" @RJMacReady said:

" @Snipzor said:

" @RJMacReady: No. I'm not even going to waste my time. "

Why not ? At least throw me a bone. "

No, and I'll tell you why. I've been through this far too many times with tons of right-wing libertarians and I won't bother... until tommorrow when my head and thoughts are clear.  Now let me play Braid. "

"

@pirate_republic: 

I just wonder, how is public health care socialism? Like seriously, there are tons of public industries in the states, this is just adding one more.

Payment for care goes to the government and the government then plays the middle man and decides what services will be available. Eventually the government will have to ration, because there are not infinite resources, when it does the state will be administrating and deciding who gets what care and who dies.

"

I thought it was a republican thing.  (The politicians. I'm talking about the politicians.)
 
You know, fearing socialism...
 
Besides its a front. Health Insurance lobbyists are working hard to stop the government from going for public healthcare. Who do you think these lobbyists are trying to support?
 
You need contributions to be in politics in the US. Lobbyist are there for that reason aren't they? 
 
Anyways, I'm always miffed on how citizens can eat up that bullshit.
 
 
Private Health Insurance premiums hurt most Americans as a whole. Ironically, especially for those who need health care.

" @pirate_republic: Do you live in an urban area? Because rural Canada has a serious doctor shortage. "

" @Video_Game_King: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT HE IS THE ANTITHESIS OF CAPITALISM! (sorry for the caps, but what you said is absolutely fucking insane and so I must address it in capitals)
 
HE STOLE, HE KILLED, HE THREATENED, HE TERRORIZED! HE DIDN'T PRODUCE JACK SHIT! HE WAS A THIEF. HE MAY BE SELF-INTERESTED (as we all are) BUT HIS METHODS WERE NOT CAPITALISTIC, THEY WERE NOT BASED ON PRODUCTIVITY, THEY WERE BASED ON THE USE OF FORCE! NOMINAL "CAPITALISTS" WHO EMPLOY FORCE ARE FASCISTS, FOR THEY TIE THEIR INTERESTS TO YOURS BY NEGATING YOUR INTERESTS IN FURTHERANCE OF THEIRS.
 
Once again, I apologize for the capitals, but referring to the character of The Joker as a "capitalist" is a gross misuse of the word. I would even go so far as to say that it is an inverted use. "

" @Suicrat said:

" @pirate_republic: Do you live in an urban area? Because rural Canada has a serious doctor shortage. "

That's cause if they come to the US they can make a lot more money. The socialist health care system in Canada doesn't reward them for all their hard work of getting through medical school. "

All property is theft

  "I AM AN AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SHITHEEL

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US department of energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the national aeronautics and space administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US department of agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the food and drug administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the national institute of standards and technology and the US naval observatory, I get into my national highway traffic safety administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the environmental protection agency, using legal tender issed by the federal reserve bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US postal service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the department of labor and the occupational safety and health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet which was developed by the defense advanced research projects administration and post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right"

" Socialism sucks!!!

People should be rewarded for hard work, not punished. In Britain, if you make more than $220,000 a year the government will tax you at 50%. So if you run a successful business, or write a bestselling book the government will use threats of violence to STEAL half of the money you worked for. This kind of behavior encourages people to not work hard and be successful, because if they do, the government will just take a bigger bite out of their ass. Poor people don't create jobs, rich people do. Your country is going broke because socialism punishes people who are successful.
"

I will say that I have been at least a little offended by some earlier comments referring to the NHS as an "abomination", my mother was a nurse for 17 years, many of my family friends are doctors and nurses, I understand the problems within the National Health Service, but will still defend it as one of the best health systems in the world and would like direct those who doubt its value here

" I don't think that is true, there needs to be differentiation between the scoialism of the Labour government in the UK after WWII and Communism, the socialism practised by the Soviet Union and The People's Republic of China; Marx himself rejected the communist ideas being propagated in Rusiia before the rise of the Soviet Union, saying "if they are Marxists, then I am not".   Anyway this is besides the point, I can see that there is no chance of the US becoming a socialist nation, however what Obama is proposing isn't a true nationalised health system, it's an alternative for those who can't get health care from the insurance companies, and a way to fix the health system so that it's primary purpose is what it always should have been, i.e health. "

"  I can't understand why Americans are scared of a system which means that everyone will be better looked after(...) "

" @pirate_republic: Do you not see your hypocrisy by demanding a tax increase? You argue that no one should have to pay for something they need. But when faced with the fact that everything of value costs money, you argue that we should all be forced to pay more for this free thing.  Why not just cut out the middleman? Why not simply let communities and individuals compensate doctors directly? "

" @demonbear: This Canadian doesn't understand why Canadians think that Americans would want more of the same (government intervention in the healthcare industry).

" @pirate_republic: Actually, in Canada we have several socialist industries. Communications, manufacturing, commodities, education, childcare, the list goes on and on.  Moreover, what it ultimately comes down to is under this system, everyone is an indentured slave for life. They receive a good of fixed value, but are forced to hand over a large portion of their wealth for their entire life in order to get this privilege of an absence of choice.  This is not a beneficial relationship. I would much prefer to be able to buy my freedom than be a slave for life. So, for example, my recent ankle surgery. I would rather have taken a loan to pay for it, which might have ended up taking a couple of years (or more) to pay off. But to me, that is superior to having the surgery "for free" (which we've both acknowledge is a dishonest phrasing) and then being indebted from birth till death to the province of Ontario, the Municipality of Toronto, and the Federation we call Canada. "

"Because the average person can't afford it. If everyone contributes a little to the cause, then it becomes "free". "

"Your link is from over a year ago... you might want to at least find a modern link before your repeat gov't propoganda. "

Bottom line is the plan hasn't been explained well at all and when people don't know  how something works they fill in the blanks themselves.

"   "I AM AN AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SHITHEEL

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US department of energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the national aeronautics and space administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US department of agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the food and drug administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the national institute of standards and technology and the US naval observatory, I get into my national highway traffic safety administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the environmental protection agency, using legal tender issed by the federal reserve bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US postal service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the department of labor and the occupational safety and health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet which was developed by the defense advanced research projects administration and post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right" "

This is totally analogous to the notion that the slave that is fed by his/her Master then owes his Master allegiance or gratitude; all you’ve done here is justify slavery. You ancillary argument, I guess, is that these services could not be provided privately. The basis of your argument is that they cannot be provided privately because the government is providing them currently. This is not a convincing argument by any means because the very fact the government is providing a service forces private entities out of the market.

Consider Lysander Spooner’s attempt to make a better mail delivery service via his PRIVATE American letter mail company. From wiki: The American Letter Mail Company was able to reduce the price of its stamps significantly and even offered free local delivery, significantly undercutting the 12 cent stamp being sold by the Post Office Department. Although the business was forced to close shop after only a few years, it succeeded in driving down the cost of government delivered mail.

It’s now obvious that the government has intervened in the past to maintain it’s monopoly. Had Spooner thought as you do the price of stamps would have been set via monopoly pricing and been higher. Your argument is worthless because it doesn’t address the Unseen, or what would occur via private provision and a competitive market, you only look at what is and assume that what is is the most objectively optimal solution to economic coordination problems.

This is the most contradictory statement I’ve read on this board so far.   If I pay for something it is free?

You have invalidated your argument in the same sentence you tried to prove it, good job.  
Also the average person cannot afford it because of current government interference in the market. This is something you people will not address. It's assumed that the market and greedy business models are driving up the costs, but what if, WHAT IF, you had to ask yourselves if the interference of the state was responsible for the increase in prices? Can you posters honestly ask yourselves this question and dismiss it. I have and i believe it's a significant variable that you all have COMPLETELY IGNORED.

Why is it good to separate payment from provision? This makes costs to the consumer invisible and thus they could easily pay more than they receive as they never have the ability to evaluate what they are receiving vs. what they are paying as taxation for all centralized institutional services are aggregated.

@raidingkvatch 

This is false.  Property must have an owner if you wish to avoid depletion of resources. I’ve already introduced you to Garett Hardin’s notion of “Tragedy of the commons” where assets held in common are depleted because costs of depletion are not fully realized by users of it. While Marx argued that property ownership by individuals would lead to exploitation he cannot reconcile how in a society where the “tragedy of the commons” is a daily event shortages wouldn’t be the norm and people won’t be exploited by their own communal economic activity.

Exploitation exists and is unavoidable. All biological systems are constantly struggling for survival or to reproduce and in order to do this they must exploit things in their environment. All human action is exploitative, especially love. The only question is how to minimize the degree of exploitation and make relationships more asymmetrical. Socialism doesn’t do this, capitalism does as it gives individual market agents exit and ensures the MOST EFFICIENT use of available resources. Exit drives biological systems toward mutualism. Socialism marginalizes individual freedom of movement because it consolidates assets into aggregates via the Hegelian notion that freedom is collective, not individual. Germanic idealism (that the universe is one large ego) has done more to retard our understanding of humanity then anything I can think of.

To sum up, you must reconcile :

1 Tragedy of the commons

2 How decisions are made with property when they are held in commons

                And you must overcome in regards to 2

                                A  Arrows impossibility theorem

                                B  Voter ignorance, depending on the size of the coordinating aggregate State vs syndicate.

@Alex_Murphy

" @pirate_republic said:

"Because the average person can't afford it. If everyone contributes a little to the cause, then it becomes "free". "

The average person can't afford a lamborghini either, does that mean  the government should take money from rich people and give it to people who didn't put in the hard work to earn the money so they can drive a sports car too? The "free" health care you speak of isn't really free, the goverment is taking the money to pay for it with threats of violence. If I refuse to pay for it, and keep not paying for it eventually a man with a gun will come to my house.
 

@pirate_republic

said:

"Your link is from over a year ago... you might want to at least find a modern link before your repeat gov't propoganda. "

My link is over a year old?? So are you saying that the information isn't true anymore? England was going broke a year ago, but now everything is fine? What leads you to believe that they have turned around their economy? Here is a link from 2009 saying that Britians economic performance will be the worst it's been since 1946.  "Annual net borrowing will rise to 8.8 per cent of GDP this year, more than the 8 per cent forecast by Alastair Darling in November, while the gross national debt will rise from 44.1 per cent of GDP in 2007 to 72 per cent in 2010, the Commission predicted, largely due to the multi-billion pound bank bailouts." But that link is from JANUARY 2009 so I guess you'll say that in 6 years it's possible that Britain had the biggest economic turn around in the history of the world, and then offer no proof of it actually happening. "

" @RJMacReady: What I meant by "free", is that you pay a minute fraction of what the actual costs are. Instead of you paying the full price, everyone in the country splits it so that everyone can afford it.  Anyways, it seems American propaganda is too well rooted into your head to argue. As is socialist propaganda in mine. Go see Sicko (if you haven't already)... amist all the blatant bias (in favor of health care) are some interesting statistics. This conversation is going no where: you're misunderstanding what I'm trying to say, and I'm probably misunderstanding what you're trying to say. "

Free is not paying any marginal sum or fraction of costs. Free is incurring zero costs. Healthcare can never be free because somebody else has to pay for it and that is a cost to society because as you tax somebody across the street to pay for something you have inexorably altered the pattern of resource allocation throughout the entire economy. That individual that you took money from now must cut back in some other expenditure. That means growth somewhere else is compromised, that means other people lose their job. That means somebody else cannot pay for health care. That means they must become a ward of the state, that means that the treasury incurs a higher cost that means that you must go back across the street with a gun and take more that means that you have AGAIN inexorably altered the pattern of resource allocation throughout the entire economy.

You have created a monstrous positive feedback system that will cannibalize itself until it implodes violently. You’ve inverted the incentive structure of a normal functioning economy so that supplying value is punished and consuming value Is rewarded, that is just not sustainable.

" @Alex_Murphy said:

" @Suicrat said:

" @pirate_republic: Do you live in an urban area? Because rural Canada has a serious doctor shortage. "

That's cause if they come to the US they can make a lot more money. The socialist health care system in Canada doesn't reward them for all their hard work of getting through medical school. "

Do we really want Doctors who are only in it for the money? Not that Doctors shouldnt get paid good but, wouldnt you rather have less doctors who genuinely want to help people than a surplus of greedy doctors? "

Less Dr’s means more rationing, which means more death. If you have cancer EVERY SECOND counts. The faster you get treatment the less likely the cancer can metastasize, which will result in a highly likelihood of your death.

Time matters in treatment, the sooner you get it the more likely you are to survive or less likely you will be crippled or disfigured for the rest of your life for a large spectrum of injuries , conditions.

Now can you still honestly tell me that we as a society should sentence people to DEATH, so that we can have only dr’s that work for people and not profit? Please answer honestly.

" @RJMacReady: Clearly, dear sir, you have no idea how health care works. As I said, see Sicko if you haven't already. Ignore the bias, but it'll set you straight. "

I think we are taking ourselves way to seriously here and we need a fun little distraction or interlude. This should amuse all. It’s a bureaucratic strategy known as “patient stacking”.

What is patient stacking ?

From NHS Blog doc:   

A new but increasingly common strategy, which we met last week, is putting pressure on ambulance crews not to take people onto hospital at all. It has the merit of simplicity. A new strategy is revealed today. We shall call it the “Heathrow Strategy.” If the A & E department is busy, you instruct the ambulances crews to wait outside. Or maybe they drive round in circles.

From wiki : The emergency department (ED), sometimes termed the emergency room (ER), emergency ward (EW), accident & emergency (A&E) department or casualty department is a hospital or primary care

Why problem is this strategy meant to solve?

Also from NHS Blog Doc:

Ambulances are being used as waiting rooms outside hospital emergency units in order to meet Government pledges on treatment times, a union has claimed. Unison said so-called patient stacking in ambulances was used if they could not be seen in A&E within four hours. The claims come after the Observer reported that some patients were left for up to five hours in an ambulance because A&E refused to admit them until they could seen within the target time. A study of seven of England's 11 regional ambulance services by the newspaper showed delays of more than an hour were common and that at least 44,000 delays were reported in the last 15 months. ( BBC )

So because of a temporal target: 4 hours, people are being left in parking lots so the hospital is’nt fined for exceeding a time limit.

Examing the course of events here.

Government socializes healthcare and as a result everyting is free. Soon people find out it’s not free as wait times are increasing and people cannot be seen. The benevolent Gods decree “all shall be seen within 4 hours” magically making wait times disappear. Now all injured and sick are seen in 4 hours, once they get unloaded from the ambulance that is.

A word on compassion:

The only thing that is compassionate about this is it reduces allows the bureaucracies to feel like they are actually accomplishing something when they are actually wasting resources. All those that support socialism support extended rights for a political class, the irony is that these individuals typically want equal rights but they end up creating tremendous inequality.

Moral of the story.

No matter how compassionate, not matter how smart you cannot change economic reality. You cannot transmute lead into gold. The alchemy the state provides to make unfairness -fair, the poor- rich, inequality into equality, is a impossible fairytale that only ends up shuffling resources around. It’s about as easy as transforming lead into gold. Will man ever wake up for this destructive delusion?

Anyway I wanted to break the tension and add some humor to this forum.

RJ you are obviously very well read, and you've seen sicko. Can you explain why we keep hearing horror stories where private health insurance fails to pay out runing the lives of decent tax paying law abiding people.
 
I'm Irish in Ireland we have free health care and free education(for the moment...fees of around 4000 a year may come in for third level as the crisis deepens). You also have the option of Volountary Health Insurance(VHI) .A neat feature is that the company is not allowed to discriminate so someone with a history of cardiac problems pays the exact same as a fit an healthy 18 year old.Ethically a very good thing. An individualist such as yourself may not like it though. 
 A survey, commissioned by the HSE in 2007, found that patient satisfaction with the health service was quite high, with 90% of inpatients and 85% of outpatients saying they were satisfied with their treatment. In addition to this, 97% said they were satisfied with the care provided by their GP
 

It is my opinion and obviously I am a product of my environment that items such as Education,Health,Water, and basic telecommunications should be under the control of the state.
These items where the welfare of the citizen far outweighs the bottom line have to be run by government because profit is secondary to a government.If the national debt can be serviced, then all other money should be spent.  I mean I had to wait 6 years for anything better than 56k internet because it wasnt profitable to upgrade the exchange. All except telecommunications are under the control of the state. 

 The government largely stays out of everything else, the result up until the banking crisis we has very low unemployment,high wages and were voted best place to live in the world by The Economist magazine.So even though welfare spending was high the vast majority of people worked damn hard.

I feel like this has come to a point where all the arguments are going round in circles

This is very hard for me to explain and I’ve posted about this previously and it seems to get ignored.

The basic problem is in a mixed system with both markets and a centralized regulator profit maximizing agents will behave in a different way than if a monopoly on regulation (state) is not present. I have two options as a profit maximizing agent I can

1.        Invest my capital to produce a good or service that is desired by consumers over a competitor. This allows me to voluntarily obtain that individual’s revenue and use it to expand production or to consume for myself (profit taking).

2.        I can use my capital to attempt to capture a regulator. This is called “Rent Seeking”. Rent seeking is not clearly defined as of yet but it is the attempt to “avoid costs” or obtain uncompensated value from public assets. This is not just “corruption” it is a normal channel of a mixed economy(the political economy).

My problem with the left is that they seem to assume 2 occurs because of free markets or that increasing government oversight will minimize 2. In fact increasing government oversight in any capacity will enhance the occurrence of this event. 2 Cannot occur in a system where the State is partitioned from the market because there is no entity to lobby to and nothing to capture. We learned to separate church from state now we have to come to grips with the reality that the market and state must also be separated not because the state is evil, but because self interest will direct itself into the political market.

Nobody on this board seems willing to address my question in regards to our mixed nebulous economic matrix:    “is the government or the incentive structure the government creates “see 2” increasing the cost of healthcare in America?”

If it isn’t then socialized healthcare is the solution.

If it is then we have average American citizens pretending to be social scientists, and economists and saying with metaphysical certitude that proposing a economic construct that could be destructive and deadly.

A word on individualism. Collectives do not act, individuals do. That is “a person acts”, (please attempt to deny this). It cannot be denied, because a denial of this axiom would reveal a contradiction. A denial is an action performed by an individual.

Onto collectivism: collectives cannot act. We only perceive what we call collective preference by attempting to sum the preferences via a vote. This is impossible. Arrow’s impossilbity theorem:

In social choice theory, Arrow’s impossibility theorem, or Arrow’s paradox, demonstrates that no voting system can convert the ranked preferences of individuals into a community-wide ranking while also meeting a certain set of reasonable criteria with three or more discrete options to choose from. These criteria are called unrestricted domain, non-imposition, non-dictatorship, Pareto efficiency, and independence of irrelevant alternatives. The theorem is often cited in discussions of election theory as it is further interpreted by the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem.

Yes I’m an individualist.

Evolutionary biology has rejected new and old “group selection theory” in favor of kin or conspecific (nonrelated same species individual) altruism. These evolutionary paradigms function and are mathematically modeled only at the individual level. To deny individuality or individualism in favor of collectivism is to deny reality.

Now maybe you meant something else by collectivism. Perhaps you’ll aknowledge collective action is just an aggregation of individual action. I will say that individual action will attempt to maximize it’s utility by regulating itself in a social order. The social order is of intense value (economically see division of labor, evolutionarily see “many eyes phenomenon”) Social orders form because they are more efficient. That does not mean that social orders are a manifestation of collective intelligence or a universal ego.

 This is I’m sorry to say, worthless information because the question has to be asked “compared to what?”   It would be akin to saying my horse will come in first, every time, when it competes on a track by itself.

This is another tremendous error I think the left make, that somehow profit is bad. Profit is a signal that reveals who is using resources most efficiently and providing something of value to people. We cannot have economic coordination without considering the ephemeral nature of resources.   Universal healthcare just wants to divorce the cost from the provision, this just hides the costs. The state will then deny care when profits are not being made and resources must be cut back.  

Just because you’ve hidden cost from the consumer under a new institutional provisional framework doesn’t mean you’ve subverted economic reality. Scarcity still exists and care must be denied.   The bottom line is the only line no matter if you’re communist or capitalist. Economic reality is reality. You cannot control the universe.

These items where the welfare of the citizen far outweighs the bottom line have to be run by government because profit is secondary to a government.

This is exactly the problem. Because resources are secondary waste can be easily ignored. When we waste finite resources we subject ourselves to depletion and depletion will result in death. We can’t give everybody everything. The government isn’t Santa Claus with a magic bottomless bag of gifts. These gifts must   be extracted out of somebody else’s pocket, and that person must then watch as his resources are removed from his possession and then ask himself if he should continue to supply the thief;  that person must act.

That’s interesting because the telecommunications industry in Somalia, which is not regulated is experiencing more growth then surrounding countries. I find it hard to believe this or at least that the government somewhat effects some of the factors that may be necessary for expansion of tele in your country. In new Orleans where I live we have 1 company Cox who obtains a monopoly because the city won’t allow others to expand physical hardlines. Cox has very poor service and is now losing market share that uses satellites and phone DSL. They subverted the market shield that stands in the way of competition.

 

I’m not convinced here for a multitude of reasons. 1 of all countries Ireland is number three on the most liberated or most economically free place on earth. This means that citizens see a lot of the value they generate to society come right back to them.

 This is interesting because the UK government is listed below you on the “index of economic freedom”.   That means that per capita more people have more money to spend on things they need. People with abundance are more likely to engage in or ignore wasteful spending (socialized services must be wastfull because profit is ignored).   Just because the public approve of something doesn’t mean that is the best manifestation of that thing. Markets create information and reveal what is best through profit/losses. The State decides what is best based on its’ technocrats and experts. The market will always know more than these people and placing them in ascendant positions where the selection process manicures them back only after 2 or 4 or lifetime of service is akin to the religious notion of a benevolent all knowing god.