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$60b wiped off market (5 Viewers)
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funkshen
dvds didnt exist in 1991
oh dear.
Garygaz
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oh dear. it usually helps when you respond with something other then a flustered expression. do you think that a privatized health care system is the way to go? the problem with this fucking thread is you guys are only reading half of the responses in it.
you link private military - yes, we were previously discussing with omie about the implications of a no tax state with a military/police provided by the private sector, that was separate from previous discussions.
american health care system - i personally think that is at bare minimum a pretty useful model to look at if you were considering cutting all government support for hospitals and for other health related schemes (reducing costs of expensive drugs). yes there is a push from obama currently to have universal health care, but look back 2 years if you can remember that far.
you guys are a fucking joke, i realize you may not share my view nor i share yours, but at least i have the decency to reply with more then a 1 liner.
you link private military - yes, we were previously discussing with omie about the implications of a no tax state with a military/police provided by the private sector, that was separate from previous discussions.
american health care system - i personally think that is at bare minimum a pretty useful model to look at if you were considering cutting all government support for hospitals and for other health related schemes (reducing costs of expensive drugs). yes there is a push from obama currently to have universal health care, but look back 2 years if you can remember that far.
you guys are a fucking joke, i realize you may not share my view nor i share yours, but at least i have the decency to reply with more then a 1 liner.
SylviaB
Just Bee Yourself 🐝
lol you were talking to someone else so I didnt want to start a whole new thing
but anyway
I laughed because the american healthcare system is not in any remote sense "completely private"
govt spending accounts for half of all healthcre spending
us govt spends more on h/c as % of gdp than any scandanavian ("socialist") country
you can't sell healthcare insurance across state lines
you can't start a medical school without getting permission from the government sponsored healthcare cartel (the AAMC)
the list goes on
but anyway
I laughed because the american healthcare system is not in any remote sense "completely private"
govt spending accounts for half of all healthcre spending
us govt spends more on h/c as % of gdp than any scandanavian ("socialist") country
you can't sell healthcare insurance across state lines
you can't start a medical school without getting permission from the government sponsored healthcare cartel (the AAMC)
the list goes on
funkshen
dvds didnt exist in 1991
what Sylvester mentions is merely the beginning of the list of the dozens/hundreds/thousands of contradictory and duplicitous laws and regulations that can be confidently said to characterise the US health care system. i apologise for the one liner but it it is self evident that the US system can in no way be labelled free market/private.
while a wholely different industry, private military-security can be described similarly.
edit: the distinction must be understood between that which is 'privatised' and that which is 'private'
while a wholely different industry, private military-security can be described similarly.
edit: the distinction must be understood between that which is 'privatised' and that which is 'private'
Last edited:
cosmo kramer
Banned
It isn't private. Before the war US healthcare was similar to most other developed countries. That is to say, it was free market, but there was some state involvement. The primary state involvement consisted of the licensing of physicians, which was (and is) done by the states and typically in accordance with American Medical Association guidelines. There were also some public hospitals in most states in an attempt to help the needy. Typically people paid for healthcare out of pocket (ie, cash) and there were insurance plans available for catastrophic events.
The real change came during World War 2. FDR had previously toyed with socialized healthcare in the 1930s but abandoned it. During the war, to control inflation, companies were not allowed to compete for workers on the basis of wages. They were, however, allowed to compete on the basis of benefits, and Congress created a new type of health insurance in which the insurer basically paid all healthcare expenses. Imagine having automobile insurance which paid for repairs and gasoline. These plans multiplied rapidly as corporations offered them to get workers. Postwar Truman again toyed with national healthcare, but decided the existing system was working. Before long nearly all Americans and their families were covered by employer provided healthcare. This new system was inherently problematic in that patients no longer had an incentive to ration their healthcare nor did doctors. Even insurers don't really have an incentive to since they can just raise premiums. Around the same time legislation was passed encouraging the construction of public hospitals, so America went from having mostly private hospitals to mostly public hospitals over the next few decades.
It must be noted now that there is some degree of universality in the U.S healthcare system, in that hospital emergency rooms cannot turn away people who seek treatment regardless of their ability to pay. This humane law, in combination with the lack of universal coverage, creates problems in that uninsured people and idiots go to emergency rooms for minor healthcare issues which severely tax critical emergency room resources and send costs soaring. This is a particularly severe problem in the Southwest due to the increasing accumulation of the latino poison there. I'm sure it is also a major public stress on states with high concentrations of out of control, feral Negroes.
The next major change to the system came with LBJ's "Great Society" in 1965. While most Americans did have healthcare, there was a problem with the elderly maintaining their insurance coverage. There was also an issue with indigents gaining access to healthcare, since healthcare was predicated on employment. Thus Medicare and Medicaid were created. Medicare is a single-payer universal insurance system, like Canada's healthcare, for all people over the age of 65. There is a monthly premium which is deducted from Social Security (America's pension system). Medicaid is a single-payer system for indigents, although each state runs its own Medicaid plan and receives matching funds from the federal government. After these changes America had close to de facto universal healthcare.
Cracks in the system began emerging soon. I am not sure why, but shortly after the creation of Medicare and Medicaid inflation of healthcare costs exploded. Right-wing intellectuals have long blamed Medicare and Medicaid, but I haven't examined their claims. There was a TIME Magazine cover article in 1979 however which did say that the system was a perfect model to inflate costs; perhaps the insurance industry had a hand in the legislation? At any rate, this problem was clearly noticed in the 1970s and since then there have been half-hearted attempts to correct it. Nixon proposed universal single-payer healthcare. In the mid-1970s Congress created a new form of health insurance known as managed care (such plans are known as HMOs), in which the insurance organization is to ration care. This did not have the desired effect but did infuriate people. As healthcare costs continued to increase, deindustrialization began, and mass immigration resumed for the first time in half a century the problem of uninsured people began to emerge. Congress attempted another remedy in the 1980s by creating legislation which allowed people to continue participating in employer-provided group health insurance plans even after no longer working there, which helped rustbelt layoffs but also contributed further to healthcare inflation and declining industrial competitiveness.
Since then the system has basically continued on autopilot. The only real changes I can think of since 1985 are the creation of tax-free medical savings plans (similar to Singapore's CPF only not mandatory). There have been two attempts to create universal healthcare, in 1993 (torpedoed by Congress) and the one Obama tried to pass a while ago. Massachusetts created universal healthcare on its own under Governor Mitt Romney, though I would consider its system to be idiotic. It should be noted that there are peculiarities of the American system which make health insurance more expensive than it should be as well. Due to separate state regulatory systems, insurance cannot be purchased across state lines (this includes all forms of insurance and not just healthcare, as far as I know).
America's lawsuit culture (and legal system generally) likely substantially increases costs, and while studies show a negligible cost increase from torts I'm not sure they take into account altered doctor behavior (e.g. performing every possible procedure to avoid getting sued, or just not seeing certain kinds of patients). While most health insurance is group (ie, an employer purchases a group plan on behalf of its employees who then copay), employers or individuals may not themselves band together to purchase group health insurance.
At any rate from this you can see that the America system is certainly not unregulated or free market, and stating that it is so is sloganeering.
I wrote this a long time ago on another (horrible, horrible) forum and just copied and pasted it here because it's kind of relevant but really because I can't stand all the bullshit rhetoric and sloganeering you hear about the U.S healthcare system, which is unusual really because ordinarily I don't really care about this sort of thing but for some reason this really irks me.
The real change came during World War 2. FDR had previously toyed with socialized healthcare in the 1930s but abandoned it. During the war, to control inflation, companies were not allowed to compete for workers on the basis of wages. They were, however, allowed to compete on the basis of benefits, and Congress created a new type of health insurance in which the insurer basically paid all healthcare expenses. Imagine having automobile insurance which paid for repairs and gasoline. These plans multiplied rapidly as corporations offered them to get workers. Postwar Truman again toyed with national healthcare, but decided the existing system was working. Before long nearly all Americans and their families were covered by employer provided healthcare. This new system was inherently problematic in that patients no longer had an incentive to ration their healthcare nor did doctors. Even insurers don't really have an incentive to since they can just raise premiums. Around the same time legislation was passed encouraging the construction of public hospitals, so America went from having mostly private hospitals to mostly public hospitals over the next few decades.
It must be noted now that there is some degree of universality in the U.S healthcare system, in that hospital emergency rooms cannot turn away people who seek treatment regardless of their ability to pay. This humane law, in combination with the lack of universal coverage, creates problems in that uninsured people and idiots go to emergency rooms for minor healthcare issues which severely tax critical emergency room resources and send costs soaring. This is a particularly severe problem in the Southwest due to the increasing accumulation of the latino poison there. I'm sure it is also a major public stress on states with high concentrations of out of control, feral Negroes.
The next major change to the system came with LBJ's "Great Society" in 1965. While most Americans did have healthcare, there was a problem with the elderly maintaining their insurance coverage. There was also an issue with indigents gaining access to healthcare, since healthcare was predicated on employment. Thus Medicare and Medicaid were created. Medicare is a single-payer universal insurance system, like Canada's healthcare, for all people over the age of 65. There is a monthly premium which is deducted from Social Security (America's pension system). Medicaid is a single-payer system for indigents, although each state runs its own Medicaid plan and receives matching funds from the federal government. After these changes America had close to de facto universal healthcare.
Cracks in the system began emerging soon. I am not sure why, but shortly after the creation of Medicare and Medicaid inflation of healthcare costs exploded. Right-wing intellectuals have long blamed Medicare and Medicaid, but I haven't examined their claims. There was a TIME Magazine cover article in 1979 however which did say that the system was a perfect model to inflate costs; perhaps the insurance industry had a hand in the legislation? At any rate, this problem was clearly noticed in the 1970s and since then there have been half-hearted attempts to correct it. Nixon proposed universal single-payer healthcare. In the mid-1970s Congress created a new form of health insurance known as managed care (such plans are known as HMOs), in which the insurance organization is to ration care. This did not have the desired effect but did infuriate people. As healthcare costs continued to increase, deindustrialization began, and mass immigration resumed for the first time in half a century the problem of uninsured people began to emerge. Congress attempted another remedy in the 1980s by creating legislation which allowed people to continue participating in employer-provided group health insurance plans even after no longer working there, which helped rustbelt layoffs but also contributed further to healthcare inflation and declining industrial competitiveness.
Since then the system has basically continued on autopilot. The only real changes I can think of since 1985 are the creation of tax-free medical savings plans (similar to Singapore's CPF only not mandatory). There have been two attempts to create universal healthcare, in 1993 (torpedoed by Congress) and the one Obama tried to pass a while ago. Massachusetts created universal healthcare on its own under Governor Mitt Romney, though I would consider its system to be idiotic. It should be noted that there are peculiarities of the American system which make health insurance more expensive than it should be as well. Due to separate state regulatory systems, insurance cannot be purchased across state lines (this includes all forms of insurance and not just healthcare, as far as I know).
America's lawsuit culture (and legal system generally) likely substantially increases costs, and while studies show a negligible cost increase from torts I'm not sure they take into account altered doctor behavior (e.g. performing every possible procedure to avoid getting sued, or just not seeing certain kinds of patients). While most health insurance is group (ie, an employer purchases a group plan on behalf of its employees who then copay), employers or individuals may not themselves band together to purchase group health insurance.
At any rate from this you can see that the America system is certainly not unregulated or free market, and stating that it is so is sloganeering.
I wrote this a long time ago on another (horrible, horrible) forum and just copied and pasted it here because it's kind of relevant but really because I can't stand all the bullshit rhetoric and sloganeering you hear about the U.S healthcare system, which is unusual really because ordinarily I don't really care about this sort of thing but for some reason this really irks me.
Last edited:
funkshen
dvds didnt exist in 1991
loving the way a reference to die hispano-amerikaner gift is snuck in to an otherwise spot-on assessment of US healthcare
Garygaz
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okay i concur, maybe it isn't private but the fact that there is no medicare system (was? i'm not too sure how their legislation is panning out at the moment) which covers the costs of certain medical expenses for its citizens is worth mentioning.
funkshen
dvds didnt exist in 1991
They do have Medicare (it's for over 65s), as well as Medicaid (a means-tested/disability based healthcare program) - see the video SylvesterBr posted above. That's the whole point of the "American health care system", though. It's a gigantic, incomprehensible conglomeration of federal and state regulation and subsidies that has resulted in an illogical and inefficient patchwork of public and private health care provision.
SylviaB
Just Bee Yourself 🐝
[youtube]FHXzAU8_0fg[/youtube]
once upon a time the "poor" would form friendly societies to essentially collectively bargain with doctors for affordable rates
of course, this pissed off a lot of doctors because it put downward pressure on their incomes, and so they lobbied the state and it became banned
once upon a time the "poor" would form friendly societies to essentially collectively bargain with doctors for affordable rates
of course, this pissed off a lot of doctors because it put downward pressure on their incomes, and so they lobbied the state and it became banned
Garygaz
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i don't think there could be these fraternal societies for specialist doctors and surgeons. i mean it sounds like it worked to an extent, though i doubt in today's society a qualified doctor will be willing to sacrifice his/her income for a morality issue. 99% of people do medicine to make money. it doesn't sound like a suitable solution to having healthcare for the lowest demographic in a no tax state, at least in my eyes.
SylviaB
Just Bee Yourself 🐝
um the doctors didn't deal with them because of "moraltiy", they did it for security. They had a guarunteed income.
the only reason that there's such a shortage of specialists is because there is such a shortage of dcotors, which is because the ama get to decide who can and can't teach medicene and so create an artifical shortage so they make more money
the only reason that there's such a shortage of specialists is because there is such a shortage of dcotors, which is because the ama get to decide who can and can't teach medicene and so create an artifical shortage so they make more money
cosmo kramer
Banned
yeah the problem is that the u.s doesnt exacxtly have a short supply of high iq people with degrees they could shuffle a great many art students into medicine instead with the iqs needed to do well in medicine
and given that u.s medicine is full of affirmatives anyway (thanks dan roodt for this expression) its hardly just for the "best minds"
and given that u.s medicine is full of affirmatives anyway (thanks dan roodt for this expression) its hardly just for the "best minds"
cosmo kramer
Banned
prob like 120+
theres a lot of dumber doctors than that but also there's a lot of bad doctors so go figa