Are collective efforts necessary?
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Tuesday, November 8, 2005 21:59
VIEWED: 5226
PAGE 2 of 6
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/03/AR2005
110301143.html
Yep. It's that free market system doing what it does best.
"Americans pay more when they get sick than people in other Western nations and get more confused, error-prone treatment, according to the largest survey to compare U.S. health care with other nations.
The survey of nearly 7,000 sick adults in the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and Germany found Americans were the most likely to pay at least $1,000 in out-of-pocket expenses. More than half went without needed care because of cost and more than one-third endured mistakes and disorganized care when they did get treated.
Although patients in every nation sometimes run into obstacles to getting care and deficiencies when they do get treated, the United States stood out for having the highest error rates, most disorganized care and highest costs, the survey found."
Oh yes, and those horrid communist pinko governments exploiting their downtrodden people.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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At best and at worst.
The Govt. of Bill Clinton had problems. The foreign policy of Bill Clinton was worse.
Somalia, for the record, is widely viewed to not really have a govt. It's perpetually ranked the worlds closest state to anarchy by some UN group that does such things. The closest competitor I think is Afghanistan, and this was BEFORE we invaded. Soon Iraq will get to compete for the dubious title.
I'm sorry, but I cannot take the healthcare industry as an argument against the free market. Not only is it not a free market, but it is by far the most restricted and regulated market there is. This is not an argument for socialism, it's an argument against it. An actual free market would greatly improve things. I said it will be a dangerous world, when we cut medical care loose from it's current straight jacket, but soon it will be a world of wonder if only we have the guts to take the first step.
Commie healthcare cannot move forward, so commie healthcare did not come up with genetic engineering, antiviral drugs or stem cell reasearch, just to name a few. But high prices are also a product of overregulation. I know this for a fact because there is a flakey alternative to professional medicine which is herbal treatments. Herbals are a free market, and I easily replaced my $120/month pills with my $7/month unregulated herbal, and I would say not only was it cheaper, but it was easily 15 times as effective. Please, by all means bring on the free market.
As a foot note, I would welcome Gorby's suggestion, if you don't feel comfortable with free market medicine. I'll try to restate it here as best I can, it was in the pre-internet days he gave a radio interview and said something like this:
What america should do is have two healthcare systems, one completely open and free market, and the other govt. run. You could simply take the VA system you've set up for veterans and expand it. This system would provide basic low cost healthcare for the poor, or whoever wanted it, and the other could be more innovative. The public system would keep the prices of the freemarket system in check just by its existance as competition, and the free market system could keep the quality of the public health in check by compeition.
This was from Mikhail Gorbachev, premier of the soviet union, and definitely a commie. But I like him, and it was a good idea. Just soes y'all know, not biased against all the commies in the world, as individuals, some are fine statemen. Just object to the idea, as a govt. system.
Gorby's duel system would work, and I'd support it if someone on the left can come up with a way to pay for it that's not too deadly. Anyone interested?
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Quote:Yikes have you every tried to fly in to KJFK or KLAX or another major airport. The system needs an overhaul in terms of equipment and funding. And I'm not just talking about the ATC, the 'Ground' (the guy who directs aircraft on the taxyway) needs work to- just the other day one jetliner taxied across an active runway where another jet was taking off!
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
"traffic control,"
Air traffic control? Hmm. Another good point.
Quote:If it was on federal land I guess...
[B}"sidewalk repair..."
Or you mean local? I thought we were on federal govt.
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
"sidewalk repair..."
Or you mean local? I thought we were on federal govt.
The original post did not limit the discussion to Federal govt. Sidewalks are a great example.
Having worked with the local Equalization Board and Streets Dept I can tell you that sidewalks are VERY expensive. Here's how it works. A street is identified by various criteria (such as interest by the residents or traffic and such) as being a candidate for sidewalks. Once approved the City picks up 50% of the tab. The other 50% is assessed to the individual property owners. Often this amounts to thousands of dollars and weeks or months of street work.
Naturally people are not always happy. Most often this includes landlords who have no idea their tenants petitioned us for sidewalks that they have to pay for. Also common are people without the means to pay a sudden large assessment. So the Equalization Board hears claims of people who can't or don't want to pay. We then reduce their burden based upon their circumstances (square frontage, property value, ability to pay, etc). The City then makes up the difference.
Now I'm as anti-big govt as you can get, but I don't see how we get sidewalks and street repairs on a large scale without govt administration(cause I can fill in a pothole my own self, but I can't fill them all in...hmmm, not even my City can do that either).
H
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I think certain things should be made a right, such as Health care, protection (police and the army), and perhaps even public transport (I base this on the disastrous privatisation of the railways over here).
As for business, it should be regulated, if you don't businesses WILL pollute the environment, they WILL move toward monopolies and the customer WILL eventually end up with less choices, and paying more for them.
Should government and Business be kept separate though?
Yep, I think so. Otherwise you end up with situations like the East India Company and the British Government in the 1800's.
Business and Government should be kept physically separate, much like Government and Religion.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!
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Dreamtrove, maybe the problem I'm having is with the idea of treating every aspect of society as a business. Making money is fine, but sometimes the focus on profit runs counter to what an institution's true purpose should be. Like healthcare. The driving force behind healthcare should be providing healthcare. If doctors have to worry too much about keeping HMOs profitable, they and the patients suffer. Same with education. I'm just asking: Does everything need to be run as though it were a business?
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Sidewalk maintenance could be done by Sidewalk Inc. A company I just invented. If you want special sidewalk things, benches, driveways, ramps, all sort of other things, better pay your dues. That would more than pay for regular maintenance.
Sidewalk Inc. makes out like a bandit. Every home owner and buisiness is paying for upkeep and shelling out for bonus extras and Sidewalk becomes like port authority. Then it uses this money to build World Trade Centers.
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Sidewalk maintenance could be done by Sidewalk Inc. A company I just invented. If you want special sidewalk things, benches, driveways, ramps, all sort of other things, better pay your dues. That would more than pay for regular maintenance.
Sidewalk Inc. makes out like a bandit. Every home owner and buisiness is paying for upkeep and shelling out for bonus extras and Sidewalk becomes like port authority. Then it uses this money to build World Trade Centers.
Assuming no state and local govt involvement means that the price is outside the reach of property owners. Our city can't actually pay for the improvements. We supplement our own funding from State and Federal Grants in aid. That still leaves the average property owner on any given street with an assessment usually in the $5,000-$20,000 range. That means the average actual cost is between $10,000 and $20,000 per.
So your company, which actually exists because many smaller communities outsource this to independent contractors, would flounder with sidewalks being limited to the richest neighborhoods. You could offset by offering lower quality sidewalks, since in your no govt world their would be no liabilty for substandard work.
I suspect that were this the case the poor would become so abused by people like Sidewalks, Inc. that they would revolt and demand a govt to protect their class interests. Almost a reverse Communist Revolution.
H
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Quote:Yes, but... The fallacy is that everyone WILL pay. Some people may not want to pay for sidewalk upkeep. Perhaps they always use their car. Perhaps they would rather buy a plasma TV. Perhaps they simply can't afford it. Then the problem becomes that the sidewalk becomes less useful because some segments are cracked or even non-existant. As it becomes less useful, it becomes less used, and therefore other become less interested in upkeep. Eventually, the whole system falls down. That is what is called "the problem of the commons".
Sidewalk maintenance could be done by Sidewalk Inc. A company I just invented. If you want special sidewalk things, benches, driveways, ramps, all sort of other things, better pay your dues. That would more than pay for regular maintenance. Sidewalk Inc. makes out like a bandit. Every home owner and buisiness is paying for upkeep and shelling out for bonus extras and Sidewalk becomes like port authority.
I think that some efforts can ONLY be done in a large, collective, tax- coercive fashion: roadways, sewage systems and sewage treatment plants, communicable disease control, garbage disposal, etc. Let's take sewage as an example. In a city, you can't opt out of sending your sewage into the sewage line (health hazard/ nuisance/ water quality issue)- just look at what happened after Katrina kocked out the sanitary sewage system. You can't build sewage treatment plants on homeowner's pocketbooks because it is a benefit for FUTURE consumers and downstream consumers as well. In order to meet everyone's requirements for clean water, odor-and fly-free neighborhoods, etc no-one can "opt out". Savvy? If someone can think of a way to "provide" "necessary" services through the "free market", I'd be happy to hear about them. Also, I'm sure the list can be parsed out more intelligently. Maybe certain "services" really aren't "necessary".
In addition, if you privatize everything (and leave consumption up to individuals) you not only have to pay for the service, you also get hit on the profit. Just about every effort I have ever seen to privatize government functions (from hospital cafeteria service to corrections officers) wind up with higher prices and lower quality.
BTW- A colleague's mom used to live in one of those tax-free-pay-as-you-go states. And she was all happy about it- unitl she got billed $5000 for maintaining the piece of road in front of her house.
---------------------------------
Please don't think they give a shit.
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Oddness2Her,
Yes :)
Everything should run as a business. With maybe some slight adjustment to preventthe exploitation of things that may be profitable but not beneficial to society. Like govt. can be there to shut down the hit man business.
But ultimately, if healthcare was based on caring, as you suggest, it would be full of well intentioned people trying to do what's right, which in my experience has always been a recipe for disaster, if not the road to hell.
What we need is open competition of ideas. If there's something that needs to be done that isn't profitable, the govt. can step in with a balancing incentive program.
Take a fictional example
Morloch's disease is an infection which afflicts 100 people a year, but it kills them within a matter of weeks to months.
It can be stopped theoretically by the Simonson process, which is still under development.
Everyone drops the project when it is clear that Morloch's will always be exceedingly rare and that the Simonson process will be very expensive.
So here's where the feds could step in and offer an incentive of big $ for every case cured.
Now, Simonson does get developed, but it only works 50% of the time. Big bucks are still there for the other 50 cases, so eventually someone develops the NDabi process, which cures people 80% of the time...
And so it goes. The reason capitalism works so well at so many things is that it echoes nature. It's a process of natural selection.
Proper governance in such a system is like gardening. Minor modifications can make all the plants thrive, and only known pests really need removing.
By contrast, the socialized system is intelligent design. You set it up and it works, but no natural force presses it to evolve. 100 years later, the socialist version is probably still using the Simonson process even long after its capitalist counterpart has discarded NDabi as obsolete.
It is obvious that if the socialist syster has to copy NDabi from the capitalist one, it has admitted it's inferiority. But the most basic fact is, if God came down and created the Moku worm, it later was wiped out by rapidly evolving annelids.
The flaw with our healthcare system is not that it is capitalist, it's that it is not capitalist enough. It's the least capitalist and most state controlled of all of our private sector industries. It's probably fair to say conventional medicine in the US a solid hundred years behind the other technology industries, evolutionarily. But fortunately biotech has come to change all that. In mice. With a little deregulation it can change it in humans to.
Fortunately,
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