Hi all,
Thanks to Hyrum for setting up this excellent forum for discussion. I have enjoyed reading many of your comments up to this point and look forward to responding.
As a historically staunch free market advocate I have been baffled by the seeming failure of the US "free market system" to drive down the price of health care, making it affordable to the common man.
-Of 300 million Americans 40-50 million don't have insurance many because they cannot afford it.
-The US spends a much higher percentage of its GDP on health care than any other nation.
Is a government provided health care system really better?
For anyone asking these same questions as I did I recommend you watch this report where John Stossels takes on Michael Moore over Socialized medicine, just go to this link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=aEXFUbSbg1I (John Stossel - Sick in America)
In short I agree with John Stossel's argument that Socialized medicine is not the answer, but realistically there are insurance improvements that could be made. If everyone just had catastrophic insurance and had to pay for things like physicals medicine would be much more affordable because it would be competitive and we still wouldn't have the waiting lines and inferior medicine of Canada.
I think this is a case where the markets have made a mistake in their implementation of health care. Yes markets can make mistakes to...they are just corrected a lot quicker than the alternative. Another reason why socialism sucks... the feedback isn't as fast or accurate.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Yes, brother, thanks for the link. Sounds like good logic to me. Too bad it requires more thinking than "Free Healthcare for Everyone!"
PS. John Stossel also has youtube interviews with Ron Paul.
Thanks a lot for this post, Paul, John Stossel's film was very interesting. It made me look at the health care system in a way that I never have before. You pose an excellent question: Everything is supposed to be better, faster, cheaper with the free market, so why is the healthcare system not doing this?
This topic of debate is probably the most relevent to our situation. If the democrat wins this Nov, Hillary and Obama both are going to push as hard as they can for socialized medicine. Heck, look at our governator, a "Republican" (if that name means anything anymore). We have a state of fiscal emergency in California, he has vowed never to raise taxes, and even he wants a form of socialized medicine for California. Oh, yeah, I forgot, California made a deal to put more slot machines in the casinos, so now we can afford anything.
Anyway, Remarkably I've never thought about an issue that he brings up in the video, about insurance companies not accepting people. Think about it this way: Since you are the one paying and shopping for your healthcare, it is not a question of whether the insurance company wants to pay for this cancer victim, it is a question of whether or not YOU want to.
Paul, that is an interesting idea about having everyone covered my catosrophic insurance. So certainly that would be a form of socialized medicine, right? If the government was to force people to be insured, then it seems that they would have to supply it. Althoguh is theory it does sound somewhat practical, it seems to me that more government control and intervention is rarelly the best choice.
Another thing to look at, is perhaps one reason why the system is as bad as it is, is that there is too much governemt control as is. Why do we need the FDA to spend years aproving medications? Aren't people smart enough to make wise dicisions? Why do we need the government to say who can and cant practice medicine? Also, medi care has brought a large amout of inflation to the healthcare market.
It seems that less government would help make healthcare cheaper, faster, better, but we would still have the issue of insurance dampering the effect of competition. I'm not sure what the best answer for that is. I would be intersted to hear more detail about your idea on this, Paul.
Post a Comment