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jrodefeld posted: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. The medical industry is highly regulated precisely because of what happened when we, as a society, found out exactly what happens when medicine is deregulated and left up to the free market. Charlatans sell ineffective and dangerous patent medicine in unregulated markets. Consumers don't have access to the expensive analytical equipment and research infrastructure required to figure out whether their medicine actually contains what it says on the label, and whether those ingredients are actually effective. Deregulating the market for pharmaceuticals and medical devices might lead to cheaper medicine, but it would definitely lead to dangerous medicine. Cheating is easy, incredibly profitable, and reputation is no guarantee (a new player with discount medicine might be legit and offering a discount to get themselves established, or they might be an experienced scammer behind a false identity). And, unlike, say, durable goods, where getting scammed is just "really bad," bad medicine can literally kill you. This post brought to you by Stickney and Poor's Paregoric. Remember, if your newborn is crying, it's crying out for more Stickney and Poor's!  Seriously, before the FDA, "get babies hooked on opium" was a legitimate marketing strategy. This is why medicine is regulated.
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Nov 9, 2014 23:33
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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. Yes, because socialist, government-funded care is extremely efficient (for monopsony reasons mentioned earlier). quote: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. Caros' explanation is perfectly reasonable. The only reason you don't accept it is because it doesn't fit your pre-existing beliefs (that state involvement always raises prices), but it does fit the actual real-world data, especially when you look at the cost of providing healthcare in non-US countries. The price of providing healthcare in the UK is cheaper than in the US, despite the fact that there is next to no market operating. You have not explained this. You need to. quote: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. You're making the wrong comparison and missing the point. People now spend $500 on a new cellphone whereas before they just would have gone without, because cellphones were a bit rubbish and not worth the money they cost to build. The market existed, but was waiting for the technology to catch up. Healthcare is the same - there's a massive untapped market for expensive live-saving technologies which can't be monetised until those technologies actually exist. It's not that technological advances make healthcare more expensive, it's that people can now buy something they couldn't get before, and they'll pay pretty much anything. You could look the iPhone and say "technological advances made cellphones more expensive!", but that's not really a good description of what happened. quote: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. You continue to assert this in different forms, but you haven't demonstrated it. Also, you're assuming that restrictions and regulations only ever weaken competition, when in some cases they strengthen it. For example, a regulation forcing companies to provide transparent pricing information for their insurance policies allows consumers to make better choices and therefore makes companies compete on products rather than just trying to be the best at misleading people. Would this regulation count as market distortion to you? quote: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. Right, but it doesn't matter, because it turns out states do a better job of providing good quality care efficiently. In the UK (again), no private company provides emergency services. If you go into cardiac arrest during an elective, they phone an ambulance and ship you to a state hospital. They do the "easy" stuff because they can't compete with the state, and that's fine, because the state does a great job. quote: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. What you've posted in no way puts the issue to any sort of rest. The conventional reading of your observations is that state intervention was a response to an inflation in healthcare costs that outpaced the CPI because of the changing nature of healthcare. The most telling comparison is not the US now vs. the US then, it's the US now vs. other countries now. To "put this issue to rest" you need to address the apparent fact that the US has less state intervention in healthcare than any other developed nation and is also the most inefficient. If state intervention causes problems, why are nations with nationalised healthcare providing better healthcare for less money?
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Nov 9, 2014 23:39
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jrodefeld posted: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). Have you ever considered that government intervention became necessarry as prices rose? Or that on average, the government pays far LESS than private insurance for the same things? That's because government insurance is dedicated to providing positive outcomes, and so it bargains collectively for its patients where private insurance just told them to get hosed. Moreover, who are all these people getting extraneous medical care? Outside of hypochondriacs, who likes to go to the loving doctor? It really does come across here like you've never interacted with another human being in the flesh. gently caress. quote: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. Well, it's not just better technology. Like we've been saying this whole time, it's also exploitation by the capitalist class. quote: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. Good to see that you still don't understand inelasticity. I mean, you did say "um but it's not inelastic," but you've yet to demonstrate that, either factually or praxeologically.
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Nov 9, 2014 23:54
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Actually Jrod is tangentially right on one thing: when the State pumps money into a market without imposing price controls (usually through monopsony or bulk purchaser's power), prices will rise dramatically. See higher education in the US for another example.
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Nov 9, 2014 23:57
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jrodefeld posted: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. I don't expect you to reply to this post, but if this statement is indicative of your true intentions, then at least read it. Many people have responded substantially to you in the couple of years you have been posting here, myself included. At first we were stymied by your posting style of responding to each post, potentially days apart, so that you would be replying to a post on page 2 after 11 pages had already filled. Additionally, you had a habit of responding to obvious parody posts with complaint. I get that you cannot respond to everyone, and no one here expects you to, especially the people who are offering taunts and snark rather than substance. But even then, it became clear that you were more interested in adopting a proselytizing approach rather than an actual debate. Multiple times you have inferred that we were somehow inferior, stupid, or ignorant, simply because we don't agree with you and your mises.org linkdumps. I used to effortpost in Libertarian threads, being a former Libertarian myself who sat through the forum transformation back in 2004. In fact, I have effort posted in your past threads. You are the reason I no longer effort post, because you proved time and time again that you are arguing in bad faith. I simply do not believe that you are actually willing to debate, as that would imply that you would consider an alternative position if given a valid argument. I have asked you this before in multiple threads before I gave up responding to you (except to maybe sideline snipe on something particularly egregious), but I will ask again since I think a lot of people in this thread would be interested in the answer. What would it take for you to reconsider your position? If you are truly open to debate and consideration of someone's position, what burden or proof or level of argumentation must be offered such that you actually do this? Because if you cannot offer this, then you are not debating in good faith. I know that people like Caros primarily respond so that those on the sidelines will have a better understanding of why he(we) believe Libertarianism is not as advertised, but I have a bad time with bad faith debaters. And I love to debate with people.
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Nov 10, 2014 00:00
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archangelwar posted:I have asked you this before in multiple threads before I gave up responding to you (except to maybe sideline snipe on something particularly egregious), but I will ask again since I think a lot of people in this thread would be interested in the answer. What would it take for you to reconsider your position? Agreed. And I just want to add to this -- although we haven't made this explicitly clear, I think I can speak for the majority of the posters in these threads when I say that what it would take to convince us would be a rational examination of a significant body of real-world data, explaining the existing trends in a way that makes your worldview come out on top of ours. A large part of the problem here is that you are only engaging with our ideals, and you are not engaging with the data that supports them. But honestly, this might all be a begged question, because if, to you, governmental taxation is fundamentally worse than the deaths of countless people (which will be the effect of, say, global warming), then we truly are speaking completely incompatible ethical languages.
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Nov 10, 2014 00:05
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bokkibear posted:If state intervention causes problems, why are nations with nationalised healthcare providing better healthcare for less money? Ooh, ooh, can I guess the answer? It's one of the following: 1. That's not true because we've never seen a truly free market, because there has never been such a thing. If we did, you would see even lower costs, faster innovations and less corruption. -or- 2. That may be true, but you had to steal money via coercion to do it so it's immoral by default. Even if it's a net positive for society it will never be moral for that reason. Coincidentally you can pretty much copy/paste these for any questions you may have about libertarianism and still pretty much nail it.
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Nov 10, 2014 00:18
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Wolfsheim posted:2. That may be true, but you had to steal money via coercion to do it so it's immoral by default. Even if it's a net positive for society it will never be moral for that reason. I'm interested to learn more about jrod's view of practical vs. natural morality. Earlier in the thread I posted the following: bokkibear posted:Here's an interesting hypothetical. Suppose we admit that taxation is a deeply immoral activity and thus government should be disbanded. However, suppose also that government turns out (in practice) to be indispensable and societies without government simply don't work right. I can't find a way to approach this question without coming to the conclusion that what is moral is partly predicated on what works. Is it even meaningful to talk of a moral society that doesn't work? Doesn't that subvert our instinctive understanding the word "moral"?
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Nov 10, 2014 00:30
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I've said this many times, but I'll say this again: Stop talking about things that you clearly have no clue about. jrodefeld posted:A few more points I want to raise about healthcare. What do you mean by fascist? What the gently caress is fascist about our health care system? Also, congratulations. You couldn't even get a chart from a source that wasn't Mises.org. I mean, seriously. quote: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. Why does it go without saying? You can't just make an argument from an assertion and then expect me to prove you wrong. It only goes without saying if you believe that the free market will always be the most efficient system around. Which you haven't proven. quote:Here is a list of a few of the State regulatory programs that keep prices high and stifle innovation: First off, the AMA is not a State regulatory program. Secondly, you failed to say anything substantial here beyond making an assertion. How do they keep prices high and stifle innovation? Thirdly, do you even know why the FDA came into existence? Or any of these things (aside from the AMA). Do you know why these regulations exist? I'll give you one example of why the FDA does what it does. Perhaps you are aware of the Elixir sulfanilamide scandal, that killed more than 100 people. By the way, that's one more example than you've given us. Sure, they keep drugs from getting to the market faster, but that's because they want to ensure that those drugs will be safe. They're just making sure people are selling effective medication that won't kill you. I fail to see how the CDC can possibly make it onto the list. Once again, though, stopping the spread of deadly diseases is something even my most hardcore right-wing friends will say is something the government should be involved with, since it impacts the safety and security of the country. Once again, how does the US Department of Health and Human Services keep prices high and stifle innovation? quote: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). Wha...? Look, I work in Healthcare. My entire professional career has been in healthcare. Kindly shut the gently caress up Jrodefeld. Please. Just shut the gently caress up. You know as little as you do on healthcare as I know about the reproductive habits of humingbirds. Which is to say, I know it exists. See, one reason why healthcare costs are high are the uninsured people who can't pay for services who come into the emergency room. Since hospitals can't refuse to give them necessary treatments, costs go up because hospitals have to deal with emergencies since many of these people can't afford primary care, which is cheaper. It also means that when they get into the ER, it's already an emergency. quote: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. You haven't shown your argument. All you've done is dismissed the opposing argument. There are many possible reasons. First off, people are living longer these days, and in general, end-of-life healthcare is more expensive than normal healthcare. In fact, we spend most of our health-care dollars on the last six months of your life. Also, there are more procedures that are available using new and expensive technology. So once again, we have more treatment options and can do more to treat. Couple that with a pay-per-service payment model that we have in most of our healthcare today, you can see how prices go up. Of course, I can't possibly have come up with that explanation. You, who have consistently shown yourself to be knowledgeable in healthcare just said so! quote: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: I'm gonna have fun here. quote: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. First off, today, the AMA is seeking more medical schools. Secondly, licensing is what helps keep incompetent doctors from practicing, since it requires you demonstrate a basic set of knowledge. quote: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.) Dude, you don't loving pay attention to anyone, do you. We've already went over why patents aren't a monopoly, but you're too loving stupid and stubborn to admit you're wrong and that you didn't know what you were talking about. Also, if there are monopolies, why are there so many drug companies, and why do generics exist? quote: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. Yup. Helping to end poverty in the elderly populations is a terrible thing! quote: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.) This is because if the patents expired after 20 years, after all the testing that a drug has to go through, drug companies might not get a chance to recoup their costs before a generic hit the market. quote: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. So why doesn't this happen in England or Canada where they have Universal Health Care? I mean, if the private system is supposed to be better, why doesn't it happen everywhere with a socialist system. quote: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. As I'm sure, it has not clearly and unequivocally caused excessive price inflation. I mean it. Stop talking about stuff that you have no knowledge in.
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Nov 10, 2014 00:55
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Ratoslov posted:Do you have a reference to this? That sounds fascinating. Here's a video from PBS where they discuss some of the findings: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-jan-june13-makingsense_06-21/ jrodefeld posted:Here is a list of a few of the State regulatory programs that keep prices high and stifle innovation: The AMA is not a state program. It's a privately-run professional association jrodefeld posted: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. That chart doesn't discredit his point. Advances in medical care have led to the development of new diagnostic tools and new treatments, but these are all orders of magnitudes more expensive than the tools and treatments that we had in the 50s. This means that our medical care has increased in cost significantly overall, but our outcomes have also improved significantly overall. This is true in every modern western nation; we have amazing new advances in medical technology, but those advances are expensive as gently caress. Do you believe that Medicare and Medicaid in the US led to exponentially increasing healthcare costs in the UK and China? Do you know what it costs to construct, maintain, and operate an MRI machine? Hospitals in the 50s didn't need to have machines that run on superconducting magnets, but now you're considered backwards if you don't have access to such a device. Coincidentally, the 1960s is right around the time when we started building and using such devices. This applies to countless other amazing (and expensive) medical technology advances that only started really appearing after the 1960s. All that your chart does is show that the increase in medical cost doesn't follow the CPI, which is completely true and easily explained. jrodefeld posted: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. Yes, you can. Doctors performed surgeries before the 70s, but not nearly as many, and not nearly as complex. This is well-documented. And they also sure as gently caress didn't perform many MRIs or CAT scans before the 1970s. There are countless other examples that prove you wrong jrodefeld posted: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. Nope; correlation does not lead to causation. While you're focusing on the United States, there are examples abroad where decreasing levels of state involvement have still resulted in higher medical expenditures, or where extremely high levels of state involvement have resulted in lower medical costs. You're completely wrong. You're arguing from a position of rationality, but your assumptions are flawed and your conclusions are disproven by empirical evidence.
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Nov 10, 2014 01:42
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Like, look at AIDS medication. This stuff is expensive as gently caress because the only alternative is to just curl up in a ball and die. Even in a system with absolutely no state, AIDS medication is not part of a free market. If I own the secret to creating AIDS medication and decide that it's worth 50% of a person's net worth, people will pay that. If I decide that it's worth 90% of a person's net worth, people will pay that, too. This is coercive as gently caress and there's no way that you could believe that this situation is created by The State.
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Nov 10, 2014 01:54
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How does a free market handle orphan drugs? These are medications for diseases that are relatively rare, and so the government subsidizes the production of these medications through things like tax credits and easing some of the tax burden. Basically, your proposal means that we'll have unsafe drugs on the market that have not been tested, or there will be less inventive to produce these medications. Also, what about genetic diseases. Without insurance, one of the medications I take every month would cost me over 1000 dollars every month. I can not afford that cost, nor would a significant number of people. This is why I find your whole discussion on health care offensive, because in your world, I would be unable to afford to live just because I was born. Or would the free market world have a eugenics program to keep me from being born? It shows incredible myopia to the real struggles that people like me go through all the time.
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Nov 10, 2014 02:50
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When will you dumb statists realize that there are plenty of entrepreneurs out there who are perfectly willing to Jrodefeld, have you considered that there might be a stratum of the population to which it's completely impossible to sell healthcare at a profit?
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Nov 10, 2014 03:16
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Heavy neutrino posted:When will you dumb statists realize that there are plenty of entrepreneurs out there who are perfectly willing to They'd also have plenty of of willing test subjects, too! "Right. Now, you might be asking yourself, "Cave, just how difficult are these tests? What was in that phonebook of a contract I signed? Am I in danger?" Let me answer those questions with a question. Who wants to make sixty dollars? Cash. You can also feel free to relax for up to twenty minutes in the waiting room, which is a drat sight more comfortable than the park benches most of you were sleeping on when we found you. So! Welcome to Aperture. You're here because we want the best, and you're it. Nope. Couldn't keep a straight face." -A Forward Thinking Entrepreneur
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Nov 10, 2014 03:21
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Who What Now posted:They'd also have plenty of of willing test subjects, too! Or, alternatively: "Welcome, gentlemen, to the Aperture Hollow Science Jungle. Tramps, hillbillies, drifters: you're here because you followed the hobo signs. So, who is ready to scrounge around for some science? Now, you already met one another on the boxcar over here, so grab a bowl of slumgullion and a glass of sterno, and let me introduce myself. I'm Michigan Slim Cave Johnson. I'm the hobo king."
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Nov 10, 2014 03:41
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Just got done with a four hour drive... but this is pretty bite sized and I've got nothing else to do tonight so, eh, why not.jrodefeld posted:A few more points I want to raise about healthcare. I already made fun of someone last night for using fascist wrong, but I want to make it clear that fascist has a very real definition. I know you enjoy using JRodefeld specials where words mean what you want them to mean, but if you are discussing in good faith on these forums please stop making up definitions for words that have nothing to do with what you're talking about. Honestly, you're just using fascist as a synonym for bad. quote:I want you to look at this chart from the WHO: Wow. That sure is.. uh... A chart. I guess? I'm guessing its hundreds of billions spent on healthcare by the government? I have to guess because the chart doesn't tell me, and neither do you. The only reason I'm sure is that 3.8 trillion is roughly the number that they currently spend. quote: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. This is factually untrue. Specifically, the US government does not spend almost 20% of GDP on healthcare, they spend about 7.96%, with the remaining 9% coming from private expenditures. I suspect that this was simply poor wording on your choice, but I'm honestly not sure. In addition it is worth remembering that even with the US government accounting for 45% of all healthcare expenditures, that means 55% is covered by the private sector. A majority of US healthcare spending is market based, which is why we argue that the US is an example of a market based healthcare system. If you are arguing that it is not a totally, perfectly free market, I'll agree with the caveat that such a market does not, has not and will not exist anywhere in the world, at least in my opinion. quote:Here is a list of a few of the State regulatory programs that keep prices high and stifle innovation: Okay, while all of these are pretty stupid examples of things that you'd want to cut, I'm going to pay special attention to the CDC and HHS. I mean, cutting the FDA is stupid for the whole 'opium baby cough syrup' thing people have already mentioned, eliminating the AMA is dumb because of the whole 'Unlicenced doctors' thing I pointed out last night but the CDC and HHS cuts are simply ridiculous on their face. Also the AMA is a private group, but we'll get to why you don't know that right away. So lets talk HHS and CDC Jrodefeld. What is it that you think they do that stifles innovation and keeps prices high? Do you have any specific grudge against the CDC, or any specific reasoning as to why cutting the department would be a good idea? How does the CDC's 15,000 employee staff dedicated to disease control and prevention somehow increase prices and reduce innovation. For that matter, why would you need to include the CDC at all since the CDC is part of HHS, are you even aware of that fact? Personally I would argue that you are not aware of it. In fact, I would go so far as to say that you probably don't know much of anything about those four organizations, and in fact lifted much of this post wholesale from mises.org and partially rephased it to fit with the rest of what you were saying. Cards on the table here, you really don't have any reason for saying the CDC is bad do you? You just read it on a link from Mises.org and considered it gospel. This is why I have a hard time believing what you say, because I honestly don't believe you even understand much of what you so much as you regurgitate it. For the record, HHS includes the NIH, the National Institutes of Health. The NIH by itself accounts for more than 50% of all funding for health research in the USA, and 85% of all funding for health studies in universities. The fact that the NIH was in the middle of a political scuffle over funding in the 80's is considered to be one of the contributing factor into why AIDS exploded like it did. To say that HHS "Stiffles innovation" is so diviorced from reality that I actually when and googled your quotes, because I couldn't believe you were actually stupid enough to believe what you were saying. quote: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). I don't even know why I'm replying as this is a nearly verbatim lift from the above article, but I covered this yesterday so I'll do it one more time. The idea that you get more of what is subsidized is easily disproven. I have hemochromatosis, it is a hereditary condition that means I retain too much iron in my blood and need to have it filtered or I will eventually have health problems, including blindness. If you subsidize people who have this disease, you don't get more people suddenly popping up with the same hereditary disease. If you subsudize healthcare for say.. the elderly, you don't suddenly get more elderly. quote: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. I do scoff at it! You acknowledging that I scoff at your arguments does not disprove mine. If you think I'm wrong, then by all means try and disprove my argument, don't just repeat it and move on. quote:But look at this chart, which compares Health Care inflation with the Consumer Price Index from 1935 to 2009: Yeah, healthcare spending went up, and for a variety of reasons. For one thing people could receive treatments that didn't previously exist, but which were more effective. Open heart surgery simply wasn't a thing in the early 60's, and once it became a thing people would pay to receive the treatment. Moreover, as I clarified several posts back, one of the biggest increases in spending in the 60's has to do with the fact that the elderly could actually receive treatment. Considering that the elderly were essentially poo poo out of luck prior to Medicare, and that they are typically the sector with the most health problems it is no wonder that health costs increased as a whole segment of the population gained access to affordable healthcare. But no, I'm sure your solution is much better. The funny thing is that I don't argue that the government didn't end up increasing prices to some extent in some sectors, I just don't think it was among the primary factors, while you seem content to deny all my arguments out of hand and insist that the government is solely responsible for increasing prices. quote:The following are past major laws and other policies implemented by the Federal and state governments that have interfered with the health care marketplace: The above is an entirely unsourced quote from this Mises.org link. As I have precisely zero desire to argue with a an article from Mises.Org I'm going to refrain from any comment other than to say this list is a very simplistic view of healthcare reform over the decades. quote: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. The US government spends more money per capita on healthcare than in nations with nationalized healthcare. What you are leaving out is that they also spend more money per capita on healthcare in the private sector than the total healthcare budget of nations with nationalized healthcare, and the second number is higher than the first. We think you you as a market because you spend more money on market based healthcare than you do in government provided healthcare. In addition nearly 2/3 of your population is covered by private insurance, while only 1/3 receives care through government assistance. This isn't because government assistance is bad by the way, but because the government 'pool' consists of the poor and the elderly, which are two of the most at risk groups, meaning they have to spend far more. quote: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. This is incredibly loving disingenuous, and I have no idea why you think this would fly here. I 'conceded' that a rich person would be able to purchase great healthcare in the private market, while at the same time pointing out that rich person would actually be able to get equal or better care in the UK. If you have enough money you can get 'great' anything anywhere. A rich person could get great medical care in Somalia, that does not mean I have conceded that the US Healthcare system is in any way 'good'. quote: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. Those same profit seeking entrepreneurs are not going to forgo the massive market of selling radium based eye shadow, or opium cough syrup. Anyone who can't meet basic requirements like 'going to medical school' to become a doctor or 'proving your product won't give me cancer' shouldn't be in business as far as I, and the vast majority of people are concerned. quote: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. Do you think you can just declare victory? HAHA! I have posted the same thing that just got argued against last night, but because this time I plagurized Mises.Org I have proven clearly and unequivocally that the government is the only thing that caused price inflation in the healthcare market. No, do not look behind the curtain! Ignore the man behind the curtain! Seriously Jrod, don't loving do this. You've actually managed a win or two in your time on the forums, but we both know that that there is plenty of doubt in your position. Simply declaring your victory by repeating the same thing does not make you correct. By the way, unequivocally means "leaving no doubt". You know that isn't true by the sheer fact that we clearly doubt you. Caros fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 04:01
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murphyslaw posted:Yeah I have to say, and not to cheerlead, but reading Caros' mini-dissertations are teaching me a lot of things. Thanks! First off, thanks to everyone who complimented my posts. Sort of made my day when I got to where I was going since it is good to know it isn't wasted effort. The number in particular I pulled from Matt Taibbi's book Griftopia, but upon further research the numbers I can currently find appear to be lower. While it is possible that the number has dropped significantly since the book was published in 2009, I suspect that he was probably using a source that was either incorrect or which simply disagrees with the sources that I can currently find. A similar number from a study in the American Journal of Public Health found the number to be roughly 45,000. They likewise found that uninsured americans had a 40% higher risk of death than those with private insurance.
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Nov 10, 2014 04:28
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Jesus, I had already done a small post detailing jrod's intellectual dishonesty through his overuse of outsider articles and opinion pieces, but now he is just straight up plagiarizing articles wholesale? Jesus that's pathetic.
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Nov 10, 2014 04:34
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Who What Now posted:Jesus, I had already done a small post detailing jrod's intellectual dishonesty through his overuse of outsider articles and opinion pieces, but now he is just straight up plagiarizing articles wholesale? Jesus that's pathetic. Posters here have repeatedly told him to use his own words; maybe he thought that passing off an article for his own would be more convincing. But yeah, deeply pathetic.
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Nov 10, 2014 04:40
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Jack of Hearts posted:Posters here have repeatedly told him to use his own words; maybe he thought that passing off an article for his own would be more convincing. But yeah, deeply pathetic. Let alone that citing Mises was going to sell anyone.
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Nov 10, 2014 04:45
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Jack of Hearts posted:Posters here have repeatedly told him to use his own words; maybe he thought that passing off an article for his own would be more convincing. But yeah, deeply pathetic. It also makes his claims of being proud of being a "free-thinker" incredibly ironic. Hell he admitted just a few posts ago that he's a libertarian because his mom is. He can't even claim to have come to it naturally, he inherited it by emulated his parents. Given that it's really not surprising that he relies so heavily on people to do his thinking and arguing for him. Who What Now fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 05:00
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Who What Now posted:It also makes his claims of being proud of being a "free-thinker" incredibly ironic. Hell he admitted just a few posts ago that he's a libertarian because his mom is. He can't even claim to have come to it naturally, he inherited it by emulated his parents. Given that it's really not surprising that he relies so heavily on people to do his thinking and arguing for him. To be fair, this is the only example I've been able to find of him doing this, and I went back through every post he made in this thread and looked because I'm actually quite loving annoyed. To be honest I suspected something was up the moment I read his post because it isn't formatted in his usual style. A typical Jrodefeld post is... if not confrontational than at least conversational. He talks at or to you, rather than simply talking. In fact if you look at his post you can clearly tell the parts that he wrote and the parts that are unsourced quotations solely by looking to see if they are addressed to the reader/reference the forum or if they are simply 'facts' being put forward. I am begining to suspect more and more that many of his arguments are simply based on dogma rather than understanding. His arguments about waiting lists, for example, are boilerplate conservative/libertarian talking points that are easy to fact check if you take even a step in that direction. Likewise if he were actually critically thinking about it, I find it hard to believe he would have included that list of four without comment. The actual writer of that section of his post, libertarian "Chris Brown" is an idiot, which is why he had errors like the 20% thing I erroneously called out Jrodefeld on.
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Nov 10, 2014 05:21
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I agree that it has to be dogma. You can see how he reacts when we challenge his thoughts - it's all lifeboat scenarios, and externalities, and nitpicking. Everything we brought up, he's handwaved away. I don't know why. I mean, he puts efforts into most of his posts (or even his plagiarism, since he took time to format that list of things hurting innovation in our medical system), and I don't know what he's getting from it, because he clearly isn't arguing in good faith. He doesn't care what others have to say. And plus, most of his arguments take little to no effort to effectively dismiss. The only reason why they take any effort is that his writing style is very dense with inaccuracies, so you can have a field day picking his argument apart and showing how ignorant he is. I think his biggest problem is that he insists on talking about things he doesn't know anything about, and it's clear when he starts discussing them in any detail that you're dealing with a guy who just doesn't know the basic facts. And you know what? It'd be okay if he just said "You know what, I don't know enough about healthcare to really discuss it." But instead, he has to give his two cents on every subject. It's something I see a lot in Libertarians. I have a Libertarian friend who could talk at length about any subject, even if he was completely wrong. And he was obviously intelligent, since he was eloquently wrong, but still. He was just wrong about the basics. It's like being a Libertarian gives you the ability to talk about anything. It's really frustrating, because when somebody acts like they're an expert on everything, it turns out you can't really argue with them. Jrodefeld is like Cliff on Cheers. Except instead of growing potatoes that look like famous people, he's espousing political ideas. And his ideas are half-baked. For example, he brought up that there would be a private police force in Libertopia, the stateless society. And so, to return to this, let me ask you a serious question. A man is found dead on a city street. He has no identification. There's clearly been a sign of struggle, the wounds are consistent with murder. Do the police investigate the murder? Here's the problem. Police work is expensive. I mean, you think about it. You got these guys working professional wages doing work that requires specialized training. For example, you have to do an autopsy, right? You have to determine the cause of death, you have to figure out what killed the guy. Then you have to try and figure out who the hell this guy is. Maybe he's a homeless bum, maybe he's not. I don't know. Nobody can ever know until you do the basic research. But either way, it's going to be expensive. So, with this information at hand, can you answer my question? If the answer is no, then Libertopia is a lawless society where the laws mean nothing because they cannot be effectively enforced. If the answer is yes, then we open up a whole new can of worms. Who investigates the crime. There's competing police forces, but the problem is that you don't really have a customer. Or at the very least, you don't have a customer capable of choosing a police force to investigate the crime. So who's going to decide. Does it go to the best or the worst? Okay, now, who's going to pay for all this work. After all, this guy could be a bum. Or he might not be, but he might not have any money. Or his family might not be able to afford an investigation into his murder. Who pays for the investigation? Or do we have murder insurance to cover this tragedy in Libertopia? What happens if it's a bum without murder insurance? Well maybe you say, hey, the criminal should pay. Okay, what if the criminal is also another bum who has no money? Who pays then? What if the police force who is taking it decides they don't want it anymore because the guy can't pay. Does his murder go uninvestigated? Does it get transfer to a police force that will do it pro-bono? Who's going to make the police investigate the crime? What do we do with the body? Okay, we find the murderer. Who prosecutes the guy? Who's going to handle the legal side of this matter? Jrodefeld, this is not nitpicking. This is not some hypothetical lifeboat situation. This is something I stole from a Law and Order episode. The basic fact is, you can't effectively answer this question. Because if you answer no, then you've shown that Libertopia is dysfunctional at the most basic level. It's lawless. It's easy to escape the law. How would we prevent people from using violence if we can't enforce the law? If you answer yes, then you've opened up all these other assumptions that have to be handled and dealt with. You have to explain to me how all of this can work, and frankly, I doubt that you really can. There's just a lot of things you have to account for. The biggest one being the whole cost of the endeavor with little gain. After all, investigating a murder and bringing it to trial is expensive work. Think about the lawyers. It's all very expensive, and it doesn't seem to offer too much gain in the long run. Now maybe you'll say "Hey, they'll take a public relations hit," but come on. Would you work for free? So why should the police. If you think we're glib and snarky, it's because you just clearly have put more time into expressing your thoughts than you have with coming up with them.
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Nov 10, 2014 06:09
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Caros posted:The number in particular I pulled from Matt Taibbi's book Griftopia, but upon further research the numbers I can currently find appear to be lower. While it is possible that the number has dropped significantly since the book was published in 2009, I suspect that he was probably using a source that was either incorrect or which simply disagrees with the sources that I can currently find. A similar number from a study in the American Journal of Public Health found the number to be roughly 45,000. They likewise found that uninsured americans had a 40% higher risk of death than those with private insurance. Thank you! And Jrod: Forgetting for a moment that you plagiarize, why do you rely so heavily on Mises.org? I recognize that it is a good place for data that supports a Libertarian argument, but that's also part of the problem for us when we read your posts and see a mises stamp on the bottom. See, when you rely on that one source for your data it makes it seem like you have no other foundation for what you're saying than from places already heavily invested in the same viewpoint as yours. It makes me suspicious of your commitment to facts and good faith argumentation, like a person who gets all their views from Fox news. It would be far more convincing if you could find data and use argumentation from sources outside of mises, and outside of the libertarian bubble it represents. It's not that it's a libertarian source and that I dislike libertarian thinking, but that it's the only source you seem to ever use. Live a little, expand your horizons, enlighten yourself etc. Who knows maybe you'll find perfectly good sources that back up what you're saying without resorting to tricks like praxeology, fuzzy definitions, and austrian voodoo.
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Nov 10, 2014 06:14
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Speaking of jrod's Mises-dependence, has he given any indication that he sides with their "Lincoln was the devil" attitude? I wouldn't be surprised.
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Nov 10, 2014 06:20
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Jack of Hearts posted:Speaking of jrod's Mises-dependence, has he given any indication that he sides with their "Lincoln was the devil" attitude? I wouldn't be surprised. I believe it did come up in a previous thread. I don't think he takes the extreme view, moreso just the typical "Lincoln didn't 'need' to 'start' the civil war."
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Nov 10, 2014 06:23
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Caros posted:I believe it did come up in a previous thread. I don't think he takes the extreme view, moreso just the typical "Lincoln didn't 'need' to 'start' the civil war." Northern Aggression, eh? 
CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 06:28
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CommieGIR posted:Northern Aggression, eh? Because I'm a Canadian I never really cared enough about the civil war to fall into that particular trap, so most of my knowledge about the libertarian view is from arguing with them after the fact, but the typical source for the anti-lincoln stuff is a guy named Thomas DiLorenzo, who is most famous for writing two books "The Real Abraham Lincoln, and Lincoln Unmasked. Generally speaking they trend toward attempting to make Lincoln out to be a racist because if Lincoln was a racist then the Civil War was totally about States Rights. Which it was, its just that the right in question was the right own slaves. I can effort post on this if it comes up that Jrod actually buys into it, but suffice to say that Dilorenzo is misinformed at best, and more likely just outright dishonest.
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Nov 10, 2014 06:40
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The "state's rights, not slavery" argument is easily debunked by almost every governing document produced by the confederacy. The confederate constitution removes the state's right to abolish "negro slavery" and most of the states wrote declarations of independence that listed their primary grievance as the abolition of slavery. It's open and shut for anyone who isn't a complete moron. There isn't that much depth to it.
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Nov 10, 2014 06:55
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Someone who knows very little about the Civil War will tell you it was about slavery. Someone who knows some thing about the Civil War will tell you it was about State's Rights. Someone who is an expert on the civil war will tell you it was about the State's right to own slaves. And that the only right the states have is to SUCK IT!
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Nov 10, 2014 07:06
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Cemetry Gator posted:
Several thoughts on this. For one, unsolved vagrant murders will make great advertisement material for convincing people to get their police insurance number tattooed (or branded if you're really poor) on several limbs. For a few dogecoins more, you can get micro-chipped like your pet dog. Since ancap libertarianism is reactive at best, the vagrant corpse in your hypothetical will receive many "I told you so's" from helpful passerbys for not having done that. Assuming people change police insurance policies as often as people change car insurance policies, we can accept comical occurrences of people having a dozen different insurance policies branded on their forearm or chest. Secondly, it would make sense for a person to set up an agreement with a third party, maybe a close friend, family member, or employer, to make sure that if you are incapacitated or otherwise murdered, someone will make sure your police insurance plan is being put into effect. Third, vagrant murder investigations will look like this on your police insurance bill: quote:Would you like to donate a dogecoin to our charity vagrant investigation unit? President Kucinich fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 08:20
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Somehow I have a feeling that there would be quite a few google hits on many paragraphs jrodefeld has posted as his own words over the years.
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Nov 10, 2014 09:49
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Well it's not like jrod believes in intellectual copyrights 
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Nov 10, 2014 09:58
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jrodefeld posted:I want you to look at this chart from the WHO: Even before the plagiarism came to light, this was absolutely hilarious. Did you really expect us to believe that shittily-formatted graph came from a professional outfit like the WHO? Through this whole thing, it's obvious you don't expect us to ever check your sources on anything. You throw a clearly-labeled mises link at us and say it's the WHO, you say liberal economists didn't predict the housing bubble and link us Paul Krugman warning of a housing bubble as evidence, and on and on. I have to ask, and it's a genuine question, do you check the sources you link to us? Praxeology says you wouldn't need to check the evidence to know that it must support your argument, so do you just do a quick search for whatever you're talking about and throw the first result into your post, safe in the knowledge that it backs you up?
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Nov 10, 2014 13:11
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Nolanar posted:Even before the plagiarism came to light, this was absolutely hilarious. Did you really expect us to believe that shittily-formatted graph came from a professional outfit like the WHO? The graph is actually from the WHO. Its just that he eliminated the top part of it when he linked it. It is supposed to say: Figure 1. Per capita government expenditure on health 1995–2006 (PPP int. $)  Which gives the context that we are missing as to what the remaining axis actually is.
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Nov 10, 2014 15:57
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President Kucinich posted:Several thoughts on this. I'm still unconvinced that an unknown body will even be allowed to be removed or examind. If the human body is personal property, then surely once the owner of the body passes on, it becomes the property of the next person to mix their labor with it? So if John Smith murders Joe Indian on his own land, nobody is even allowed to trespass to find out about it, much less steal John's rightfully-owned property from him?
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Nov 10, 2014 16:37
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Who What Now posted:It also makes his claims of being proud of being a "free-thinker" incredibly ironic. Hell he admitted just a few posts ago that he's a libertarian because his mom is. He can't even claim to have come to it naturally, he inherited it by emulated his parents. Given that it's really not surprising that he relies so heavily on people to do his thinking and arguing for him. What a ridiculous thing to say. I never said I was a libertarian because my mom is a libertarian. In fact I was a leftist during high school and I adopted all sorts of different positions before I came to accept individual self ownership and the non aggression principle. It is incredibly insulting for you to insinuate that I just blindly accepted libertarianism because of who my parents are. I came to my views because I read a lot, learned a lot, debated with a lot of people and my views slowly evolved over the course of six or seven years. And I greatly resent the insinuation that I cannot argue for myself or express libertarian ideas without the use of quotes or links. Go back and look over all the posts I have made on this forum. Count up every word and every thought I expressed in my own words and compare it to the number of original words expressed by any other single poster in debating me. You might think I am wrong, but to claim that I am not able to articulate these ideas on my own is absurd and negated by observable fact. Caros has come the closest and indeed his effort to engage is appreciated, but I can write a dozen paragraphs in my own words any libertarian concept you want to list. The issue I was trying to raise in my last post was that I find it absurd that anyone could understand the healthcare economy and not understand the substantial role the State had in artificially inflating healthcare costs. This argument is well documented and expressed by many libertarians and non libertarians alike.
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Nov 10, 2014 17:40
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jrodefeld posted:The issue I was trying to raise in my last post was that I find it absurd that anyone could understand the healthcare economy and not understand the substantial role the State had in artificially inflating healthcare costs. This argument is well documented and expressed by many libertarians and non libertarians alike. I think you mean 'For-Profit Healthcare inflated Healthcare costs' Since even the 'Government Healthcare' is privatized and profit based healthcare. Free Market, after all 
CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 17:53
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If you can argue for yourself then by all means completely stop linking and plagiarizing other articles. But do bear in mind that mere word count doesn't mean a drat thing, especially when half of yours are just rephrased from other libertarians. Aim for quality, not quantity. As for the State's role in jacking up prices that isn't well documented at all. In fact reality contradicts that assertion wholly because nations with total State control have universally lower prices than we do. For gently caress's sake Caros did two whole posts debunking that bullshit, maybe you should actually take the time and read them? Who What Now fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 17:54
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jrodefeld posted:The issue I was trying to raise in my last post was that I find it absurd that anyone could understand the healthcare economy and not understand the substantial role the State had in artificially inflating healthcare costs. This argument is well documented and expressed by many libertarians and non libertarians alike. We still come back to the thing that libertarian ideas tend to be either untried, or resulted in horrors that led to the kinds of regulations and government programs we have today. If businesses would actually follow the NAP it would be a massive improvement over the current state of affairs, but instead we have a world where it's basically impossible to survive without goods that have made other human beings die in one way or another, and government "interference" just barely holds back some of the worst of that. Government regulation is far from perfect (as I said before, especially when capitalists interfere with the sausage-making), but as a people we've seen the effects of a lack of regulation and turned away in justifiable horror.
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Nov 10, 2014 18:16
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