Poll A "Free Market" System is Not Sensible

Don't the majority of Americans support the Affordable Care Act?

 

Not in the least. The initial point I made was that economies that utilize more socialist policies are always less efficient and have less capital (e.g., North Korea, Cuba, etc.), and that is true.

In reference specifically to socialized medicine, mine certainly did.

If you say so. lol Anything you disagree with is going to be a "strawman" argument to you.

Then we need to increase the efficiency of our system, not decrease it.

Who is truly "socialist?" The fact is that the government in Cuba collects and distributes much more of the wealth, and disposable income is almost non-existent there. People still drive cars made in the 1950's in Cuba. Degrees of "socialism" I suppose.

Splitting hairs. Government mandates and programs are often part of America's problem (in Health Care and otherwise). More of the problem does not equal the solution.

Yep, and I don't want the wait lists you have on your side of the pond. Also, having universal access to Health Care doesn't mean every last thing is approved or covered. We have certainly seen that with Medicare on this side of the pond.

 

Free markets are corrupt.
Governments are corrupt.

If applied properly they can balance each other.

 

With reagrds to the 1950's cars still in wide use in Cuba perhaps that has something to do with the trade embargo against Cuba.

Hyopthetical scenario, which would a person who needed treatment prefer

1.>Being on a waiting list
2.>Not having treatment because they couldn't afford it.

I suspect that most if not all would choose option 1. The US system is only great if you can afford it.

 

And you are still yet to provide any systematic evidence of a correlation, much less causation, despite being prompted numerous times. You gave a superficial opinion piece from a magazine and hoped that would provide sufficient perceived authority that people would accept an otherwise unsubstantiated blanket statement.

Which was indeed a strawman, designed to deflect from the above. I gave an example of a socialist policy not only working well, but which could very reasonably be said to be more effective than its private sector counterparts. You had no strong response so sidetracked from the point.

Agreed, but not at the expense of the principle which makes it worth having in the first place. Healthcare is and should always be about compassion, valuing all human life for it's inherent worth, not just that which can increase profit margins. Efficiency for a few is not the purpose of healthcare, nor is it why doctors take the hippocratic oath. That we can not only provide the service cheaper, but with better overall results and without prejudice matters.

No one is truly socialist, no one is truly capitalist, which is exactly the point I have been making. Nonetheless the G7 do in fact consist essentially of social democracies, most of which rely far less on the free market for essential services than the US does. Again, provide a case or evidence that socialist policies are demonstratably linked to economic failure other than pointing to the sort of cherry picked examples we could trade all day.

True, sometimes we do have waiting lists, but don't let that detract you from the fact that since the inception of the NHS mean life expectancy in the UK has consistently outstripped that in the US. Of course this is an oversimplification, but the fact that the population level trend is replicable worldwide when comparing nationalised healthcare with privatised in otherwise comparable socio economic nations is telling. The US with it's scale and resources should be leading the field, not following whilst boasting about how well privileged parts of the population are treated.

 

Can't a socialist (if I'm allowed to use that word) country like Cuba develop it's own automobiles? They obviously know enough about cars to keep them running for decades.

Treatment can be denied in a socialized Health Care delivery system as well. So, you may not really have a choice in that case.

In the United States, we have Medicaid, Medicare, Hospital financial assistance (encouraged by tax breaks), the Affordable Care Act exchange, and employer group health insurance (although that is becoming less common due to the Affordable Care Act exchange). The idea that most people cannot afford Health Coverage in America is propaganda, although some people with higher incomes get the shaft from the Affordable Care Act exchange due to extremely high deductibles.

An opinion piece from a published PhD in economics. I value his "superficial" opinion piece over yours any day... lol

America leads the way in research (primarily financed by "capitalist" or "free market" elements of our system), and the entire world benefits from it. We need less socialism and less government mandates relating to Health Care reimbursement, not more.

Well, do you find it "compassionate" when the socialized Health Care system on your side of the pond denies coverage of treatment to subscribers?

So, we're not allowed to provide examples? lol And, any examples I provide of nations, with primarily socialist policies, that have produced weak economies (or one's that have completely collapsed) are irrelevant because it's not the socialist policies that are the cause? It's a coincidence? America's fault? Capitalist pigs keeping socialist brothers down?

The point of the thread was to express an opinion that a free market system was not "sensible." To what degree nations are "socialist" or "capitalist" isn't really so important to the original message. What policies facilitate more capital, more innovation, and more opportunity seems more important to the discussion. Western Europe was rebuilt after WWII implementing free market economic systems. Eastern Europe adopted primarily socialist economic systems. I wonder why one fared better than the other. Since you're the causation guy, maybe you can shed some light.

Lifestyle and personal choice have something to do with our mortality rate. Socialist policies that inject more inefficient government oversight, rationing of care, and lower wages for Health Care professionals will not fix that.

 

Sure, some. But, the Affordable Care Act exchange offers health plans that are tailored to a subscriber's level of income. It's the closest we have ever come to "socialized" medicine. A significant percentage of Americans that are uninsured are people who choose to pay a tax penalty instead of sign up for insurance through the exchange because they don't think the benefits are worth the cost. It's a huge gamble though because if something catastrophic happens they will end up facing bankruptcy.

Many Americans don't like the idea of socialized Medicine because of the potential wait lists, inefficiency of the U.S. government (which would be responsible for delivering Health Care to over 300 million people), lack of confidence in the government to authorize necessary treatment, and potential non-covered services (which we see with our socialized health coverage for the elderly). Most Americans know they would be sacrificing something if the U.S. went to a socialized system.

I believe the solution to America's increasing Health Care costs is to eliminate insurance companies as the "middle man." American insurance companies find loop holes all the time to avoid paying hospitals for services. They also negotiate discounts for the approved services. And, the Affordable Care Act has changed reimbursement in such a way that many patients are stuck owing a much higher percentage of the insurance companies' "allowed amounts" (which patients don't always pay). All of this results in significant monthly loses for hospitals and probably bears the biggest responsibility for the rising cost of Health Care in the U.S. Instead of paying insurance companies for coverage, I think consumers should be paying monthly fees directly to hospitals and groups of private practices kind of like a gym membership fee. The concept is called "Direct Pay Health Care," and it has been tried in isolated areas of the U.S. with success.

http://www.netquote.com/health-insurance/news/health-care-membership-fees

You could maintain Medicaid or charity programs for the impoverished and handicapped. It is unlikely to be implemented on large scale though because of the insurance lobby in the U.S, but if you cut out all of the costs associated with dealing with the insurance companies, it would reduce the cost of Health Care for providers and patients. The major downside is that it would phase out millions of jobs in both the insurance industry and the business sector of the Health Care industry.

 

And yet the fact remains you have more health inequalities and lower life expectancy, deny far more life saving care and for ethically less sound reasons. Privatised healthcare doesn't deliver on a national scale, never really has, but again, strawman. That Nationalised healthcare works is still something you haven't addressed. A socialist policy that doesn't fail or lead to national failure. More deflection.

Still a superficial opinion piece, no matter who wrote it. I guarantee his PhD thesis reads nothing like it. Please tell me he has a nobel prize, it will still be a superficial opinion piece.

Really? Pretty sure my example referred to healthcare delivery, not sure why you keep deflecting.

Actually I am sure, you have no counter.

I don't, but we do it far less often and never on the basis of someones income , we don't have "subscribers", we have patients. Hence our life expectancy being higher. Counter this point or concede your argument is weak.

Provide examples by all means, but relying on specific examples to support a systematic trend is poor debating, just like you repeated strawmen and misdirections. I could point to dozens of failed states that relied on some version of the capitalist model, I choose not to because I understand it would be meaningless. Unless you can establish a statistical relationship between socialist policies and economic failure you simply aren't supporting your case.

My counter is that this isn't necessarily true, socialist policies can match or outperform capitalist counterparts both economically and in terms of productive outcomes. Such an argument only requires one solid example as I am supporting the negative hypothesis. I have given you one you can't refute. @Australis has happily provided far better, extrapolating my example across the globe and showing how nationalised healthcare consistently outperforms private on the country level. You have been given chance after chance to provide a strong response failed to do so.

Americans do not consistently make those lifestyle choices across the population in a vacuum, there are underlying reasons and any unless you intend to suggest that those trends in lifestyle choices are simply the result of statistical noise (they aren't) then any continuation on this line will be hindered by the fact you are arguing in favour of a system whilst simultaneously making the claim it is the cause for poor health.

I'll help you out though, public healthcare does have a role here, one which is well known and acknowledged.

Treatment for profit incentivises healthcare providers operating at the treatment level, which is poor healthcare, treatment at a loss incentivises preventative measures. Again, you should be well aware of this if you have the background you claim. Far more lives are saved by health education than operations, which has long been one of the accepted reasons for the success of public healthcare which invests far more in preventing people requiring treatment in the first place.

And, no, public sector healthcare does not introduce more rationing of care or inefficiency, that's the whole point, that's why it performs better, something you keep trying to deflect from.

The take home message is simple, either refute the success of socialised healthcare, provide a strong statistical case in favour of your claim, or concede the point.

Please do not, however, continue wasting everyones' time with paper thin strawman arguments, cherry picked examples and unsubstantiated claims.

 

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1608672675834852

 

I'm just glad air is free. Hopefully forever.

 

Regardless, that "superficial" opinion piece is more relevant than anything you have posted here. lol

It's entirely relevant that America's privatized Health Care industry benefits Health Care for the rest of the world by investing in most of the world's research. As a result, America has contributed to improving Health Care in other delivery systems as well. There wouldn't be as much money to invest in research in a socialized system...

I will just have to take your word for it that denial of treatment occurs less often in socialized systems.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/hea...f-cancer-patients-to-be-denied-treatment.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-36138750

I know. The fact that nations that implement more elements of "socialism" into their economy have consistently had weaker economies with less disposable income is really just an illusion. lol

If you're referring to the image @Australis posted showing no end dates of socialized medicine, that is because the longer a social program is implemented into a system, the more people grow to depend on it. It's exactly the same reason why so many American Republicans were unwilling to repeal the Affordable Care Act. A large number of Americans depend on it now since it has been ingrained in our society for 8 long years, and Republicans know that if they eliminated it overnight the free market wouldn't also have an alternative ready overnight. The Affordable Care Act has driven up the cost of private plans outside of the exchange.

Oh, but it is relevant. Here is just one example that American liberals like to pounce on all the time...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160202090811.htm

Here is another one (obesity rates)...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...0px-Obesity_country_comparison_-_path.svg.png

The health insurance industry in the United States has an incentive to catch medical conditions early as well because treatment often becomes more expensive to cover down the road. I have never heard of a routine office visit being denied by an American insurance company.

Then to what would you attribute the wait lists in socialized delivery systems?

If you feel I have wasted your time, you're invited to stop reading and responding to my posts.

 

Then why can't you make use of that research to improve your own health delivery? Companies operating in the US do generate a lot of research money, sure, but per capita, South Korea and Switzerland both invest more in research, the only reason the US "leads" is scale, whilst on delivery it follows.

Newspaper articles have been telling us the NHS is in crisis since the 1940s, it sells papers . Yes we are currently having a problem with funding, but that it due to cuts, carried out by a conservative government, who have apologised for the consequences of cutting that pubic sector money

Whether it will be here in it's current form in ten years remains to be seen, but of course more people go without adequate healthcare under a private system. They aren't turned away, they simply don't turn up because they can't afford the cover and go elsewhere or do without. You've already told us yourself that medicaid is a subpar system which costs lives. Based on the figures I'm inclined to believe you, but that shouldn't be taken as indicative of all public healthcare, merely what it looks like when it's halfhearted, underfunded and intended only as a backup for a perceived underclass.

And still, you make this claim without evidence. Until you do I think we can consider that particular avenue of discussion dead. I genuinely don't want to keep going around in circles.

No actually, I was referring to the image which compared life expectancies and how far the US lags behind pretty much every major country with socialised healthcare. Ultimately the purpose of healthcare is to improve the health of the nation, not to make a profit or be efficient. When countries socialise healthcare clinical outcomes improve. That is the measure of success, not how profitably they can be processed.

What is relevant?, I stated it can't be down to statistical noise, it isn't.

Gun crime, whilst tragic, does not significantly affect your life expectancy figures, this however does....

Completey agree, but Americans do not on aggregate randomly happen to live less healthy lifestyles without there being reasons. Ask yourself why obesity rates are so high and this will start to make sense

A major part of the reason is the role public healthcare has in preventative measures and education. We see that as part of the role of a health system, whereas private healthcare tends to take the narrower view of healthcare as treating an illness. I'm not talking about "early detection", I'm taking about programs which play a role in lifestyle change across the nation and influence health related behaviours. Investing in such programs reduces mental health problems, heart disease, metabolic disorders, cancers. Catching it early is not the same thing, treating at the most profitable point is nowhere near as good as never having to treat at all, not unless you perceive the purpose of healthcare being the profit margin.

Waiting lists happen in every system, they should not be a measure of success. Success is measured by saving lives and socialised healthcare consistently does that more effectively.

Sure, the NHS isn't perfect, nor is any other system and I'd love to get those waiting lists down, but ultimately healthcare is about the end result, not the wait. You can't get away from the fact socialised healthcare delivers the end result more effectively than any other system we've seen.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but you seem to be arguing under a false premise that the US performs well on healthcare, that it is the benchmark to which others aspire. On the contrary it underperforms quite badly by comparison to its peers and I take no pleasure in saying that, it isn't about scoring points.

I genuinely believe the US with its' resources could be doing a far better job at looking after it's citizens and you seem to be equating universal healthcare with your experiences of medicaid. We aren't comparing private providers with medicaid (quite likely you are right and medicaid is a bungled mess), we are comparing them with the socialised healthcare systems around the world which really do better at meeting health outcomes.

Why you believe the US couldn't deliver adequate public healthcare when so many other countries do I can't say, but the point still stands that public healthcare is an example of a socialist policy which consistently works in practise. Personally I suspect it could be done, I have more faith in your citizens than you do, but that is beside the point. Whether it could or will ever be applied to the US it has been shown to work time and again around the world.

 

Some do but I suspect most of them are retired and don't know what it's actually like. Assuming those who gripe about it are telling the truth, on either side.

 

My two cents, others' pennies may be different but throw them all into this big jar known as "the swear jar" "democracy":

We know that overeating, too many processed foods, being sedentary, side-effects from any number of drugs (never mind misdiagnoses or insurance companies paying for cheaper drugs only where the more expensive ones don't cause the weight gain the cheaper drugs can), genetic predisposition, and other factors - of which most of those we cannot directly control due to various constraints, and also because most of us don't eat fast food on a regular basis - which also explains fast food's slumping figures (for which automation will become a moot point later on).

I've not read of people being denied office visits, but many of us did read around 2010 about the newborn baby denied heart surgery due to "preexisting conditions".

But you will also find people who try to get preventative treatments but are always turned down... then the inevitable "what I got turned down for is now much worse" and they then pay for it. Why? Their own procedures and thresholds, many of which do make a reasonable sense, were determined by other factors we're not considering.

 

It all routes back to cost, and some of that cost is funding that all important research. When American companies develop new technology or medications, nations with socialized health delivery systems force the American companies to sell the product at mandated rates. The American consumer subsidizes (for lack of a better word) the difference. There are of course other reasons for the rising cost of Health Care in the U.S., not the least of which being the cost of dealing with insurance carriers.

Sure thing.

I said Medicare is a subpar system that is inefficiently run and costs dollars (I never said lives, although it probably does have something to do with our lower life expectancy). Medicaid can certainly be costly for providers, but not on the same level. There are far more Medicare subscribers than Medicaid subscribers. Medicaid is also run on the state level where Medicare is run on the federal level.

It says the American government doesn't really have the systems in place to administer a socialized delivery system to well over 300 million Americans (even if that is what the American consumer wanted).

Who would? History is our evidence.

Efficiency is definitely one measure of success. Wait lists in socialized delivery systems certainly arn't an indicator of efficiency.

It comes down to choice. American consumers have all the resources they need to educate themselves on nutrition, and there are gyms on every block in major cities.

It's just a redistribution of "success." The American consumer is often not interested in sitting on a wait list for months (or sometimes even years) for specialized treatment.

I believe America could improve it's results without the sacrifices involved with socialized medicine.

I didn't hand out any grades on performance, but I definitely trust providers within my own network more than I would any Health Care professionals "across the pond." I wouldn't trade my choices and my access within my network for anything Europe could offer.

I absolutely agree that the U.S. could be doing better. However, I also think the American government's inefficiency in operating social programs like Medicare is a relevant consideration when thinking about how it would manage a social program that encompasses the entirety of America's 300 million + population.

It doesn't work the way most Americans are accustomed to accessing Health Care. You start limiting the American consumer's choice of providers and put them on wait lists, and it's going to piss a lot of people off. And then you inject "non-covered" services into the mix (like Medicare), and you will see even more pissed off people. I believe America can improve it's delivery system without resorting to a socialized delivery system.

 

My mistake

Neither did any of those countries in the first instance, nonetheless the transition invariably results in improved health outcomes. I do believe America is up to the task, in fact I find it hard to believe there is any reason the US should be so less capable than all those countries which blazed the trail and showed this works. On the contrary I suspect the difficulties would lie more in the public consciousness, the focus on individuality, even where it becomes self destructive.

You run the world's largest military (which has traditionally been a major influence on healthcare systems), much of the expertise required to manage such large scale projects is already right there. What is required is the public support to make it happen.

Again, until you can substantiate that it's simply you making an assertion many historians would disagree with. I happen to know a published PhD historian who might have a slightly more nuanced view.

No, it is a measure of success in business, in healthcare it is simply a means to an end. That end is saving lives and is the measure by which we work. I'm sorry to seem like I'm hammering this point but it really can't be overstated, the most cost efficient system in the world is useless if it doesn't deliver on clinical outcomes. all the evidence suggests that the world's most prominent example of a private healthcare system is consistently outperformed by it's socialist counterparts in countries which by all rights shouldn't be able to compete. Maybe that system could be improved to the point where it matched but we are yet to see such a large scale example and even if we did, it would still be an inherently multi tier system which did not treat people as equals.

No one is, those lists are typically due to government underspending, there's a reason they get steadily longer throughout terms of conservative government and shorter under labour ones. The problem there isn't socialism, it is political parties ideologically opposed to it holding the purse strings. Again, Jeremy Hunt, an avowed conservative, this week publicly apologised for the effect cutting that spending has had on performance and the lives that have been lost as a result.

Nonetheless the purpose of government policy should be to improve the welfare of it's citizens, not to place value on certain groups at the expense of others. Where inequalities exist (for whatever reason) the role of responsible government is to decrease, not exacerbate it.

As it stands, there really aren't any, that's my point. Waiting lists exist, but overall public healthcare stands a better chance of keeping you alive and for longer.

Even though those socialist systems across the pond (and elsewhere around the world - it's not just Europe) are almost universally acknowledged to deliver better outcomes?

Even though those countries who have public healthcare consistently have healthier populations?

 

Federal government employees in the U.S. are not at all treated like military personnel. They are coddled by comparison.

But many economists would agree with.

I thought you didn't value PhD's, nobel prize winners, and the like? Or, is that only relevant in instances where they support your views?

I don't see how you can possibly say that efficiency isn't part of the equation in Health Care. Is efficiency not important in the emergency room? Providers need to be efficient when a person's life depends on it. The business side of the Health Care industry needs to be efficient because lack of efficiency in business processes/managing reimbursement can raise the cost of Health Care. Efficiency is definitely an important aspect of Health Care.

Then America should trail blaze that path, and remove inefficient government mandates from the system, instead of settling on a socialized delivery system.

• Waiting lists
• Lack of choice in providers
• Non-covered services

I remember when my family was in Ireland for my nephew's wedding, my sister fell and broke her wrist on a curb. She went to a local ER, and they applied a cast that was much smaller and less supportive than the type of cast they would normally apply in an American ER. A cost saving measure perhaps? It wasn't providing my sister's wrist sufficient support, and when she got back to the states, she had to go back to the ER to get a real cast. I realize this is an isolated incident, and it certainly didn't cost my sister her life, but I have never heard of an American emergency room fucking up something as basic as a cast. It makes me wonder what other things they could have screwed up.

Also, my cousin is married to a German heart surgeon. He blasts the German Health Care system all the time and claimed there was medical equipment he was forced to use that was held together by duck tape because they just didn't have the same kind of funding that an American hospital would. Another isolated case, I know, but I would not be more inclined to subject myself to a Health Care system that is expected to do more with less.

The current state of America's Health Care system definitely needs improvements, as does the public's responsibility for their own personal health, but my provider network hasn't let me down yet where treatment is concerned. I'm good with it. I would like to see the American Health Care system strive to improve without the restrictions of socialized medicine.