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Oh, it's some bullshit about fraternal aid societies again, I guess. I don't really care, but I feel like we've been over this before. Here's a question: what happens when the Great Depression hits, everyone needs the help of these charitable societies, and no one has any spare money to put into them?
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Jan 17, 2016 20:13
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jrodefeld posted:Where I sharply disagree is the baseless insinuation that the inability of the United States medical care system to adequately provide options for people like Caros’s friend implicates a rebuttal of libertarian ideology. This means one of two things. Either Caros never really understood libertarian ideology, or at least didn’t during the time when he identified as a libertarian, or the emotional trauma of losing a close friend was so great that a logical re-evaluation of his positions was not possible. Also it can mean a lot more things. Like how people in certain circumstances either 1) Do not act rationally where "rationally" is some sort of common usage of the word, or 2)Act rationally where "rationally" is in line with some sort of human action axiom or whatever, but reach incorrect conclusions. I mean, I don't think his reasoning has really gone astray, but you do, so you're going to have to give an account of how if people are just left up to their own devices, they won't make the wrong (wrong according to you) decisions. quote:I’m not saying that there are no good reasons for abandoning libertarianism. However, the reasons that Caros has thus far provided as to his initial abandonment of the ideology are absurd. Even a cursory examination of the literature would reveal that libertarian thinkers have been harshly critical of the United States healthcare system for decades. This is something that has been brought up and hammered again and again. The point is not that the US system is a free market system. The point is that it's free-er than the Canadian or UK healthcare system and seems to get worse results for it. Also lol @  BIG PHARMA.quote:If your friend had access to a free-market surgical center that provided procedures for cancer (tumor excision for one example) and the cost was less than $10,000 I feel fairly confident that she would have been able to get the money needed for such treatment even without access to insurance. If his friend had access to a socialized surgical center that provided procedures for cancer, I am also confident that she would have been able to get the money she needed because under such a system the money needed can be as low as $0.00 quote:Let me tell you about Dr Josh Umbehr, who runs a concierge family practice in Wichita, Kansas. A while ago, he was interviewed by Tom Woods on his podcast but I’d had heard of him before that. His story is yet another concrete example of the unbelievable cost savings that can be seen when people are able to escape the bureaucratic bondage of insurance companies and State regulations to operate in a mostly free market. Here is a link to the Tom Woods Show episode where he is interviewed: Hey if you take this idea, apply it to all citizens of a nation, make it a requirement to live in that nation and maybe adjust some prices to allow for what people are able to pay, you get UHC. The monthly fee is just applied on a yearly basis as part of your usage fee for all the stuff the nation you live in manages to provide for you (read: pay taxes to pay for infrastructure) quote:I already know what your response will be. Without actually reading this book or learning a bit about the history of such fraternal orders, you will nevertheless argue that such societies could never cover the needs of everyone in society and, thus, the welfare State is needed... There is no  big enough.
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Jan 17, 2016 20:22
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jrodefeld posted:Now, to my mind, your friend died due to the lack of a free market in medical care not because we don’t have total healthcare socialism. This is incorrect. We have "healthcare socialism" in other countries where people do not experience the issues that Caro's friend experienced in America. We have a proven way to eliminate these problems with no decrease in quality of care. We have no need to engage in your wet dreams with the hopes that they might incidentally achieve comparable results. The rest of your post continues to make this mistake.
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Jan 17, 2016 20:42
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Followup: Jrod, is slavery wrong or is it fine so long as I do it by stealing a foreigner's documents? Very important to know if you want to argue Libertarianism is morally superior.
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Jan 17, 2016 20:48
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Jrode, you still need to reply to my through and sourced post from 3 months ago that perfectly meets the criteria of the kind of post you say you want to respond to. In terms of this post, despite its length you make remarkably few arguments. Most of what you say is either rambling or unsupported statements. What you did make an effort to explain though is nonsense, albeit nonsense that people who don't bother to look into it or aren't familiar with the situation might not be immediately able to identify as such. However even complete amateurs in this topic would be able to see there is something that doesn't smell right about the claims you're making just based on common sense. I mean look at those prices you list for Atlas MD. Do those look like actual reasonable prices for delivering healthcare? $50 a month? $10 for children? Do you really think that libertarianism can drastically get the prices that low because a dude said so on a podcast? Really? I spent 5 minutes going through Atlas Md's sign-up to look at their terms of service, and you don't get any treatment for health problems (see Appendix 1 for the services they offer). The only medical services you get are a once a year "wellness examination and evaluation" to find out your BMI and all that poo poo. You also get a few non-medical services like being able to skype a physician or whatever for advice (like "that looks bad, go see a doctor who will actually give you tratement, unlike me"), but this is not a replacement for actual medical care. I mean hell, if you'd actually linked to a reputable concierge service, it wouldn't have been much better because it is not a solution. Concierge services (the ones offering real healthcare unlike Atlas MD) will charge hundreds or thousands of dollars a month which puts it well outside of most peoples price range. Not only that but their focus is on offering greater service to a small number of more elite customers (who will use it to complement rather than replace insurance). The physicians offering these services will see a tenth or so the number of patients that a normal physician would to focus on these customers and offer this concierge service. It's not a viable replacement because as well as being a complement rather than a replacement, you couldn't have all the physicians in the country cutting their patient lists by 90%. If this replaced the actual system, 90% of patients would be dropped and have no doctor available even if they could afford hundreds or thousands of dollars a month in payments. It's a system for the rich few, not the majority.
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Jan 17, 2016 20:49
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StandardVC10 posted:Oh, it's some bullshit about fraternal aid societies again, I guess. I don't really care, but I feel like we've been over this before. Here's a question: what happens when the Great Depression hits, everyone needs the help of these charitable societies, and no one has any spare money to put into them? One of two things, depending on what sort of Libertarian you're talking to: 1) This cannot happen in Libertopia because of reasons. 2) Those people suffering during a depression have been tried and found wanting by the MarketGod and should just crawl into a ditch and die. Weembles fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Jan 17, 2016 |
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Jan 17, 2016 20:56
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Jrod, given that you were scammed into removing perfectly good fillings for no reason at all, are you really sure you're the best person to offer... pretty much anyone at all medical advice?
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Jan 17, 2016 20:58
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jrodefeld posted:the indisputable fact is that fraternal orders were very successful for those that had access to them and such mutual aid societies are no longer with us. Benefit societies only function when the economic situation is relatively good. They were drastically reduced in consequence of the Great Depression, because they have no means of coping with a serious economic crisis. Subscriptions coming in must equal or exceed payments out, otherwise they are insolvent and must collapse. The severe depression drastically increased payouts to members in need of aid, and simultaneously drastically reduced the pool of money available to be paid in as subscriptions. Bankruptcy for most of the organizations followed as a mathematical inevitability. Government intervention was and is the only solution--first in the form of welfare to ameliorate the immediate conditions of misery in the population, second in the form of regulatory laws and structures to prevent another economic collapse before it happens. These approaches did not "crowd out" benefit societies, they collapsed and the state was obliged to replace them with a more robust system. I'm also going to note for people who haven't read or don't have access to the source Jrod is citing, the above information is in Beito's book. During the sections dealing with the effect of the Great Depression on he most definitely describes how collapsing membership and depleted financial reserves caused many of these organizations to disband, or to husband their resources by dramatically reducing the services they offered to members. He's not trying to argue that it didn't happen, because it's historical fact. See for example page 222 in the introduction to his chapter covering the depression years: quote:On the whole, fraternal societies were in good shape on the eve of the Great Depression. [...] This was not nearly as true by the end of the 1930s, a decade characterized by a dramatic and demoralizing fall in memberships and prestige. Rather, he's trying in a more limited way to convince other historians to see fraternal societies not as a doomed throwback but as an alternate model for social relief that was organized on a voluntary basis between equals, rather than being a hierarchical paternalistic entitlement, as he describes the welfare state (he's a libertarian academic,  ). Along the way he's obliged to make some funny contortions. e.g. in describing how the Loyal Order of Moose weathered the Great Depression, he claims that the Order of Moose didn't reduce benefits payments during the Great Depression. This (p. 231) is in the same section that he notes membership fell by over 50% from 541,463 to 265,664 between 1930 and 1935. Think about that for about two seconds. The Moose may not have reduced the value of benefits in themselves but they did MASSIVELY reduce the number of people eligible to receive benefits by shedding members who were in arrears--by shedding, in fact, exactly those members who would be in a position to make benefits claims while retaining those who were still paying their dues and who had much less need to request aid! Beito presents this as a success. To me it seems more like the Order of the Moose survived the depression by triage, that is, they started out as an unusually large and well-funded fraternal order and then when things got tough they gradually purged needy members to avoid having to pay benefits.He also goes on to claim that fraternal societies didn't make a comeback after the postwar economic recovery because they'd been crowded out by government welfare. That's one read, and the one he wants very much to believe, but I think a more likely alternative interpretation can be found in some demographic data he doesn't pay a huge amount of attention to. When benefit societies shed membership during the Great Depression, the lost members were disproportionately young men; young men may have had less savings to draw on to continue payments, or they may have stopped payments in the hope that their youth and good health meant they wouldn't need to make claims anyway. I would suggest that the more likely interpretation of why fraternal organizations declined over time is not that they were crowded out, but rather that they failed their members during the Great Depression. The young membership simply never came back, and the remaining members got old and gray and died off, with the societies themselves following. At any rate, this is not a bad book. It has some limitations and the best parts are the chapters dealing with the "good times" for fraternal societies prior to the Great Depression, but it's pretty good. The scholarly reviews are pretty positive overall, as well. However, it doesn't really say the things that Jrod thinks it says--it requires a really selective reading and analysis to go where he's taken it. That's if he even actually read it, rather than reading about it on a libertarian website.
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Jan 17, 2016 21:31
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Hey shithead, I made a post about fraternal orders and why they failed. Feel free to actually respond to it in any way shape or form. TL:DR they went tits up in waves regularly without any welfare programs being present and could not compete against the changing structure of employment and rise of insurance companies. You're loving dumb about literally everything on earth.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:16
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Who What Now posted:You know I had almost forgotten this side of you. I had almost put on the rose-colored glasses in my mind and saw you only as a clown to be laughed at. But here you come roaring back into our lives, all too willing to just poo poo all over the death of someone's friend. To use it as a loving nail in your pseudo-intellectual bat with which to beat someone over the head with like a loving uneducated barbarian. You little poo poo. You miserable loving pile of failed abortions. Thats you're idea of a thrilling intellectual debate? Using a person's tragic death as a rhetorical attack? You're a loving blight, a goddamn festering pus-filled boil on society's rear end. You give nothing of worth to humanity, and we would be a better world without you in it. You goddamn worthless waste of breath. I'm responding to Caros's posts where he brought up the point that the death of his friend was the primary reason he chose to abandon libertarianism. That doesn't make any sense to me so I am seeking a bit more clarification. Nothing in what I wrote was in the least bit belittling or un-empathetic to the personal tragedy of losing a loved one. It has certainly happened to me, though I am sure I was not as close to any of the relatives of mine who have passed as Caros was to his friend. Nevertheless, if someone were to mention to me a way that future deaths could be prevented and so others would not have to feel the same loss that I experienced, you can bet I'd be more than open to hearing about it. What makes a personal tragedy all the worse to my mind, is when we learn the wrong lesson from it. Given that Caros was the one that brought it up, and I have had a discussion with him about how we came to libertarianism and, in his case, abandoned it, I don't see any reason why mentioning this event should be off limits. Go ahead and point to anything I said that was belittling or un-empathetic about a personal loss and I'll certainly change my tone if that is appropriate. Furthermore, if Caros posts and tells me that the topic of his friend and her death is absolutely off limits for discussion, I'll promptly shut up about it and I won't mention it again. However, let me be a little firm with you for a minute. This is not a subject I take very lightly. There are many people who will go through similar tragedies of losing loved ones because of an inability to access needed drugs (not approved by the FDA or prohibitively expensive), not having insurance or inability to pay the inflated medical costs. To my mind, not learning the correct lessons about the medical care system has far-reaching ramifications for everyone. If Caros decided that his friend died because our healthcare system has something to do with libertarianism, and that the free market is to blame and all we need to do is adopt a socialist model of healthcare delivery, then I take great issue with this and I want to disabuse him of that notion. If the subject is too sensitive to touch upon, even in an indirect way, I can appreciate that but at the same time I also have a great deal of concern for all the people who stand to prematurely lose loved ones because we don't reform the medical care system in a wise manner. So many posts in response to anything I write are like a projectile vomit of vitriol and hate. This style of "debate" used to be considered a tacit admission of defeat. I understand getting frustrated once in a while but probably 90% of responses to anything I write constitute this sort of substance-less vitriol. Not a good look.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:20
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jrod what are your thoughts on bartering for healthcare with livestock
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Jan 17, 2016 22:26
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Put down your fist fulls of child porn and KKK brochures and address my post on fraternal orders.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:27
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People do not die of lack of money for medical treatment in nations with UHC. The slightest departure from this to an ever so slightly freeer market causes mass death due to lack of money for medical treatment. There is no appreciable downside to UHC. Thus, we do not have any reason to explore your fantasy world. Thus you will continued to be taxed for the healthcare system, whether it is the current US one or if the US manages to finally civilize and adopt UHC.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:33
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jrodefeld posted:However, let me be a little firm with you for a minute. This is not a subject I take very lightly. There are many people who will go through similar tragedies of losing loved ones because of an inability to access needed drugs (not approved by the FDA or prohibitively expensive), not having insurance or inability to pay the inflated medical costs.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:43
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Pfhahaha I missed that. Jrod, you are the poster child for why we need the FDA now more than ever. Not only did you fall victim to a scam, you felt grateful to the con artist for scamming you out of your fillings. This proves you are not a rational actor and require a guiding hand from the state. You're welcome  .
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Jan 17, 2016 22:47
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DrProsek posted:People do not die of lack of money for medical treatment in nations with UHC. The slightest departure from this to an ever so slightly freeer market causes mass death due to lack of money for medical treatment. There is no appreciable downside to UHC. Thus, we do not have any reason to explore your fantasy world. You're approaching this as if you and Jrod share similar goals and similar definitions of what constitutes "good". Anything that stops a kid from getting raped to death or otherwise stuffed so far down a mine shaft they forget what sunshine even is is quantified as "bad" in Jrod's worldview. You and him do not share the same definition of what good is. Your goal of limiting cancer death is diametrically opposed to what Jrod wants.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:51
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jrodefeld posted:Hi y’all. No, gently caress all this gross callous dissection of someone's personal tragedy because it reflects poorly on your ideology. Like do you know what a creeplord you sound like here, you're like the worst missionary. Tell us more about how income tax is slavery and foreign workers in Qatar are just whining because they don't have a union.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:56
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theshim posted:Holy poo poo are you really trotting out this same bullshit again? Do you not remember people tearing you a new rear end in a top hat about thalidomide? Reminder that people think apricot pits will cure cancer because of the cyanide in them
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Jan 17, 2016 23:01
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DrProsek posted:This is incorrect. We have "healthcare socialism" in other countries where people do not experience the issues that Caro's friend experienced in America. We have a proven way to eliminate these problems with no decrease in quality of care. We have no need to engage in your wet dreams with the hopes that they might incidentally achieve comparable results. I don't think that a free market libertarian healthcare system would achieve "comparable" results, I am quite convinced through demonstrated evidence as well as a modicum of economic literacy that a free market would provide demonstrably superior results in nearly every way to a State-run healthcare system. You seem to have rose-colored glasses about the general efficacy of actually existing single-payer healthcare systems. There is a demonstrated inefficiency and a shortage of care that necessitates rationing for many types of medical procedures. This is elementary economics. Making something "free" creates a huge spike in demand, overuse of medical resources and unintended consequences. Would Caros's friend have gotten the necessary treatment in Canada or Great Brittain? She would have probably gotten SOME treatment, as such systems are theoretically designed to ration care in favor of more urgent medical emergencies. Whether she would have pulled through and gotten efficacious medical treatment is another story and we cannot know that counter-factual. Why not apply your reasoning to any other sector of the economy? Why trust the market to properly price and distribute groceries? Certainly access to food is a more fundamental human need than even medical care? Because while lack of access to good healthcare might kill you in the long run, you might not survive more than a couple months without access to reasonable nutrition. We know this idea of State control and delivery of food is foolish not only due to economic theory, but through real world examples like the Soviet Union, where we saw bread lines and an inability to effectively calculate economically without a market price system for capital goods. What so many of you have tried to do is explain how healthcare is a type of good that is completely different from all other consumer goods and thus the rules of economics somehow don't apply to it. These excuses have been unpersuasive and reek of special pleading. Non-critical medical conditions can put you on a waiting list for treatment in Canada or the United Kingdom. Maybe you need a knee replacement, for example. Not getting it quickly won't kill you but you'll be in a lot of pain and your quality of life will greatly suffer. Nevertheless, people have had to wait sometimes a year, sometimes two or even more for such "elective" surgical procedures. Getting an MRI test might take you eight months to a year. In the United States, as screwed up as it is, most patients are able to get an MRI done within a month. I'm sure you'll make excuses for these problems by pointing out that long delays for treating non-life threatening medical conditions is a reasonable price to pay for ensuring that people with life threatening emergencies can get care. But the problem of course is that in a libertarian market economy, no such trade-off is necessary. Consumer price competition and entrepreneurial doctors and medical care providers will work to provide affordable care options for every person, both for electable procedures and for emergency medicine. So criticizing a place like the Oklahoma Surgery Center because you still have to pay SOME money for your procedures while under a universal healthcare system you'd get all your procedures for free, and free beats non-free everyday of the week, is so astounding economically ignorant it boggles the mind. You pay for it with very high levels of taxation. Income taxation, VAT taxes, sales taxes, import taxes. You pay for it with rationing of care, an artificial restriction of supply imposed by abandoning the market for central planning. Furthermore, it is not just about a blind price comparison. The payer is the one who wields control of the situation, and there are very few things as personal as medical care. By paying out of pocket and being able to freely shop around for doctors and procedures, medical care providers must try to cater to you. If insurance companies pay or the State pays, then the efforts of the medical providers are all aimed at lobbying the State for favorable regulations, and trying to raise prices as high as they can get away with. Needless to say, they can get away with charging much higher prices when big insurance corporations and governments are footing the bill instead of individual patients who have options. Just open up your eyes are recognize the problems that exist under State-run healthcare systems. In a blind comparison between the corrupt State-dominated healthcare we have access to in the US and the State-dominated healthcare available in Canada and Great Britain, you may have a few points in your favor. But that is not any comparison I am interested in making. I am in favor of a genuine free market in medicine, which would be a radical change from the status quo.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:06
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Jrod, is it true that you sell pirated blu rays?
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Jan 17, 2016 23:14
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Hey Jrod, please kill yourself. Also people insulting isn't an attempt at debate. It's them saying what they honestly think of you as a person.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:17
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jrodefeld posted:Making something "free" creates a huge spike in demand, overuse of medical resources and unintended consequences. This is incorrect. You need to learn elementary logic. Just because something is free does not mean people will automatically demand it. Snow is free. I can run outside right now and grab it by the handful. Nobody would stop me or complain. And yet I do not. It has no value or use to me and even if it did, I have sufficient ice for anything I'd need snow for and so I have no interest in the snow outside. Similarly, I do not have cancer so chemotherapy drugs are useless to me. I do not want to irradiate myself because there aren't really any upsides to it in my situation. Even if you offered to cut me open and cut away any cancer cells you happen to stumble across for free, I would decline because to my knowledge I do not have cancer and so even if it's free I don't really want to go through the hassles and dangers of surgery for no apparent reason. I am a Canadian who currently lives in the USA. I have lived with UHC and I have lived with American healthcare. I have visited European countries and in particular Poland where my relatives live. The thing you are suggesting that there is a shortage of medical supplies due to people getting cancer treatment for funsies because it's free is not a common enough occurrence to base any policy decisions on. Thus we will continue to tax you to fund our healthcare systems, whether it is the American system, or if the USA civilizes, UHC. burnishedfume fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Jan 17, 2016 |
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Jan 17, 2016 23:21
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jrodefeld posted:Would Caros's friend have gotten the necessary treatment in Canada or Great Brittain? You wouldn't even be asking this question if you bothered to actually look into what getting treatment is like in these systems for 30 minutes instead of just assuming its some kind of Orwellian hellscape.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:21
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Can we refrain from in line quoting jrod megaposts in their entirety.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:23
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lol jrod thoroughly demonstrates a lack of understanding of demand elasticity and then accuses people of lack of economic literacy
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Jan 17, 2016 23:24
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It's like he doesn't know poo poo that they teach you in the second month of an high school economics class.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:25
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Wanamingo posted:Reminder that people think apricot pits will cure cancer because of the cyanide in them Reminder that under Jrod's system bull whipping your child concubine is an acceptable form of healthcare to treat lethargy. President Kucinich fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Jan 17, 2016 |
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Jan 17, 2016 23:26
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jrodefeld posted:
lol praise from caesar
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Jan 17, 2016 23:38
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paragon1 posted:You wouldn't even be asking this question if you bothered to actually look into what getting treatment is like in these systems for 30 minutes instead of just assuming its some kind of Orwellian hellscape. Reminds me of that amazing "Stephen Hawking would be dead under the NHS" thing.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:52
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jrodefeld posted:I don't think that a free market libertarian healthcare system would achieve "comparable" results, I am quite convinced through demonstrated evidence as well as a modicum of economic literacy that a free market would provide demonstrably superior results in nearly every way to a State-run healthcare system. Your demonstrated evidence of Amazon product reviews and podcasts you've listened to which when looked at in closer depth turn out to be totally wrong. That's not thoroughly demonstrated quote:You seem to have rose-colored glasses about the general efficacy of actually existing single-payer healthcare systems. There is a demonstrated inefficiency and a shortage of care that necessitates rationing for many types of medical procedures. This is elementary economics. Making something "free" creates a huge spike in demand, overuse of medical resources and unintended consequences. In a system where you have to pay for healthcare, not everyone will be able to pay for healthcare and very few people will be able to pay for the best healthcare. If you're counting the UHC solution as rationing, you have to include the free market approach disallowing healthcare to people as rationing as well. In either case there are finite resources so it's a matter of a) Whether we want to ration it out based on morality and egalitarianism or profit and b) which is more cost effective and productive. Also while people will be more likely to overuse a system if it's free and there are no consequence (going to the doctor for minor ailments that they just need bedrest to deal with) this is fairly minor and you can't treat healthcare like any other commodity when bringing up this point. I'm sure if you gave away free computer games or tomatoes or anything that people actually got some enjoyment out of then yeah, there'd be a huge spike in demand. With healthcare people don't like to waste time at the doctors for no reason so any effect is minimal. Almost everyone will only go to the doctor if they have a need and if they have a need they should go to the doctor, so it all works out. Not only that but it is far less harmful than the opposite problem which is people not going to the doctor because they're afraid of the cost. quote:Would Caros's friend have gotten the necessary treatment in Canada or Great Brittain? She would have probably gotten SOME treatment, as such systems are theoretically designed to ration care in favor of more urgent medical emergencies. Whether she would have pulled through and gotten efficacious medical treatment is another story and we cannot know that counter-factual. We can look at life-threatening illnesses that fit the bill and see if patients get treatment for them. Hmm, yes they do. quote:Why not apply your reasoning to any other sector of the economy? Why trust the market to properly price and distribute groceries? Certainly access to food is a more fundamental human need than even medical care? I don't. Millions of people die from easily preventable causes like starvation and malnutrition as well as lack of healthcare each year while we produce more than enough food to feed the entire world and people in developed countries become obese. The free market system is obviously not working in terms of food or healthcare. quote:We know this idea of State control and delivery of food is foolish not only due to economic theory, but through real world examples like the Soviet Union, where we saw bread lines and an inability to effectively calculate economically without a market price system for capital goods. The Soviet Union isn't most leftists idea of how to model delivery of food as an alternative to the free market but I think even the Soviet Union could probably do it fairly efficiently nowadays, with the popularisation of RFID and modern computer systems it's possible to keep track of stock from a centralised system and act appropriately with a great deal more ease than in the 80's. quote:What so many of you have tried to do is explain how healthcare is a type of good that is completely different from all other consumer goods and thus the rules of economics somehow don't apply to it. These excuses have been unpersuasive and reek of special pleading. It carries certain similarities with other types of good (like food) and most people would argue that those goods shouldn't be free market either and should at the very least be heavily regulated, you just haven't represented those arguments when you're strawmanning. At this point I'm bored and realise you will never reply and even if by some miracle you do it will be a one off. team overhead smash fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Jan 17, 2016 |
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Jan 17, 2016 23:52
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Go gently caress yourself, wow.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:55
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jrodefeld posted:Hi y’all. Merry Christmas jrod quote:Personally, I was quite busy and family obligations kept me away from things I otherwise would have been doing. The reason I sometimes post sporadically on here is that I have an active social and professional life and, as much as I might want to, posting on internet forums merely to satisfy my desire for intellectually stimulating debate simply has to be sacrificed when more pressing matters are at hand. You always say this, but whenever you're gone inevitably some internet detective in the thread goes looking around and discovers that you're just posting in other threads on the internet whenever you're not posting here. I don't think that you're interested in intellectually stimulating debate, otherwise you'd reply to the countless posts that have offered thoughtful and enlightened critique to your position instead of the handful of posts that are trolling you. For years you've scrolled past really good replies that completely dismantle your position and your ideas, and instead of replying to or even acknowledging those you get into pissing matches over whether or not slavery in the UAE is really slavery or whether or not Rothbard is a racist shitheel (he most definitely is, he wrote frequently about how the races should be separated and lavished praised unto David Duke, of KKK fame). What you really want is to proselytize. Your belief in ancap libertarianism is so unshakable because it is deeply rooted in faith rather than logic or intellectual reasoning; if the opposite were true, then you wouldn't skip over so many good replies. And like many devout cult members, you want to spread your faith to others, as we see from your posts on other threads. quote:With that said, let me reiterate my desire to have a written debate with one of you, one on one, where hopefully a more fully fleshed out discussion can take place. I have to find the time to dedicate to the exercise because I don’t want to short-change my positions. I can accept one poster at a time, with a clear topic and a defined time limit, which as I proposed, should be about three days. I think Caros had first dibs on a debate with me. I'm interested in watching this and I recall Caros making several posts expressing this interest, so please don't back out or disappear for 3 months on the night of the debate like you usually do quote:In the meantime, however, I’d like to continue with a discussion I was having with Caros the last time I posted here. I was again pushing back against him for the narrative that he told whereby he abandoned libertarian ideas after the death of his friend due to her inability to pay for the healthcare that presumably would have cured the disease and allowed her to live a normal lifespan or at least many more years. This is a personal tragedy that I empathize with and I think that every well-meaning person wants a reasonable standard of medical care to be available to all people so premature deaths due to an inability to receive a medical intervention are either eliminated or reduced to the greatest possible degree. This is exactly the kind of cultist mentality that I was talking about earlier. You seem to be approaching this from the perspective of being able to convert Caros back to libertarianism if you can just frame this tragedy in just the right light. Because how could someone possibly read all of this libertarian literature and then ultimately reject the holy teachings??? Surely this friend that died of a curable disease would have benefited under a free market, where her inability to pay... could be... uh... fixed... somehow... let's see: quote:Where I sharply disagree is the baseless insinuation that the inability of the United States medical care system to adequately provide options for people like Caros’s friend implicates a rebuttal of libertarian ideology. It's not a baseless insinuation, there are actually quite a few good supporting ideas backing it up. In any free market system, people who can't afford to pay don't get medical care. It's as simple as that. You're going to try and legalese your way out of this with mutual aid societies or charity or some other contrived bullshit, but the fact of the matter is that people who can't afford care simply won't get any. It's an open and shut case despite your discomfort quote:This means one of two things. Either Caros never really understood libertarian ideology, or at least didn’t during the time when he identified as a libertarian, or the emotional trauma of losing a close friend was so great that a logical re-evaluation of his positions was not possible. There's that cultist mentality again. "If you read HHH and choose not to be a libertarian anyway then you clearly didn't understand it, possibly due to some emotional trauma". Don't bother reflecting on the rational arguments that accompanied this rejection of libertarianism quote:I’m not saying that there are no good reasons for abandoning libertarianism. However, LOL that is exactly what you are saying. "I'm not a racist, but..." quote:However, the reasons that Caros has thus far provided as to his initial abandonment of the ideology are absurd. Even a cursory examination of the literature would reveal that libertarian thinkers have been harshly critical of the United States healthcare system for decades. They're only absurd if you're an active drinker of the libertarian kool-aid. You need to think more carefully about what you're saying here. This is the position that Caros has: -- US healthcare is lovely because it creates situations where people can't afford to pay and then die of preventable and curable illnesses This is the position that libertarian thinkers have: -- US healthcare is lovely because it provides healthcare to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it Can you understand how these are not the same position, or even complimentary? Caros rejected free market healthcare in general, not US healthcare specifically. quote:The United States has not had anything resembling a free market in medical care (with a few notable exceptions) for at least fifty to sixty years. Health care is one of the most heavily regulated and distorted markets in the US economy, with massive amounts of State expropriated and redistributed tax dollars flooding into subsidies, welfare programs, research projects, and crony capitalist coffers (pharmaceutical and insurance companies). No, it really isn't. But even if it were, that's not actually relevant. Caros rejected the free market aspects of the US healthcare system, which is what really matters. quote:I want to now state my understanding of the situation with Caros’s friend, why I believe she was unable to acquire the needed healthcare services at an affordable price, and why I am convinced that she would have been far better off with an actual libertarian free-market medical care system. That's because you're an idiot. Even if the US system was completely free market, by whatever definition you want, there would still be people who die because they can't afford to pay. Full stop, your position is untenable quote:The problems with the American medical care system have to do with a century of State interventions, artificial price inflation, regulatory restrictions that reduce the number and variety of medical care services on the market, patent laws on pharmaceutical drugs coupled with prohibitions on the free importation of drugs manufactured in other countries, a systematic crackdown on mutual aid societies and charity hospitals and a near-elimination on price competition that is inevitable when you have a third party payer system such that patients and doctors don’t negotiate on price and most doctors don’t have to compete with other doctors on price to entice consumers. You're showing your ignorance of history again. Mutual aid societies and charity were never sufficient to cover treatment of people who couldn't afford healthcare. That poo poo only works when the latest medical practices include blood-letting and using heroin as a cold medicine quote:For you, Caros, to believe that this extent of State intervention and distortion in the healthcare sector of the economy constitutes an approximation of libertarian policies can only mean that you don’t know much of anything about libertarianism. You’ve demonstrated that you know the names of major libertarian thinkers and have shown some familiarity with their work, yet perhaps you’ve been too busy trying to “out the racists” and find ways to classify libertarians as bigots, sexists, homophobes, or whatever than in comprehending the economic arguments on their own merits. Caros never said that the US healthcare system is an approximation of libertarian policies you loving idiot, he was critical of the libertarian aspects of that system that still exist, namely that people who are unable to pay are unable to receive healthcare. You have no counterargument to this criticism, which is why you continue ignoring it in favor of tangents about statist intervention. quote:Let me run down a few reasons why your friend would have been much better off in a libertarian society than in either a fascistic corporatist State-distorted healthcare system like in the United States or in a left-socialist healthcare system like in Canada. Further proof that you're a loving idiot who knows nothing about anything: in Canada his friend would have received treatment. I know that you refuse to acknowledge that, but it's the solution to the problem. quote:The primary reason your friend died was that prices were too high. Had market forces brought prices down such that medical treatment options were available to people who are middle or lower income, then your friend likely would have been able to get the drugs, the surgery and she would still be with us today. When I mentioned a while ago that State intervention had caused artificial and excessive price inflation in medical care, astoundingly I was met with incredulity. Even this elementary economics point that even the most mainstream of economists and political commentators concede was met with push back. “No, it’s all technological advance that has caused the skyrocketing price inflation” was the common retort. Yet I heard only crickets when I point out the obvious fact that technological progress has occurred in every major sector of the economy, yet prices for ever better and more advanced goods and services stay stable or even come down, at least in the most free sectors of the US economy. Actually, you heard many well-reasoned retorts and chose to ignore all of them. As usual quote:I had an MRI and a blood panel done about a year ago. I have insurance fortunately, but do you know how much those two diagnostic tests cost? The MRI was about $8000 and the blood work was about $800. This isn't relevant. Even if MRIs only cost $100 (lol do you even know how an MRI machine works?) you'd still encounter situations where people die of easily preventable illnesses due to their inability to pay. But even if you do want to go down this tangent, you have no proof to support your allegation that healthcare would be orders of magnitude cheaper under a truly free market system. You may point to consumer electronics and the like, but what you continually fail to recognize is that those are goods with high price elasticity, whereas healthcare has low price elasticity. I mean you might be able to drive down costs a bit, but not to the degree that you're insinuating, and then you still have the problem where people who don't have money simply get to die. This works back to a point that I keep bringing up: what do you think caused us to build up regulatory frameworks around healthcare? Why do you refuse to recognize the creation of regulation as a natural byproduct of free market systems? People don't like being sold heroin repackaged as cold medicine even if it's a high-profit practice. quote:This is actually not just an abstract and speculative discussion. We have actual examples of areas of medicine that are still relatively free market. Lasik eye surgery is one example. Prices continue to decline while the effectiveness of the procedure continues to advance and improve. You can now cure many kinds of vision problems for under $2000. Cosmetic surgery is another example. Technology has similarly advanced in cosmetic surgery yet prices have fallen which is in stark contrast to much of insurance-covered, State-regulated and subsidized healthcare. The cost of Lasik eye surgery has actually been increasing over the last decade. Leave it to a libertarian to completely misrepresent facts Furthermore, even if you were correct, cosmetic procedures are not the same as medical care. Do you understand that cosmetic surgery is a luxury while poo poo like cancer treatment and preventative medicine are life-saving necessities? These are not alike at all. But you're wrong anyway, since Lasik procedures have been getting more expensive over the last decade quote:There are even areas in medicine where maverick doctors have found ways to get out from the burden of insurance and State regulations to deal in a purely free market. I’ve mentioned it before, but the Oklahoma Surgery Center is a very good example of how many common surgical procedures could be made available to people as affordable, out-of-pocket expenditures in a free market. The cost savings in comparison to third party payer based hospitals are dramatic. In Canada, all of these surgeries are free. If you don't have money, you can still get surgery. quote:The prices charged at other hospitals that rely primarily on insurance and/or State payments is many, many times higher. The cost savings are quite evident and prices have thus far come down to where a regular middle class family could simply pay for a needed procedure out of pocket, eschewing any third party payer bureaucracy. Why do you feel really confident in a completely baseless assertion like that? quote:Similarly, if there were no restrictions on the importation of cancer-treatment drugs, no monopoly patent grants to exclusive manufacture and sale by the US government and thus free price competition was available for drug and radiation treatments for various types of cancer treatments, then prices would similarly have fallen through the floor and been accessible to many more people in need. Merely seeing a doctor and getting a diagnosis isn't what's expensive in healthcare, it's treatment. This guy won't give you an MRI or cancer medication, you're still going to need to pay extra (a lot extra) for those. quote:Now, if you dismiss these two dramatic examples of libertarian success in delivering healthcare much cheaper and more effectively as I am sure you will attempt to do, you had better have a very persuasive argument as to why such successes are to be discounted rather than emulated. There are dozens of similar success stories of doctors and hospitals that find pockets of economic freedom in the United States and are somehow able to get out from under the boot of State coercion and bureaucratic excess and provide a path forward in solving our medical care crisis. You've tried to compare the cost of MRIs to the cost of seeing the doctor for bad gas. That's completely idiotic and in no way relevant to Caros' principle criticism of free market healthcare: people who can't afford to pay don't receive healthcare, and that's hosed up. quote:I want to keep this particular post brief This is already one of your longest posts ever quote:but I could go on and on about the history of fraternal orders and mutual aid societies that were able to effectively provide healthcare services for the poor and working class in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. You certainly could, and you'd be as wrong now as you were wrong the many other times when you did exactly that. Mutual aid societies were never adequate, and there's no reason to believe that they'd be adequate today. quote:I already know what your response will be. Without actually reading this book or learning a bit about the history of such fraternal orders, you will nevertheless argue that such societies could never cover the needs of everyone in society and, thus, the welfare State is needed. Leaving aside the obvious fact that such a counter-factual history is hard to prove No, it isn't. Failing either of these tests means that these societies were inadequate: 1) When these societies existed, did they manage to cover the needs of everyone in society 2) Did these societies exist in perpetuity, or did they have a tendency to collapse during economic downturns? Oh, historical evidence shows that mutual aid societies actually fail both of these tests. I guess they were inadequate, then. Does your source attempt to claim otherwise? Can you cite a section where this occurs, along with any supporting evidence? quote:(what would have happened if social welfare programs had not crowded out private charity efforts during the progressive era and instead the mutual aid model had been allowed to expand and proliferate as the economy grew?) Social welfare programs were created to address a problem. The mutual aid model mostly collapsed during the Great Depression, leaving countless people destitute with nowhere to turn. In fact, why wouldn't you think of Social Security as a giant mutual aid society? That's basically what it is. We pay people of retirement age some basic subsistence wage so that we may be paid in turn when we retire. That's the mutual aid model in a nutshell, except that everyone is contributing to it so that it won't ever collapse without a total collapse of society (in which case we have much bigger problems). And everyone is free to not participate: you can emigrate somewhere else. quote:, the indisputable fact is that fraternal orders were very successful for those that had access to them and such mutual aid societies are no longer with us. If this model were allowed to exist in contemporary America by eliminating licensing requirements, regulations, and other State restrictions, mutual aid societies could again be available and would, at the very least, alleviate SOME of the problem by providing needed social services to those who still could not afford the drastically lower free market prices that would certainly exist as the examples of the Oklahoma Surgery Center and Dr Umbehr’s family practice prove. Mutual aid societies are fine when times are good. They are not fine when times are bad. They are needed most when times are bad. Ergo, mutual aid societies are inadequate. quote:So Caros, I’d ask you to now, in light of the overwhelming evidence that the healthcare system in the United States over the past fifty years has nothing to do with any proposed libertarian solution, to either admit to making a gross error in thinking that it did when you rejecting your previous libertarian beliefs. Or you are free to elaborate on your reasons for rejecting it but the experience with losing your friend, as emotionally distressing as that no doubt was, provides absolutely no argument against libertarianism whatsoever. Your concession to this fact would mean we are at least making progress. Again, Caros' problem with the US healthcare system is that it doesn't treat people who can't afford to pay. This is a feature that it shares with libertarian healthcare systems. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Jan 18, 2016 |
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Jan 17, 2016 23:55
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gently caress you. Fuuuuuck you. If it weren't for "socialist" health care in Canada, my dad would be dead or my parents bankrupt from cancer treatments. Go die in the hole you crawled out of.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:59
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team overhead smash posted:Jrode, you still need to reply to my through and sourced post from 3 months ago that perfectly meets the criteria of the kind of post you say you want to respond to. I'll look back and respond to your earlier post that you mentioned. But if my post was so lacking in arguments, you did an even poorer job of rebutting the ones that I did offer. Did you really take my mention of Atlas MD as suggesting that for the monthly rate you'd get all the medical care you'd ever need and you'd never have to pay for anything else? I hardly think you could honestly have thought that. No, the monthly rate is for general doctor visits, diagnoses, some basic diagnostic tests, writing prescriptions, getting referrals to specialists, etc. You know, stuff that normal general doctors do. No, you don't get "unlimited surgery" in that monthly bill. But here is what you DO get: quote:As a member of AtlasMD, you’ll have access to the following: Look, even IF you have medical insurance, you can be expected to pay $20 to $30 just as a co-pay for every single visit. Without insurance, you could be paying $200 for a visit with a family doctor. I am merely comparing the savings that one medical care provider is able to achieve in the free market, to what most people are used to . House calls? Same day or next day service scheduling? EKG, Holter Monitor, Body Fat Analysis, Lesion Removal, Laceration repair, properly diagnosing illnesses, providing referrals to specialists (yes, I get that you'll have to pay separately if you have to see a specialist), and annual physicals don't constitute "actual medical care"? I had an untreated and mistreated medical condition for several years and I can tell you from experience that one of the most important things to have in order to save money and get the proper treatment for any health problem is to have a good primary doctor in your corner who is available and you can rely on. Even if you have to see a specialist, having a good referral and someone who can manage your medical records and streamline your care is vitally important. Even if you do need extensive lab workups and prescription drugs that Atlas MD doesn't provide in its monthly price, they make every effort to save you money by passing on the wholesale price so even this would be cheaper than most other places. How can you discount this example so hastily? Atlas MD provide literally everything that a normal internal medicine doctor provides and more, but at a substantially reduced price. Your last point was that this is not a system that could be emulated because there are way too many patients in the country and not enough doctors to cut back on their patients enough to provide this level of service. There are several points that I have to respond to this. First, State intervention, licensing requirements, regulations and barriers to entry have dramatically reduced the supply of doctors and medical providers that would otherwise be available. Remember that medical care is not some magical area of human interaction where the laws of economics somehow don't apply. Medical care is a universal need and there is a substantial profit to be made by serving that need on the market. Do you think Atlas MD are not making a profit? By eschewing insurance and State involvement as much as possible, they are able to reduce costs while still being profitable. Yes, they reduce their patients to 600 per doctor, as opposed to the 2000 per doctor that is the average. The supply of doctors would increase to serve the demand if this model proves profitable to the satisfaction of the patients being cared for. This statement is remarkable: "If this replaced the actual system, 90% of patients would be dropped and have no doctor available even if they could afford hundreds or thousands of dollars a month in payments." No one is suggesting that a concierge service replace should "replace" the current State-regulated healthcare system. Libertarians are not advocating a "system". We are simply advocating for the market. Consumers, through the market, will determine which delivery of medical services is the most efficacious through their purchasing habits. Concierge services of the sort offered by Atlas MD might be emulated to the degree that they stay popular and people like it. If such a model does not remain profitable throughout the economy, then other healthcare providers will adopt different models of healthcare delivery.
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Jan 18, 2016 00:01
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jrodefeld posted:I don't think that a free market libertarian healthcare system would achieve "comparable" results, I am quite convinced through demonstrated evidence as well as a modicum of economic literacy that a free market would provide demonstrably superior results in nearly every way to a State-run healthcare system. You seem to have rose-colored glasses about the general efficacy of actually existing single-payer healthcare systems. There is a demonstrated inefficiency and a shortage of care that necessitates rationing for many types of medical procedures. Hey. Hey! You are arguing for instituting rationing in medical care. It's called "pricing" and it has the signature insane disadvantage of limiting access not on the basis of need but on the basis of one's ability to pay. In a sane and civilized society - that is, the opposite of the feudal hellscape you fantasize about - personal ability to pay is irrelevant and need is everything. That is why universal healthcare is superior.
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Jan 18, 2016 00:02
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Jrod, is it true that you sell pirated blu rays?
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Jan 18, 2016 00:07
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Wanamingo posted:Jrod, is it true that you sell pirated blu rays? You know what, I'm just going to keep quoting this as the new "Have you ever hosed a watermelon?" because right now I am all out of fucks to give. Jrod, is it true that you sell pirated blu rays?
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Jan 18, 2016 00:36
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jrodefeld posted:I don't think that a free market libertarian healthcare system would achieve "comparable" results, I am quite convinced through demonstrated evidence as well as a modicum of economic literacy that a free market would provide demonstrably superior results in nearly every way to a State-run healthcare system. You seem to have rose-colored glasses about the general efficacy of actually existing single-payer healthcare systems. There is a demonstrated inefficiency and a shortage of care that necessitates rationing for many types of medical procedures. Free market systems ration healthcare, too, it just does this in a way that fucks over people who don't already have money. People are able to more effectively ration healthcare than the chaos of a free market. If a $100 treatment will save my life, and I don't have $100, which systems would I prefer? Why is the system where I die due to my inability to pay preferable to the system where I live? quote:This is elementary economics. Making something "free" creates a huge spike in demand, overuse of medical resources and unintended consequences. People don't demand more healthcare when that healthcare becomes cheaper. If you completely subsidized the cost of, say, insulin, you wouldn't suddenly see a spike in insulin demand. People don't want insulin, they either need it or they don't. The demand is constant regardless of the price. This is common to many products and procedures in medicine. I'm not going to go line up at the hospital to get a catheter inserted just because it's free, that would be idiotic. But even if there are extremely dumb people who decide that they want to do that, you're still going to need a doctor to approve that poo poo. So you literally understand nothing about single payer medicine, in other words. quote:Would Caros's friend have gotten the necessary treatment in Canada or Great Brittain? She would have probably gotten SOME treatment, as such systems are theoretically designed to ration care in favor of more urgent medical emergencies. Whether she would have pulled through and gotten efficacious medical treatment is another story and we cannot know that counter-factual. You're a callous monster who didn't even bother to pay attention to the details of what Caros wrote. The treatment in question is cheap and plentiful, his friend just couldn't afford it. Getting that treatment is undoubtedly better than nothing getting that treatment, and she would definitely have gotten that treatment in the UK or Canada quote:Why not apply your reasoning to any other sector of the economy? Why trust the market to properly price and distribute groceries? Certainly access to food is a more fundamental human need than even medical care? Because while lack of access to good healthcare might kill you in the long run, you might not survive more than a couple months without access to reasonable nutrition. We know this idea of State control and delivery of food is foolish not only due to economic theory, but through real world examples like the Soviet Union, where we saw bread lines and an inability to effectively calculate economically without a market price system for capital goods. Great idea, we should not leave the growth and distribution of food up to the whims of the free market. Oh wait, we already don't do that. Food growth and distribution is already highly regulated and subsidized, and food sale is also subsidized thanks to SNAP. These are all good things. You tried to bring up this example before, and this counterargument was already provided. I know that you didn't read it, but it's still mind-boggling that you think that "groceries" constitutes an example of a triumphant free market system. quote:What so many of you have tried to do is explain how healthcare is a type of good that is completely different from all other consumer goods and thus the rules of economics somehow don't apply to it. These excuses have been unpersuasive and reek of special pleading. The rules of economics do apply, you just don't a strong enough footing in reality to understand that the demand for medical services doesn't really change with price. Nobody goes to the hospital just for the hell of it, even if going to the hospital is free. And if someone needs to go to the hospital, then they need to go to the hospital regardless of whether or not they can afford it. This is not like buying a television, where "shucks I just can't afford it this year, maybe next year" is a viable option. quote:Non-critical medical conditions can put you on a waiting list for treatment in Canada or the United Kingdom. Maybe you need a knee replacement, for example. Not getting it quickly won't kill you but you'll be in a lot of pain and your quality of life will greatly suffer. Nevertheless, people have had to wait sometimes a year, sometimes two or even more for such "elective" surgical procedures. Getting an MRI test might take you eight months to a year. In the United States, as screwed up as it is, most patients are able to get an MRI done within a month. It might take you that long if you don't desperately need an MRI. Contrast this to the US, where you might desperately need an MRI but don't get to ever have one because you can't afford it. How is that preferable? In your mind, is one year a greater length of time than one lifetime? quote:I'm sure you'll make excuses for these problems by pointing out that long delays for treating non-life threatening medical conditions is a reasonable price to pay for ensuring that people with life threatening emergencies can get care. YES, you get it! We shouldn't prioritize nose jobs and botox, we should prioritize medical procedures that save lives and improve livelihood! quote:But the problem of course is that in a libertarian market economy, no such trade-off is necessary. Consumer price competition and entrepreneurial doctors and medical care providers will work to provide affordable care options for every person, both for electable procedures and for emergency medicine. gently caress, no, you apparently still don't get it. In the libertarian market economy, that trade-off still occurs but with different criteria. In the social healthcare option, healthcare is (loosely) based on need. In the libertarian market economy, healthcare is allocated based on a person's ability to pay. This is still a trade-off, all that you'e done is swapped "needs medical care" with "has sufficient wealth". A person's wealth should not decide their access to medical care, that's idiotic. And even in countries with UHC, like the UK, you can still get private treatment. If you just have oodles of money and desperately want to pay for a nose job, you can go ahead and do that. UHC is a system of universal coverage, it doesn't stop you from seeking care elsewhere if you have the means. quote:So criticizing a place like the Oklahoma Surgery Center because you still have to pay SOME money for your procedures while under a universal healthcare system you'd get all your procedures for free, and free beats non-free everyday of the week, is so astounding economically ignorant it boggles the mind. That's right. And it's vastly preferable to a system where people die simply because they can't afford to pay. I would rather suffer from higher taxes to make sure that people get the treatment that they need. Coincidentally, healthcare is actually way cheaper (per capita) in countries with universal healthcare systems. Why do you suppose that is? Perhaps your understanding of the economics of this situation is not as good as you think it is, did you ever stop and consider that? quote:You pay for it with rationing of care, an artificial restriction of supply imposed by abandoning the market for central planning. Again, rationing still occurs under a free market system, it just occurs in a way that is far from optimal (unless wealth prioritization is literally your only criteria, which is dumb). quote:Furthermore, it is not just about a blind price comparison. The payer is the one who wields control of the situation, and there are very few things as personal as medical care. By paying out of pocket and being able to freely shop around for doctors and procedures, medical care providers must try to cater to you. If insurance companies pay or the State pays, then the efforts of the medical providers are all aimed at lobbying the State for favorable regulations, and trying to raise prices as high as they can get away with. Needless to say, they can get away with charging much higher prices when big insurance corporations and governments are footing the bill instead of individual patients who have options. You're somewhat right about this as a criticism of HMO health insurance, it does suck to get assigned a doctor and to have no real choice in the matter (although in many cases you can request another doctor, but they still have to be at whatever HMO facility that your provider requires). But it doesn't apply to PPO health insurance, since you can choose whatever doctor you want. It also doesn't apply to UHC, as you're not assigned a doctor under that system, either. quote:Just open up your eyes are recognize the problems that exist under State-run healthcare systems. In a blind comparison between the corrupt State-dominated healthcare we have access to in the US and the State-dominated healthcare available in Canada and Great Britain, you may have a few points in your favor. But that is not any comparison I am interested in making. I am in favor of a genuine free market in medicine, which would be a radical change from the status quo. Aaaaaand we're back to the cultist dogma. "Open your eyes and see the light of libertarianism! Open your heart to Rothbard!" Let's compare a completely free market healthcare system to the healthcare system in the UK. In your hypothetical free market healthcare system, people who can't afford to pay simply don't get treatment, so access to healthcare is allocated on the basis of personal wealth. In the UK, everyone has access to treatment, so access to healthcare is allocated on the basis of need. So if you really badly need an MRI, you'll definitely get it in the UK, whereas most people in the US wouldn't be able to afford that even in a free market system (because building, maintaining, and operating an MRI is still expensive, even in an optimal scenario where no one extracts any profit along the way). Which system would you prefer, and why?
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Jan 18, 2016 00:39
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Yo jrod: reducing the cost of medical care to $0 might result in increased consumption but only to the extent that people are going without needed care. This increase in consumption is an unambiguously Good Thing.
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Jan 18, 2016 00:53
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jrodefeld posted:Look, even IF you have medical insurance, you can be expected to pay $20 to $30 just as a co-pay for every single visit. Without insurance, you could be paying $200 for a visit with a family doctor. I am merely comparing the savings that one medical care provider is able to achieve in the free market, to what most people are used to . These are not the procedures that make medical care expensive. Do you understand that? Come on, Body Fat Analysis is a free service that my gym provides, how did you put that in your "medical care" list without laughing? quote:I had an untreated and mistreated medical condition for several years and I can tell you from experience that one of the most important things to have in order to save money and get the proper treatment for any health problem is to have a good primary doctor in your corner who is available and you can rely on. Even if you have to see a specialist, having a good referral and someone who can manage your medical records and streamline your care is vitally important. Yes, having a doctor in your corner is really important, but that has nothing to do with the discussion. Are you trying to imply that doctors in the UK don't ever "fight" for their patients? Because that's both insulting and bullshit. Substantially reduced price? Not really. In the UK, the mean cost to the patient is probably actually cheaper than what this guy charges monthly. quote:Your last point was that this is not a system that could be emulated because there are way too many patients in the country and not enough doctors to cut back on their patients enough to provide this level of service. There are several points that I have to respond to this. First, State intervention, licensing requirements, regulations and barriers to entry have dramatically reduced the supply of doctors and medical providers that would otherwise be available. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. The supply of doctors is not regulated by the state. Medical licenses are not granted by the government, they're granted by the American Medical Association, a private organization that was founded over 150 years ago. And the supply of drugs is regulated in order to make sure that the medicine that you buy is actually medicine that won't do more harm than good, but if you really don't give a poo poo about an evidence-based approach to medicine then you can still go around the regulatory framework and acquire whatever drugs you want, as the users of thalidomide discovered. Nothing that you wrote here is accurate. quote:Remember that medical care is not some magical area of human interaction where the laws of economics somehow don't apply. Medical care is a universal need and there is a substantial profit to be made by serving that need on the market. Do you think Atlas MD are not making a profit? By eschewing insurance and State involvement as much as possible, they are able to reduce costs while still being profitable. Yes, they reduce their patients to 600 per doctor, as opposed to the 2000 per doctor that is the average. The supply of doctors would increase to serve the demand if this model proves profitable to the satisfaction of the patients being cared for. "Then again, there's reality". Go write "the real costs of medical care are not in family doctor visits" 100 times on the blackboard
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Jan 18, 2016 00:54
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