-posting isn't ALWAYS a deflection tactic
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Nov 9, 2014 17:20
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No, I feel pretty safe saying the rich are stupid. Bush Senior was amazed by loving supermarket scanners. Mitt Romney didn't know what a rain poncho was. A goddamn rain poncho. The rich have absolutely no idea how the world actually works. -EDIT- Caros, add me to the growing list of people that actually appreciate and read your posts. Now if only jrod was one of them. Who What Now fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 17:21
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Guilty Spork posted:I learn way too much about the world from corrections to people who are wrong, and I really appreciate people like Caros who take the time to make those corrections. This. Reading the last page or so was time well spent.
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Nov 9, 2014 17:44
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Yeah Caros you actually contribute, unlike myself.
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Nov 9, 2014 18:20
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Yeah I have to say, and not to cheerlead, but reading Caros' mini-dissertations are teaching me a lot of things. Thanks! I hope you don't mind me asking for a favor. You (Caros) have brought up that 64.000 americans die of easily preventable diseases annually due to the financial inaccessibility of life-saving care a few times over the past few pages. Would you mind pointing me to a source? Google gave me http://www.lef.org/newsletter/2009/5/deaths-in-the-us-each-year-caused-by-preventable-factors/page-01 and the same figure floats around articles about smoking and drinking, but it doesn't take the same angle as you do. E: There's a point to the UHC vs. private discussion between Caros and Jrod that (while skimming the last post) I didn't see taken up, and that's that most countries that have UHC also have parallel, private health care options available for those who wish to (and can) pay for them. At least I'm reasonably sure of it. A personal anecdote: I once went to a private clinic for a problem at one point that for whatever reason hadn't been fixed by the national health system. The staff at the private clinic then proceeded to gently caress it up so bad that I needed to amputate a big toe. Fun times! murphyslaw fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 18:29
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Guilty Spork posted:I think the real point isn't "rich people are dumb," but rather, rich people aren't superior to non-rich people. Some people are rich because of their genius or hard work, but plenty more are rich because daddy was rich, quite a few got rich through dishonest or destructive means, and plenty of equally smart and hard-working people don't get rich through no fault of their own. There's actually a lot of work indicating that rich people are made less moral by having a lot of wealth. Specifically, the work does not show that their immorality allowed them to become rich. Rather, it shows that people who feel like they have a lot of wealth are more likely to cheat, more likely to break the law, and more likely to just have a generally lovely attitude. This is true even if you take a poor person and make them feel like they're rich in a superficial way, such as by giving them a bunch of free money in a game of Monopoly (which is why this game so often turns people into shitheads) Obviously these are all generalities, but the researchers were able to show a strong correlation.
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Nov 9, 2014 19:13
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jrodefeld posted:I also have to mention that when I post here, I usually describe a coherent philosophy of rights, of ethics, of politics. And the rest of you try and nitpick and find holes in the belief system I am defending. That is not to say that such criticisms are not valid and should not be answered, but it is far easier to sit back and pick holes in a proposal that someone else offers, especially when you are not asked to defend an alternative. Here's the problem: you're not describing a coherent philosophy of rights, ethics, and politics. You present an incredibly broad and vague vision of the world that's based on suppositions that are not backed by facts, or anything more than mere observation. Many times, I have asked you to define the terms you are using, and I have shown that time and time again that based on the wording you use, that you end up saying some pretty ridiculous things. Your views also make many huge logical leaps, and many of the structures that need to be in place in order for your system to work, you just assume that they are going to come into place. You are delusional if you think your views are coherent. Finally, you are the one proposing an entirely new system. You're asking us to upend our society, and you have to show us how our system doesn't work as well as showing us how your system will work. And we've discussed many areas where a libertarian system wouldn't work. quote:Humans are fallible and there will always exist difficult problems for society to solve. It is far easier to propose difficult hypothetical scenarios as a way of criticism. The issue at hand is that you all seem to think that by pointing out potential issues with externalities, or the difficulty of proving environmental harm to a court system, or extremely unlikely lifeboat scenarios you have won the argument. Leaving aside the fact that libertarians have good, or at least coherent and consistent answers to these sorts of criticisms, the truth is that you have to go further and describe how introducing State violence into society will alleviate those difficult problems without creating new, equally or more serious problems and unintended consequences elsewhere. And most of what you ever do is provide hypothetical solutions. A lot of your solutions are basically you proposing "x," and then saying "There's no reason why x wouldn't solve problem y!" And there's the Jrodefeld special again with "violence." What the gently caress are you referring to? quote:The State is like the default answer to all social ills for non-anarchist leftists. They are constantly on the lookout for supposed "market failures" with which to justify State violence. But the State itself is not subjected to similar criticism. In fact, virtually all proposed leftist solutions involve political action. If there is an identified problem in society, a left leaning social democrat type will encourage people to vote, to run for Congress, to get involved politically to use the political process to solve any and all social ills. Once again, this is a misrepresentation of a lot of peoples' viewpoint. I don't have a problem with the market, and in many cases, people do embrace market solutions that work. For example, many chain pharmacies have clinics where people can come in for quick check-ups or other urgent care needs without having to go to a hospital or doctor's office. I don't recall too many people demanding a law that requires pharmacies to have clinics. However, that's not to say that we don't recognize that there are problems with the market, or there are problems that the market can't solve. For example, we see the wage gap as a problem that the market can't solve. After all, I can't imagine that the state put the pressure Walgreens CEO to cut manager's pay by 15% when he got rid of the guaranteed overtime that they used to have. Or then when he got rid of the position and replaced it with a much cheaper position. Or when hours were cut across the board, and then the next week they purchased Alliance/Boots. Yeah. He's making millions of dollars, while some people are marking 7.50 an hour. quote:Okay, good to know. I don't consider myself an expert at most things either. I have gone to college but I never got a degree in economics (though I took several courses) nor in history or political science (I took some courses in both as well). But I think emphasis on formal education is actually not a good guide of the knowledge a person possesses anymore. If someone has a passion for something, I think they can learn as much or much more outside of the classroom through independent study. The value of formal education for me is that I was exposed, at a basic level, to a wide scope of economics, political theory and history. Make no mistake, this is just a hobby for me. Here's the thing - someone who has a formal education, at least in theory, has had to prove that they actually know and understand what they are talking about. Somebody who reads books for a hobby never had to do that. Also, there's a lot of experience you get by working with people who are in that field. For example, one of the best classes I had was in college - it was US in World Affairs. The professor I had worked in the Carter and Clinton Administration, and hearing him discuss those world events was amazing. Because he was experienced, he was able to discuss history in a totally different way than most of the other history teachers I had. He knew about what was going in the 90s, because he actually had to explain to Clinton what was going on at the time. As an aside, he said it was a little embarrassing talking to Clinton because the man actually knew a lot and would ask a lot of tough questions that only someone who really understood the subject could ask. You had to be on top of your game with him. quote:If he had insurance, I find it extremely hard to believe that he would be denied if a doctor diagnosed him with cancer AND the success of treatment is high. If had my share of time battling insurance companies, but that seems hard to believe. If insurance serves any purpose whatsoever it is in protecting against just this sort of scenario, where an unexpected and life threatening illness strikes and you need costly treatment to save your life. Wow, you're a bastard. You're a loving cumstain. "I must concluse?" I must conclude that you are a loving entitled rear end in a top hat who has no understanding of what people go through. People do lose their insurance. It happens. quote:Remember I am not defending the current system but as someone who has dealt with medical issues, you have to navigate this system to get the care you need. Wow, you're condescending. Sometimes it's just impossible. For example, if you can't afford the treatment, it doesn't matter where you go. quote:The reason why single payer destroys the healthcare market is that people will gravitate and overuse any service that is "free". Should I use the physical therapist that charges $80 a session or should I use the one that is "free"? People who don't understand the economics of healthcare overuse services where they would think twice if they had to pay out of pocket. Without the price mechanism, market signals and competition, the quality of care suffers. First off, the quality of care doesn't suffer, as Caros showed you. But you know in the UK, there is private health insurance and there are private doctors who aren't part of the NHS. Amazing. Even with a perfectly good universal healthcare system, there still exists private healthcare systems in the UK. But you see, once again, you didn't base your arguments on facts. You based them instead on logic based upon supposition. Yes. What you said makes sense, except it doesn't happen. quote:Now regarding the truly life threatening medical problems where people will pay as much as they can possibly afford and borrow to save their life, there is STILL incentive for providers to compete for your business. If I am dying unless I receive a surgery to remove a tumor and I can choose to have it removed by five different, independent and market based hospitals, I will choose only one. Each of these hospitals will want to get my business and I am more likely to get the tumor removed by the hospital that charges less. Here's the thing - not all of the costs are known upfront. For example, what if there are complications during the surgery that make it take longer than initially suspected, or require the surgeon to perform a totally different procedure than what was originally described. It can happen. What if you need further care? Also, you might not really have as many choices as you think. In a lot of communities, they might have smaller hospitals that basically take care of most of the basic things, but if you need surgery for something like removing a cancerous tumor, you'll have to go to a major hospital that could be pretty far away. Even if there was a market based economy, there still is a limited supply of hospitals. It's not like a community with only one hospital will suddenly have 4 more pop up. quote:Furthermore, the reputation of healthcare providers and the ethics practiced by doctors and surgeons is something that everyone will be watching carefully. If a doctor is determined to be unethical and abusive to a desperate patient through price gouging, then people will know and his future business will suffer. Let me give an example. Do you think the number of hospitals we have in this country isn't higher because people don't see enough incentive to get into healthcare? In fact, this whole reputation thing doesn't happen even today! This is a story about a Dallas doctor who was described by other doctors as the worst doctor they've ever saw, with one saying that he had know knowledge of anatomy, and thought he might have been an impostor. http://www.texasobserver.org/anatomy-tragedy/ The fact of the matter is that this doctor was able to kill or maim a few patients, and that didn't stop him from killing or maiming a few others. quote:In a free market, health insurance would play a very small role in healthcare. Insurance would be for catastrophic accidents, unexpected healthcare problems and things like that. Like car insurance only comes into play when you get into an accident but you just pay out of pocket for oil changes and other normal maintenance issues you have with your car. If the engine dies you buy a new one. You replace the battery, the tires, the brakes and everything else out of your pocket. Insurance pays for damage when you are hit by another driver, or you miss a red light and crash into another vehicle. Unexpected, unplanned for events. Car insurance is mostly about the damage you cause to other people's properties. The thing is, a car is a lot less complex than a human body. An oil change will not result in work that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars of work on your car, where a 30 dollar prescription could end up in a long hospital stay that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. quote:Don't you notice how the complaints we all have against health insurance companies are not equally applicable to car insurance providers or insurance against fires? The reason is that State intervention has distorted the very purpose of insurance and given us a third party payer system where inflated costs of healthcare cause us to rely too heavily on insurance and so we have far less control over which healthcare services we have access to. I must conclude that you have no experience with the healthcare system, or car insurance. Almost everybody will need to receive health-care at some point in their life. Whether you break a bone, have a child, need surgery, or whatever, most of us have some experience with health insurance and healthcare. It's more likely that we're going to have to deal with a broken policy because it's just a common experience. While most people have car insurance, we rarely deal with our insurance company. However, most of the people I know who had to deal with their car insurance companies have not walked away happily from the matter. One of my friends had to fight with his insurance companies after a woman totaled his car because she claim that he was speeding, even though she slammed into him. quote:I've gone to plenty of doctors who have recommended all sorts of expensive tests, drugs and different treatments but I refused because I informed myself enough to understand that it is not worth the money. Do you understand how the healthcare system works? Do you do any research, or do you just come up with some reason why the market system would work and then take that as absolute proof that market will work? First off, there are a lot of reasons for over testing. First off, most people just don't know any better. They're told by a guy in a labcoat that they need this test, and so they aren't going to question the test. Expecting that people will suddenly become informed consumers when we've seen that time after time, they aren't, is just absurd. Also, secondly, doctors are given incentives to do more tests - more money. Most doctors are self-employed, and so that means they get paid by the service they provide. So more tests equals more money. The Cleveland Clinic, which uses salaried doctors, see doctors ordering less tests since they get paid the same whether they order one test or order five tests. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/nov/20/salaried-physicians-barriers-and-benefits/ Finally, malpractice is a concern. Sometimes, doctors will order a test because if something goes wrong and they didn't order the test, they could be sued for malpractice. Once again, these are things you would know if you actually did research on the matter. But instead, you just see a problem and then say "Well, the market could work this way, so it will work this way!" quote:There are many ways the market can, and has in the past, dealt with this "lack of choice" that people have when dealing with a life threatening emergency. Insurance, in fact, IS a market mechanism with which to deal with emergencies. Right. But a lot of people have issues with insurance companies only being willing to pay for certain treatments, or only allowing a certain amount of time in the hospital, or what have you.
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Nov 9, 2014 19:30
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jrodefeld posted:Some of you seem to think it is enough to say "this difficult hypothetical problem could potentially exist in a proposed society". There is no system of political organization on earth that can possibly alleviate all human problems. Utopia is a nice fantasy but it cannot exist unless the nature of man fundamentally changes. No, see, you don't have to prove that libertopia would literally be utopia and solve all human problems. You just have to prove that it would be preferable to what we have now. We're playing a thought experiment game of "society builder". All of the issues that we keep bringing up are top priorities for a society. How do you keep people fed? How do you keep people from getting sick? How do you handle infrastructure needed by the society? How do you keep people from inadvertently poisoning each other via poor pollution practices? How do you deal with invasion by a hostile group? What do you do when someone violates deep-rooted moral principles, such as cold-blooded murder? Your answer to all of these is "the free market". That's a non-answer. When pushed further, you sometimes provide additional details, but your most common response is some variation of "I don't know, use your imagination" or "I don't feel like it's necessary to figure out every small detail" or "THE STATE is immoral". These are also a non-answers. When you do have an answer with some specifics, it's riddled with wildly inaccurate and easily disproven statements: "war is unprofitable", "monopolies and trust only exist because there's a state", "fiat currency causes the boom/bust cycle". These difficult hypothetical problems are key problems to solve if we're going to design a society together. These are serious problems. If libertarianism's solutions to these problems result in worse outcomes than the status quo, then that is a strong incentive to dismiss libertarianism. The same goes for communism, socialism, hybrid systems, etc.; each of these systems is going to have their own solutions that produce their own outcomes. When someone points out that libertarianism allows bad actors to dump mercury into the water table with no repercussions, or that fractured city-states are extremely vulnerable to invasion by a larger foreign state, we're not just nitpicking. We're looking at historical examples of real and very serious historical problems that we've had to deal with in the past, and we're explaining that we strongly dislike the outcomes presented by ancap libertarianism.
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Nov 9, 2014 19:51
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Cemetry Gator posted:Here's the problem: you're not describing a coherent philosophy of rights, ethics, and politics. You present an incredibly broad and vague vision of the world that's based on suppositions that are not backed by facts, or anything more than mere observation. Many times, I have asked you to define the terms you are using, and I have shown that time and time again that based on the wording you use, that you end up saying some pretty ridiculous things. Your views also make many huge logical leaps, and many of the structures that need to be in place in order for your system to work, you just assume that they are going to come into place. I'm not sure they're not coherent. I am positive though that even if they are logically consistent that says literally nothing about whether they constitute a good philosophy for organizing human beings. Both sides of the abortion debate can be logically consistent for example: "Murder is wrong -> abortion is murder -> therefore abortion is wrong" or "Murder is wrong -> abortion is not murder-> abortion is not wrong" are both logically consistent given the underlying assumptions. But what this illustrates is that 1) you have to recognize that you have a set of underlying assumptions that other people might not share 2) there is no universal set of logically provable assumptions (whether abortion is murder or isn't) and 3) even if there were there would be no guaranteeing that they would actually work - and actually, I can guarantee that unbending ideology won't. A certain attention to logical consistency is necesary. But you can't fool yourself into thinking that it can be relied upon entirely. Logical consistency itself tells you nothing. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 20:00
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murphyslaw posted:E: There's a point to the UHC vs. private discussion between Caros and Jrod that (while skimming the last post) I didn't see taken up, and that's that most countries that have UHC also have parallel, private health care options available for those who wish to (and can) pay for them. At least I'm reasonably sure of it. Some do, some don't, and generally it is just elective/cosmetic stuff since anything that needs serious treatment will generally be done right away in countries with UHC.
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Nov 9, 2014 20:06
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QuarkJets posted:There's actually a lot of work indicating that rich people are made less moral by having a lot of wealth. Specifically, the work does not show that their immorality allowed them to become rich. Rather, it shows that people who feel like they have a lot of wealth are more likely to cheat, more likely to break the law, and more likely to just have a generally lovely attitude. This is true even if you take a poor person and make them feel like they're rich in a superficial way, such as by giving them a bunch of free money in a game of Monopoly (which is why this game so often turns people into shitheads) Do you have a reference to this? That sounds fascinating.
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Nov 9, 2014 21:38
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Caros posted:This is entirely unfair to him Rhjamiz. The reason I have two giant effort posts on this page is because he has been consistently replying to most of my posts in this thread. If anything I'm actually monopolizing the debate time, which means he has to ignore others in favor of me. I appreciate this. I've got a few more points I want to raise about healthcare but first I want to say that it is appreciated when people take the effort to respond substantively, regardless of whether we agree or not. That is very rare on internet forums.
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Nov 9, 2014 22:28
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jrodefeld posted:The real objection to the State is, as I've said a thousand times, that the initiation of force is immoral. It violates the principle of universability of ethics. Depending on your definition of "good", government funding on occasion produces things of value. No one is denying that. The crux of the issue is that you believe the State taking your money (via threat of force) as the ultimate immorality. Every alternative you've proposed will make things even easier for the already-powerful and harder for the already-weak, and your only answer to that is "Well, maybe it won't?" Should society really move towards abolishing the State because maybe company-towns won't happen again and maybe competing, privately-funded police forces won't just turn to warring militias pretty much immediately? Do you really believe suing a polluting company for giving the whole town cancer twenty years later is preferable to the EPA telling them to cut that poo poo out immediately? Better a thousand people get cancer in a free society than even one dollar taken from you in involuntary taxation, right? Do you actually care about how your ideas would affect society, or is this just one of those 'well, in an ideal, rational world' situations?
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Nov 9, 2014 22:55
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A few more points I want to raise about healthcare. Caros has repeatedly insinuated that the United States healthcare system is an approximation of a free market in medical care delivery, but I think that is an overstatement. Yes, elements of the free market come into play in medicine, but more than anything we live under a half fascist, half socialist healthcare system with elements of the free market existing on the periphery. I want you to look at this chart from the WHO: http://images.mises.org/3233/Figure1.png The US government accounted for over 45% of all US healthcare expenditures in 2006. It spent almost 20% of GDP on healthcare. In fact it spends more per capita than any other OECD country, including those with socialist, government funded healthcare. It should go without saying that this is not a free market. Here is a list of a few of the State regulatory programs that keep prices high and stifle innovation: 1. The FDA 2. Center for Disease Control and Prevention 3. The American Medical Association 4. The United States Department of Health and Human Services Healthcare costs have risen because the industry is subsidized. Government intervention grows because you can expect more of anything that is subsidized. Doctors raise their prices on those paying privately to cover those who do not pay (those that the government pays for). But repeatedly Caros scoffs at the very idea that State involvement in medical care has caused rising prices over what they would be in the free market, continually citing advances in technology and newer medical innovations as accounting for the sky high cost of medicine. But look at this chart, which compares Health Care inflation with the Consumer Price Index from 1935 to 2009: http://bastiat.mises.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/holly1.jpg Notice any trend that emerged after the mid 1960s after the State got heavily involved in medical care? Well clearly price inflation in medical care started to quickly rise much faster than the consumer price index whereas before the price of medical care rose at the general same rate of inflation as the rest of the economy. You cannot possibly explain such a striking trend simply because of better technology. Doctors still performed surgeries before the 1970s, they still spent a lot of time with patients. There are other sectors of the economy that have been transformed due to innovations and technological improvements yet they have not had a corresponding increase in prices anywhere comparable to healthcare. The State has been interfering and distorting the healthcare marketplace for a very long time. The following are past major laws and other policies implemented by the Federal and state governments that have interfered with the health care marketplace: In 1910, the physician oligopoly was started during the Republican administration of William Taft after the American Medical Association lobbied the states to strengthen the regulation of medical licensure and allow their state AMA offices to oversee the closure or merger of nearly half of medical schools and also the reduction of class sizes. The states have been subsidizing the education of the number of doctors recommended by the AMA. In 1925, prescription drug monopolies begun after the federal government led by Republican President Calvin Coolidge started allowing the patenting of drugs. (Drug monopolies have also been promoted by government research and development subsidies targeted to favored pharmaceutical companies.) In 1945, buyer monopolization begun after the McCarran-Ferguson Act led by the Roosevelt Administration exempted the business of medical insurance from most federal regulation, including antitrust laws. (States have also more recently contributed to the monopolization by requiring health care plans to meet standards for coverage.) In 1946, institutional provider monopolization begun after favored hospitals received federal subsidies (matching grants and loans) provided under the Hospital Survey and Construction Act passed during the Truman Administration. (States have also been exempting non-profit hospitals from antitrust laws.) In 1951, employers started to become the dominant third-party insurance buyer during the Truman Administration after the Internal Revenue Service declared group premiums tax-deductible. In 1965, nationalization was started with a government buyer monopoly after the Johnson Administration led passage of Medicare and Medicaid which provided health insurance for the elderly and poor, respectively. In 1972, institutional provider monopolization was strengthened after the Nixon Administration started restricting the supply of hospitals by requiring federal certificate-of-need for the construction of medical facilities. In 1974, buyer monopolization was strengthened during the Nixon Administration after the Employee Retirement Income Security Act exempted employee health benefit plans offered by large employers (e.g., HMOs) from state regulations and lawsuits (e.g., brought by people denied coverage). In 1984, prescription drug monopolies were strengthened during the Reagan Administration after the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act permitted the extension of patents beyond 20 years. (The government has also allowed pharmaceuticals companies to bribe physicians to prescribe more expensive drugs.) In 2003, prescription drug monopolies were strengthened during the Bush Administration after the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act provided subsidies to the elderly for drugs. In 2014, nationalization will be strengthened after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“Obamacare”) provided mandates, subsidies and insurance exchanges, and the expansion of Medicaid. This stuff has been going on for a VERY long time. When you examine the data and see that in the United States, the government spends MORE money per capita on healthcare than in nations with nationalized healthcare. Yet we are supposed to think of them as all socialist and us as purely (or a close approximation of) free market. Furthermore when you examine how healthcare inflation started to quickly outpace the Consumer Price Index after the State started getting heavily involved in the 1960s, it becomes quite clear that absent that intervention, healthcare costs would be far lower. Caros has basically had to concede that for those with means, you can purchase great healthcare in the private market. The main problem is the unavailability of any significant healthcare services to the poorest. Why is that? Artificially inflated healthcare costs. Restrictions and regulations that prevent entrepreneurs from providing low costs clinics to low income Americans. Profit seeking entrepreneurs are not going to forgo such a massive market of people who desperately need healthcare but are priced out of the market unless there were some barrier to entry created by State monopoly privilege, licenture laws, and restrictions placed by monopolists. I just wanted to put this issue to rest. State intervention clearly and unequivocally caused excessive price inflation in the healthcare market that dramatically outpaced the consumer price index.
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Nov 9, 2014 22:58
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jrodefeld posted:A few more points I want to raise about healthcare. You didn't read Caros' posts at all, did you?
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Nov 9, 2014 23:21
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jrodefeld posted:A few more points I want to raise about healthcare. So...because the U.S. spends more on healthcare per capita than actual socialist countries, it proves that the U.S. is in fact more socialist than those socialist countris? What?
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Nov 9, 2014 23:22
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jrodefeld posted:The US government accounted for over 45% of all US healthcare expenditures in 2006. It spent almost 20% of GDP on healthcare. In fact it spends more per capita than any other OECD country, including those with socialist, government funded healthcare. It should go without saying that this is not a free market. Well, no it doesn't, since you just stated that countries with government funded healthcare spend less money. Opening US healthcare to the market results in higher prices. How else would you explain this gulf?
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Nov 9, 2014 23:24
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Waaaah the Christians are out to get me
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jrodefeld posted:I want you to look at this chart from the WHO: That sure is a beautiful unlabeled and meaningless graph that you posted there, champ.
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Nov 9, 2014 23:24
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Quantum Mechanic posted:Well, no it doesn't, since you just stated that countries with government funded healthcare spend less money. Opening US healthcare to the market results in higher prices. How else would you explain this gulf?  curve.
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Nov 9, 2014 23:26
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