Socialized medicine controls of treatments offered

[chef_NU]

Dude, any system that lacks a dynamic tension between competing interests will eventually decline into neopotism and favoritism. Do you think the sons of John D. Rockefeller were ever concerned about working 14/6 shifts at textile mills? Hell no, they were deciding which Ivy had the best skirt to chase. Goverments have no monopoly, so to speak, on corruption and cronyism.

Right. And corruption and cronysim lead to inefficiency. Private firms that descend into such policies will ultimately fail in a competitive market.

I don't know if you're talking to me here, but I don't have a defined basis for my morality. It would require me to develop an algorithm that, frankly, I don't have the patience for. It's much simpler for me to avoid dwelling in the abstract and instead try to be a pragmatist.

Well my advice is: get a defined basis. Any sort of argument comes from a defined set of presumptions. It's not dwelling in the abstract, it's having a foundation for your ideas. If you are not on the same page with your presumptions, how can you expect other people to accept your arguments?

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[Gut Shot]

Right. And corruption and cronysim lead to inefficiency. Private firms that descend into such policies will ultimately fail in a competitive market.

The operative word here is "competitive." There is a tendency for companies to either go out of business or merge, and monopolies or colluding oligopolies are tough to break without regulatory oversight. Dynamic tension, my man, dynamic tension. It made Charles Atlas famous, so it's good enough for me.

If you are not on the same page with your presumptions, how can you expect other people to accept your arguments?

I expect folks to accept my arguments based on the validity of my arguments. After about 600 ethics seminars in med school, I came to a very dramatic conclusion: morality and ethics is a messy business, and you have examine each dilemma individually. I don't articulate the foundation of my beliefs because it's so loaded with exceptions and nuance as to be pointless. I mean, I could say "honesty is usually the best policy" or "do unto others except in an S&M bar" but where would that get me?

 

[QuikClot]

When you look at the minimalist perspective, I would agree with you that the "inconsistent starting point" is a legitimate objection. I don't think, however that it is grounds for chronic social welfare. And I don't think that it completely abolishes the notion of a right to personal property. I would be open to the idea of government intervention early in life. For example, I wouldn't have a significant problem with paying taxes to seriously revamp the public school system; I think that a goal of government is to provide a high-quality standardized education system. I also would consider the implementation of something like universal health care for those under 18. Granted, with any government program, you run into the problem of corruption, special interest, and political entrenchment. I suppose that it is worth it in this case. The idea is to give everyone at least a semblance of equal opportunity -- but to an extent.

Here's the catch. We can give you a chance. But if you screw up, that's it. Given that government provides reasonable equality of opportunity (of course, it will never provide a perfect system, but it can do an acceptable job), there is no reason for others to fund a safety net for adults who just don't make it. And if you look at government spending, this is where it goes. What are the top 3 government expenditures in the US? Defense, social security, and medicare. All are essentially the pork projects of special interests (defense contractors, the old, and the infirm). I'm not saying that these groups don't need this money. After all, defense contractors need business, the old need money, and the old and infirm need medical care. I'm just saying they don't have a right to these things. And I don't think there's any good argument why they should have a right to these things. Spare me the sob story, humanistic perspective. I really don't care.

So, yes. Let me revise. Government should protect the right to personal property, and it should also do its best to provide equal opportunity as well. However, let me make the distinction that equal opportunity and social welfare programs are two completely different ideas. I suppose that in my previous posts I somewhat disregarded the equal opportunity function. Mark my words, I think it is extremely legitimate. As I like to say, socialism treats the symptom, education treats the disease. My view is basically give them a shot, but there are no second chances.

Bump.

I have a lot of work and application stuff right now, but I intend to come back to this post when I have more time.

I'm glad you think that "Government should protect the right to personal property, and it should also do its best to provide equal opportunity as well." That's a good revision. The effort to provide equal opportunity to everyone could carry us a long way together, even if we continue to disagree about "social welfare." There is so much to do to get America to equality of opportunity that we could strive for that for the rest of our natural lives and never get beyond it to the true welfare state.

 

[chef_NU]

Perhaps I'm a cynic, but look at it this way. If you compare this year to next year, about the same number of people are going to get sick and hurt. The same number of people are going to show up in doctor's offices and ER's, and the same number are going to require hospitalization. Doctors are going to order the same tests and scans, and prescribe roughly the same therapies. The big question is "who pays for all this"?

The cure for bleeding is to stop the bleeding, not open the wound wider hoping that the body will have extra-incentive to stop bleeding on its own. Likewise, I just cannnot fundamentally believe that the solution to out-of-control costs is to make things more costly for individuals. Sorry, but the "trust us, costs will decline" line just doesn't fly. Doctors are still going to follow evidence-based guidelines for diagnosis and treatment, and without massive reduplication of services there will be no competition to speak of.

Unless I missed it, the authors of the site cannot point to any functioning free-market medical system in existence. I suspect there is a reason for this. I also suspect that the mantra to privatize and deregulate will yield the same results that it has in our little third world experiments.

Take Chile, for example:

"In 1973, the year the general [Augusto Pinochet] seized power, Chile's unemployment rate was cut by 4.3 per cent. In 1983, after 10 years of free-market modernisation, unemployment reached 22 per cent. Real wages declined by 40 per cent under military rule. In 1970, 20 per cent of Chile's population lived in poverty.

By 1990, the year 'President' Pinochet left office, the number of destitute people had doubled to 40 per cent. Quite a miracle.

Pinochet did not destroy Chile's economy all by himself. He had the help of academia's most brilliant minds: a gaggle of Milton Friedman's trainees, the Chicago Boys. Under their spell, the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed union bargaining, privatised the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and business profits, slashed public employment, privatised 212 industries and 66 banks and ran a fiscal surplus.

Free of the dead hand of bureaucracy, taxes and unions, the country took a giant leap... into bankruptcy and depression. After nine years of Chicago-style economics, Chile's industry keeled over and died.

In 1982 and 1983, GDP dropped by 19 per cent. Blood and glass littered the laboratory floor, yet the mad scientists of Chicago declared a success. The US State Department concluded: 'Chile is a casebook study in sound economic management.' It was Friedman who himself coined the phrase 'Miracle of Chile'. Friedman's sidekick, economist Art Laffer, preened that Pinochet's Chile was, 'a showcase of what supply-side economics can do'.

It certainly was. More exactly, Chile was a showcase of deregulation gone beserk. The Chicago Boys persuaded the junta that removing restrictions on the nation's banks would free them to attract foreign capital to fund industrial expansion. Pinochet sold off the state banks - at a 40 per cent discount against book value.

They fell into the hands of two conglomerate empires, controlled by speculators Javier Vial and Manuel Cruzsat. Using these banks, Vial and Cruzat bought up manufacturers, then leveraged these assets with loans from foreign investors panting for their piece of the state giveaway.

By 1982, the pyramid finance game was up. The Vial and Cruzat 'Grupos' defaulted. Industry shut down, private pensions became worthless, and the currency swooned. Riots and strikes by a population too desperate to fear bullets forced Pinochet to boot out his beloved Chicago experimentalists.

Reluctantly, the General restored the minimum wage and collective bargaining. Having previously decimated the ranks of state employees, he authorised a programme to create 500,000 jobs.

Chile was pulled from depression by dull old Keynesian remedies, all Franklin Roosevelt, zero Margaret Thatcher. (The junta even instituted what is today South America's only law restricting the flow of foreign capital.)

New Deal tactics rescued Chile from the panic of 1983, but the nation's long-term recovery and growth is the result of (cover the children's ears) a large dose of socialism."

All this said, I would be TOTALLY in favor if giving such a free-market system a 10 year trial. If I am wrong, then great! If not, then perhaps we can put the whole thing to rest once and for all.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007764

I found this article interesting because it seems to support the idea that yes, instability arises during economic reconstruction, but said instability is not necessarily a product of a flaw in the system you try to implement. I think that the economic freedom index is also important because it demonstrates that economic liberalization does indeed bring about prosperity. In addition, it shows that the US is still far from the top. We still have a lot of work to do in decreasing the size of the government, increasing toleration, and cracking down on corruption and entitlement programs.