Quote: (05-29-2010 10:33 PM)hydrogonian Wrote:
I assume that what you mean by that quote is that "you can't give healthcare away / socialize it and have it work out for society".
I respect the general economic philosophy in a very limited context, but, in my opinion, your quote lacks a lot of context corresponding to the issue at hand. The world is more complicated than that.
That philosophy sounds sensible, but there are are a large amount of considerations, additional to that viewpoint, which affect modern healthcare. ie: insurance in general, politics / lobbying, taxes, human rights, honest insurance coverage (meaning not denying on technicalities or selling shitty insurance to people who don't know how to evaluate it), etc...
The fact remains that, on average, healthcare in this country sucks compared to the rest of the 1st world. Whats the excuse? Not enough free market? Thats not the problem in the countries with better healthcare than ours.
Also, the majority of that 'wealth' that is created (which generally means better insurance profit margins in healthcare) generally sticks in the pockets of a few people. Is that the rationale for the noble free market philosophy in healthcare? To make profits for a few?
If your a doctor, you aren't generating wealth any differently from any other worker in the USA. Your trading labor for money.
You should be charging based on real free market rates, which no longer exist. Before insurance, all doctors made a VERY middle class income, as they couldn't make more than people could afford to pay out of pocket.
The current market is based on the market distortion caused by insurance. An insurance based system is not free market, but a type of privatized socialism.
Either make the private socialized medical system (insurance) completely under public administration, to eliminate profit exploitation in the absence of a true free market, or make it truly free market and eliminate health insurance system altogether.
Then we'll see how those six figure hospital bills, and high six figure specialist salaries, evaporate completely. Surprisingly, the only change in the overall quality of the system, from the POV of the average person, will be in the cost of care, which wold go down considerably, and the access to care, which would go up. Tuition for doctors would initially plummet, more doctors would go into medicine (which would stabilize tutiion rates via a true free market mechanism), and the supply issue would be solved.
In short, private insurance benefits the few at the great cost of the many. The system that we have now is the worst of all possibilities.
A real free market in medicine would benefit almost everyone else. The middle option is socialized medicine.
Also, in my opinion, the abuse of Randian philosophy in this country is an epidemic, and its almost becoming a cliche.
You improperly conclude that health insurance is the driving factor behind the rise in the cost of healthcare, and that it has somehow created a "bubble" in physician salaries. This is patently false.
1. Physician salaries are not as large a part of healthcare costs as you might think.
2. Relative to other costs in delivering healthcare, adjusted for inflation, physician salaries have not risen as fast as other costs.
3. Insurance DID NOT cause costs to rise, rising costs caused insurance to become more popular. As the complexity of medical procedures has increased, so has the cost of equipment and the personnel needed. You could try and pay doctors mcdonalds wages, and it still wouldn't be cheap to perform an arthroscopic appendectomy.
Go ahead, push through your plan to socialize medicine and have the government make it all better.
The result will be decreased quality, hoarding, rationing, and shortages, just like every other time this has been tried.