New, Improved Obamacare Program Released On 35 Floppy Disks

In a free market, if hospitals were not providing value for money, then people would not go to those hospitals. With enough competition, all hospitals would be forced to offer high quality at a low price to ensure economic viability until a price point is reached whereby there is a true balance between the need to run the hospital and to provide care.

We can't even know what the free market would offer - because we don't live in a state of freedom.

 

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Tell ya what Mike, I'm an Aussie, an Imported variety whose ancestors took the land from the Indigenious folk, the same as you Yanks took the Land from the Indians.
Not much we can do about all that now.
The world, humanity have come along way since the middle ages but we still have a way to go....
I see myself as slightly left of centre political wise but am not adverse to going right if a better outcome for all [not just me] is inevitable.
Universal health care covers all.
Or do you propose that those who can't fend for themselves, that have had some bad luck, that are old and/or disabled, and yes, the bludger and the hobo on the street, should go with out???
People whinge about coppers and speed cameras as impinging into others lives and costing them money...guess what??, I've been caught twice, but I also know if I obey the road rules no one will touch me.
I've been stopped by the RBT units [Random Breath Testing] for Alcohol.....always had zero count.
Now if the RBT should happen to impinge on some drunk driver tonight, and potentially stop him from crashing and killing himself or someone else, the government legislation and rules of law have worked, to all our advantages.
I live in a pretty lucky country and I also realise that some of our close neighbours are not so well off. I can't do too much about that, only society in general can.
Our bubble may burst, and maybe it won't. Our mineral wealth maybe replaced by something else...I don't really know.
It's a shame, but we don't live on planet Utopia, but I believe we are closer to Utopia then we were 60 years ago, 150 years ago, or a 1000 years ago.

If there is a better system, we will find it one day.
I believe we will get to the stars one day, but only as a united species, not just Russia, China, Australia [if we had a space industry] or the USA.
We have had international crews on the ISS every day for more then 11 years.
That has brought nations together in a limited sense.
Stellar endeavours will see that dream realised I believe...But probably not for a round 200 years.

 

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And where is your support for that claim?

I don’t know what point you are trying to make here other than Japan has a better socialized system of medicine which is something you have been consistently railing against for years in this forum.

Well for starters universal healthcare and slavery are two very separate and distinct topics. How is universal access to healthcare equate to force?

Access to universal healthcare is not in any way similar to slavery. And I guess this gets back to the notion that anything government does which you do not agree with is slavery.

And you neglected to point out that post along with your reference was debunked. It was financed and written by libertarian stooges and paid for by the Koch brothers…the very same Koch brothers whose companies have been convicted of stealing oil and polluting the environment and have spent hundreds of millions financing your ideology. The study used exaggerated gross costs and it ignored the benefits or regulation…all the money regulation saved and all the revenue created by regulation. It was like what the tobacco industry did when they paid scientists to tell people that smoking was not harmful. It was like putting your hand on the scale to get the numbers you want. It was not a legitimate academic study. It was a farce commissioned and paid for by a special wealthy interest to promulgate a lie.

One more point, Australia’s wealth is mostly derived from its natural resources. Capitalist Buddha bellies did not create all of the ore and other minerals which account for nearly 60% of Australia’s exports. God did. And Capitalists are going to make money regardless of taxation.

 

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I believe I live in a free society, governed by laws made to protect me and mine from those that may covet through greed or lack of character, what I possess

 

We were all born, the minerals and natural resources, you and me, in the belly of stars.

 

True, and to the best of my knowledge there were no capitalists involved in that process.

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Capitalists may find them, dig them up and move them from point A to point B, but they didn't create them.

 

One of the many things you keep ignoring about free markets Michael is this little thing called information. In order for free markets to work the way you think they should work, consumers need perfect information and that perfect information doesn’t exist. Consumers of healthcare services cannot make rational decisions if they don’t have access to all the relevant information required to make rational decisions and without regulation collecting perfect information becomes even more impossible.

One of the other things you continually forget is medical emergencies do not allow for a careful review of all the relevant information prior to receiving medical care. Basically what you want to do with respect to healthcare is analogous to running a factory without regulation or supervision. Six sigma (i.e. quality) production just doesn’t work that way.

 

That's a fair enough comment.

In regards to healthcare, it's so messed up, I wouldn't suggest removing the national healthcare system. There's more important things to worry about than healthcare - namely the monetary system. A simple approach would be to allow competing currencies. Then liberalize the market by removing regulation by regulation allowing the free market to step in and fill the role government has played in the past.

 

Are you kidding me? When the State forces you to pay for something, this usually means you probably didn't want it. Or guess what Joe *gasp* you'd have bought it! There'd be no need to use threat and coercion. I mean gessh, this is self evident. The State doesn't have to force people into having sex. Why? Because people want to! The State doesn't have to force people into buying food. Why? Because people want to! See the difference?

Have you ever heard the term Debt bondage or Bonded labor? It's when a person's pledges their labor or services as repayment for a loan or other debt. Now, this is a free choice. How about a Debt Slave Joe? This is when a person's labor or services is pledged by someone else and they are forced to repay a debt or loan someone took on.

Does that sound fair to you? Is is moral that someone can take out a loan, and leave their bill to someone else?

Now, lets cut through the bullshit.
Fact: The State sells a 30 year Treasury Bonds (most voters don't even know what a bond even is)
Fact: These must be paid back by Taxing the labor/transaction of workers not yet born (these are children who had no vote, no say in how their labor would be spent - welcome to Democracy; Central Bank style).
Fact: The State is obligated to use brute physical force to extract the tax from future workers to pay back the bond holders (income tax).
Fact: That's called stealing Joe. It's immoral. I'm sure you're mother taught you both that stealing and hitting was wrong.

When the State sells 30 year bonded labor to the Chinese, it pulls prosperity out of the future and give goodies to people in the present, today (See: ObamaCare). That's not right. It's immoral. But it's just too easy isn't it Joe? People can't help themselves. Particularly politicians. They are desperate to have something for free today, to buy off the voter - and to hell with their grandchildren! Thus was born - entitlements. The central banks role is to produce the debt the government needs to spend and the IRS then collects it later from the next generation of workers. Well, take a good look at those kids. Many can't find work. If they do it's part-time. Many can't leave home they're so poor. Many have resorted to prostitution. Some are selling their body organs - actual kidneys. $12,500 a kidney. The birth rate has finally stalled and is reversing. But hey, at least their grandparents got cheap subsidized medical healthcare after living the good life and not bothering to plan for retirement.

Even a farmer can tell when his/her cattle are over worked, or stressed, or starved - because at some point they are no longer able to reproduce (see: Japan, Germany, Italy, Australia and now the USA). Not being able to reproduce is a sign the herd is sick. The debt past generations have run up, all those bond sales, have come home to roost. Right now the USA is paying around $500 BILLION in interest on the debt. You don't find that perverse? Just what the hell do you think is going to happen when interest rates return to the trend line of 6-8%? Of course, that will probably be after the last of your generation have been shown the door.

You may be able to live with yourself, but I personally find this disgusting.

Oh, then please post the retraction. ALL Journal articles are published and can be critiqued. So, go on and publish the editors retraction of this article. Until then the data stands. If you don't like the authors conclusions - write to the journal.

 

I agree. As I have stated many time. The proper mix for a free society is a free-market, sound money, private property rights and law. Think of international trade. There is no 'World Police' and yet 100s of billions of dollars of trade occurs each and every day. You see, they HAVE to do business in a free-market. And they do so. Believe it or not, most people are more worried about their reputation and will agree in advance to VOLUNTARILY abide by an arbiters decision JUST TO KEEP friendly trade relations. Right down to the level of the individual. Even eBay does a lot of trade without resorting to police. It's all about reputation.

If you really felt fearful of your neighbors, you could pay for private security. But, I think you'd find in a free society, most people would be pretty wealthy ($300,000 a year on average) and disputes would be more about personal matters. My personal opinion of course is that a society where children are raised peacefully and logically - will be a very safe society indeed and wouldn't need hardly any police. Hell, in the USA, the majority of the violence is centered around black on black violence and can be found in public housing projects where drug war and gangland is synonym. In a free society - those same people would probably own pharmacies.

 

OK, so you propose a problem. AND? You and I have NO IDEA what the free market would come up with. You just simply can not know. We can't even know what things will look like in our current system - say 30 years from now. How could we know what an actual free-market would have developed into - or would develop into.

Start with hospitals. It is INSANE for some cities not to allow private hospitals to be built. It is INSANE that many cities restrict fMRI centers from opening. DOs aren't even allowed to practice medicine in Australia. You can be the best kidney transplant surgeon on the world, and you wouldn't be allowed to work in AU as a doctor. The healthcare is, next to banking, the most highly regulated industry in the world. The AMA, next to finance, gives the most political donations to KEEP things the way they are.

So, you wonder what would happen? Well, for one, perhaps everyone would have access to top-of-the-line fMRI scans every 6 months. Do you know how awesome these machines are?!? Maybe most 'emergencies' would never occur because the problem would be spotted way in advance? Maybe insurance would be cheaper for people who agreed to live healthier - meaning less stress on the system. Maybe insurance would ensuring they had competent staff at all the main hospitals - thus a well trained doctor would be staffed and on-call in case there was an emergency. Perhaps teams of doctors would work for various medical insurance companies. Maybe instead of disease-care (which is what we have now), we'd have healthcare. Maybe your doctor would pay YOU when you were sick (then he/she would have a lot of incentive to come and make sure everything was fine with you).

We simply can not know what a true free-market would develop to deal with the information problem.
Other than we can be sure, it'd be 1 million times better than what we have today. Which is self-evident. You can't do any worse than what's present as that's your starting point. It means as competition and different ideas are trialed you develop a better, cheaper, more robust and more efficient system. If not, if what we have now is as good as it gets (and it's far from it) then that's what the free market would settle on. But, that's not what would happen.

 

Well that's not very interesting at all. So it's just flat avoidance then? Sad. Oh well.

 

still missing the point.







The point is that the drive for profit negatively impacts paitents well being and still lying about there not being a free market. I guess you just like people dying in exchange for poor goods and services. its the capitalists dream

 

Yeah, I know you find your fantasies and alternate realities much more interesting.

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You are basically ignoring what I said. In order for free markets to be efficient, knowledge, information must be perfect and that perfect knowledge doesn’t exist in healthcare markets. If buyers and sellers don’t have the knowledge needed, the time needed, or the emotional ability to render a rational decision with respect to healthcare, you cannot reasonably expect them to make a rational free market decision and the market becomes inefficient as is the case in the US.

And we do know what free markets would come up with, we see it in 3rd world countries and we see it in the US. In your idealized world, the world is somehow free of corruption. That has never happened and it is likely to never happen. The world has never been free from corruption, it likely never will be.

As I said earlier what you are trying to do with healthcare is analogous to trying to produce quality (Six Sigma Quality) product without regulation and oversight. That has never happened and it never will. Regulation is necessary as much as it displeases you. Just as factories cannot consistently produce quality products without regulation, healthcare systems cannot consistently produce quality healthcare services and products without regulation.

 

The state in the western world is supposed to represent the collective will of its people. The power of the state is derived from the people it represents. Taxation could not exist without the will and approval of the citizenry…without the will of the people. The state could not exist without the will of the people.

Additionally, we are not talking about sex or buying food, we are talking about being responsible. Our jails are full of people who were not responsible. That is why regulation is need, to make known what is responsible and to ensure that citizens act accordingly. That is why states have laws with respect to auto insurance...to ensure citizens are being fiscally responsible. And the same is true with healthcare. If you don’t’ have healthcare insurance or a few million in your pocketbook you are being fiscally imprudent.

You keep clinging to this false notion that debt is bonded labor. I suggest you look up the definition of bonded labor.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bonded labor


“Noun 1. bonded labor - a practice in which employers give high-interest loans to workers whose entire families then labor at low wages to pay off the debt; the practice is illegal in the United States”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage#Americas

“According to the Anti-Slavery Society:
Pawnage or pawn slavery is a form of servitude akin to bonded labor under which the debtor provides another human being as security or collateral for the debt. Until the debt (including interest on it) is paid off, the creditor has the use of the labor of the pawn.[12]”

http://www.antislavery.org/english/slavery_today/bonded_labour.aspx
“Bonded labour
Bonded labour is the most widely used method of enslaving people around the world. A person becomes a bonded labourer when their labour is demanded as a means of repayment for a loan. The person is then tricked or trapped into working for very little or no pay, often for seven days a week. The value of their work becomes invariably greater than the original sum of money borrowed. Often the debts are passed on to next generations.”

Yeah let’s cut through the demagogic bullshit. Debt is in no way similar to “bonded labor”. Requiring people to buy healthcare insurance or auto liability insurance is not slavery in any way shape or form as you have repeatedly claimed.

The US debt problem is ironically a problem that is mitigated with universal healthcare, per the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. So if you care about the US debt situation then you should be for Obamacare.

 

I didn't know you delved into faux phrenology!

Oh well. Anyway, you're a liar and sort of ethically bent. I guess that's what this is about, really. Cheerio!

 

LOL

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If you only had a brain...

 

That is simply insane: there is no such "free market" in hospital care; there will never be, because the concept is a ridiculous fantasy.

The basic situation is as follows: the people receiving medical care are usually not going to be exchanging money for value, because they are sick or injured or old or children or malnourished or pregnant or ignorant or confused or comatose and like that, and such people usually don't have money, and if they have money they don't have medical expertise enough to evaluate their care. When the ostensible customers can't recognize the value, and don't have the money, an exchange of value for money is not among the options. When on top of that they can't refuse the deal, we not only have market breakdown but actual abuse. So no market, see? You can't have one, sorry - reality prevents.

No, it doesn't. The list of things States make people pay for that everyone wants is long, and obvious. In democratically governed places, that's why the State is commissioned to make everyone pay for them - because everyone, or at least everyone sane, wants them, but no one can afford to pay the freeloader's share or afford to screen the freeloaders out. Sewer systems, for example. Most public health measures. And yes, hospitals.

 

How about, for fun, we try something slightly different this time? I'm going to try to do this quickly, let me know if and where, a mistake was made (this is going back a LONG time - but, you'll get the point here in a minute)

1) You have not provided proof that "The drive for profit negatively impacts paitents well being" occurs in free-market. We should probably define a free-market. A free-market is not a 'free-for-all'. It isn't one where there is no Law (barbarism). It's were any person is FREE to offer goods and services to any other else. Thus, in a free-market a person could act as a doctor, providing a service, without the need of a medical certification. Of course, if you lied and said you were certified, that would be against the law and not be allowed to legally occur in a free-market. A free-market also does not use the State regulate the market. This doesn't mean that the free-market is unregulated. It means that private groups of individuals collectively regulate themselves privately. An example of the free market could be this conversation. We are interacting voluntarily. Yet, there are rules to this website and we agree to abide by arbitration when entering a thread. No need of the State in this case. We're all *GASP* adults and can *GASP* manage to organize ourselves without *GASP* using the threat of a gun in one another's face.

2) So, let's go back to this statement, as I'd like to hear some other people comment on it: "The drive for profit negatively impacts patients well being occurs in free-market.

Our goal, is to determine if this is a logical statement or sophistry (as I suspect it is).

Major premise: All businesses driven to create a profit, negatively-impact their customers well being. [All profit-making-Businesses are Dodgy.]
Minor premise: All hospitals are part of the healthcare industry. [All Hospitals are Businesses.]
Conclusion: All hospitals, negatively-impact their customers well being. [All Hospitals are Dodgy].

Major premise: All B are D. (MaP)
Minor premise: All H are B. (SaM)
Conclusion: All H are D. (SaP)

So we all agree thus far? Is there some glaring error that's been made?

OK, I submit that the argument is unsound as the major premise is falsified. The fact is there are numerous of profit-driven business (examples: Apple, Toyota, Starbucks) that provide customers with products that do not negatively impact them as evidenced by the fact these businesses ARE STILL IN BUSINESS.

I would further argue that in a free-market (of which we do not live in) the evidence clearly shows that unregulated voluntary choice of trade ensures that companies that provide a product unwanted by the market will cease to offer said product to the market - even if sold at a PROFIT LOSS (see: Zune). And, let's stop and think about the function of profit for a minute. If a company sells a product at a loss, in a capitalistic market, it will eventually go bankrupt. That IS one of the roles of profit. In a free-market, any hospital attempting to sell a product (healthcare) to a customer (patient) that is not desired by the public, will lose money to competitors (not make a profit), and eventually go bankrupt, and be purchased by those competitors. The fact is, people don't lend or invest 100s of millions of dollars in a hospital that is (a) going to go bankrupt because (b) no one wants their services. Thus, the hospital must BOTH make a profit AS WELL AS provide a valued service to the market.

Free-market capitalism, with law, sound-money, and private property rights is the most efficient means of clearing the market of hospitals that only attempt to do one and not the other. That is, to either ONLY make a profit or ONLY provide the best service. By having competition a sustainable balance is achieved. Which is why, when the central bank through funny money printing or artificially manipulating interest rates (price of money) or the government through gun-in-your-face regulation skews the market, profit can no longer signal to a free-market and we end up with overly priced, crappy healthcare. You may think ObamaCare is solving the problem - but it's doing exactly the opposite. And, while it would be nice to have the bestest service with endless goodies, in the 'real' world - there actually are a limited number of goods and services, which is why, to be sustainable, businesses need to make profit - including hospitals. I know this last point must bunch the panties of progressives who live in a world of endless supply, but, this is a fact. The environment itself is limited (if you like, you could think: there is only so many carbon atoms).

There is no such thing as TBTF in free-market capitalism, we don't live in a free market and we do not use sound-money. By turning to the very thing that's causing this mess, to fix this mess - we will have a bigger mess. In this case, it's the babyboomers doing exactly what they've always done. Taking from their children and giving to themselves. THEY are the benefactors of ObamaCare because they were able to live their lives, with good insurance and paying out of pocket when minor injuries occur. Now that they are entering a time in their lives where each and every one of them may consume over a MILLION dollars in disease-care (Heart attacks cost a lot of money - and unlike in the past, we're pretty good and fixing people, thus, they can occur many multiple of times. Adults with sever dementia can live for decades - that's very expensive.). ObamaCare is the Babyboomers doing what they do best - as we will come to see.