The Myth Of Free-Market Healthcare

[Winchester]

[quote name='Jesus_lol' timestamp='1300505479' post='2221667']
you say "when medical care is free [should be "available"] more people will use it" like it is a bad thing. that's the freaking point.
[/quote]
It is available, now. People have bags of free medicine, which they often misuse, sell or don't use at all. Our health problems are not due to a lack of availability (unless, ironically, you work) but due to culture.

[Jesus_lol]

[quote name='Winchester' timestamp='1300539632' post='2221708']
It is available, now. People have bags of free medicine, which they often misuse, sell or don't use at all. Our health problems are not due to a lack of availability (unless, ironically, you work) but due to culture.
[/quote]

well, technically Lamborghinis are available to the everyday man as well.

[Maggyie]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1300517158' post='2221686']
I have very good reason to believe that privatization will lead to both lower prices and higher quality. I don't believe that healthcare is altogether different from most other consumer goods.
Speaking from a moral POV, I believe that privatization of the market is what is best for the poor.

A man named Donald Boudreaux makes what I believe to be an excellent point. He imagines a scenario where a man from the year 1700 is transported forward in time and is shown how Bill Gates and his family lives.

"a good guess is that the features of Gates's life that would make the deepest impression are that he and his family never worry about starving to death; that they bathe daily; that they have several changes of clean clothes; that they have clean and healthy teeth; that diseases such as smallpox, polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis, tetanus, and pertussis present no substantial risks; that Melinda Gates's chances of dying during childbirth are about one-sixtieth what they would have been in 1700; that each child born to the Gateses is about 40 times more likely than a pre-industrial child to survive infancy; that the Gateses have a household refrigerator and freezer (not to mention microwave oven, dishwasher, and radios and televisions); that the Gateses's work week is only five days and that the family takes several weeks of vacation each year; that each of the Gates children will receive more than a decade of formal schooling; that the Gateses routinely travel through the air to distant lands in a matter of hours; that they effortlessly converse with people miles or oceans away; that they frequently enjoy the world's greatest actors' and actresses' stunning performances; that the Gateses can, whenever and wherever they please, listen to a Beethoven piano sonata, a Puccini opera, or a Frank Sinatra ballad."

Thomas Woods expands: "In other words, what would most impress our visitor are the aspects of Gates's life that the software giant [b]shares with ordinary Americans[/b]. When you consider the differences that characterized rich and poor prior to the Industrial Revolution, on the other hand, the "capitalism-promotes-inequality" myth is further exposed as the ignorant canard that it is."

Boudreaux again:

"And while we modern Americans focus on how much more money Bill Gates has than the rest of us, our time-traveler would likely find the differences separating Gates from average Americans to be much smaller than the gargantuan differences between his own pre-industrial life and that of today’s ordinary Americans.

He would also likely find the wealth differences between ordinary Americans and the richest Americans trivial compared to the differences between most pre-industrial folk and the royalty who ruled them."
[/quote]

It's true that there have been many technological advances in health in the last 300+ years. The advances have been shared (and in some cases pioneered) by medical systems in non-free-market economies. It's interesting that the writer includes consumerist icons like TV, celebrities and microwave ovens in the same list as curing polio, but that is another topic (are 21st century poor people any better or happier than 18th century poor people because they have cable? Is that a victory for social justice?).

Ironically his comments about the five day work week, paid time off and a decade of formal schooling are all examples of how the free market STINKS at protecting human dignity. These are all reforms brought about by people horrified by the human cost of unrestrained capitalism and the industrial revolution. If your child has all his limbs and still goes to school at the age of 12 and you get to see him in the evenings and on weekends, don't thank a capitalist, thank a union organizer.

But again I disgress. His argument seems to be, in effect, "So what if there's a huge and widening gap between the rich and the poor. The poor still have it pretty good, what with with being able to eat frozen dinners and not slowly suffocating to death from consumption. Count yer blessings!" I don't see how this addresses the primary ethical issue. How can a country with a shrinking middle class, and an increasing number of people either very rich or very poor, limit access to care based on wealth? Do you see how not only is this a moral quagmire but also a recipe for political instability?

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Maggie' timestamp='1300553430' post='2221737']
It's true that there have been many technological advances in health in the last 300+ years. The advances have been shared (and in some cases pioneered) by medical systems in non-free-market economies. It's interesting that the writer includes consumerist icons like TV, celebrities and microwave ovens in the same list as curing polio, but that is another topic (are 21st century poor people any better or happier than 18th century poor people because they have cable? Is that a victory for social justice?).

Ironically his comments about the five day work week, paid time off and a decade of formal schooling are all examples of how the free market STINKS at protecting human dignity. These are all reforms brought about by people horrified by the human cost of unrestrained capitalism and the industrial revolution. If your child has all his limbs and still goes to school at the age of 12 and you get to see him in the evenings and on weekends, don't thank a capitalist, thank a union organizer.

But again I disgress. His argument seems to be, in effect, "So what if there's a huge and widening gap between the rich and the poor. The poor still have it pretty good, what with with being able to eat frozen dinners and not slowly suffocating to death from consumption. Count yer blessings!" I don't see how this addresses the primary ethical issue. How can a country with a shrinking middle class, and an increasing number of people either very rich or very poor, limit access to care based on wealth? Do you see how not only is this a moral quagmire but also a recipe for political instability?
[/quote]
I think you missed the point of the story. The idea is that the poor working class in America enjoys today what would have been absolutely obnoxious luxury in the 1700s. This is a great thing. Do you know why it happened? The industrial revolution. Our lives are thousands of times easier. The working class has leisure time. That would have been unheard of not too long ago.
The point isn't that we have cable TV. It's that the poor have cable TV just as surely as the rich.
However, your paragraph about market failures is entirely false and simply another example of how we young people have been educated. Guess who tells you all these examples of the government saving you from market failure? Oh right, government run schools.
Finally, to address the "gap between the rich and the poor", check this out:
[url="http://www.lvmises.ca/posts/articles/what-about-inequality/"]My link[/url]
Cox and Aim have demonstrated the upward mobility of the American labor force-and the uselessness of static income distribution statistics-as clearly as anyone has. To look at a representative socioeconomic sample of American society, the two Federal Reserve Board researchers used a University of Michigan tracking study of more than fifty thousand Americans that has been going on since 1968. Tracking the incomes of specific, individual families over time (in this case, from 1975 to 1991) provided an entirely different understanding of the degree of “inequality” in the American labor market from what static government statistics do. And the results were very revealing:

• Only 5 percent of families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution in 1975 were still there in 1991. More than three fourths of them had made their way up to the two highest income quintiles.

• The poorest families made the largest gains. Those who started in the bottom 20 percent in 1975 had an inflation adjusted gain in annual income of $27,745 by 1991; those who started in the top 20 percent in 1975 also improved, but only by $4,354. The “rich” are getting richer, the researchers concluded, but the “poor” are getting richer even faster.

• Less than 1 percent of the sample population remained in the bottom 20 percent during the entire time period under study.

• Among the second poorest quintile in 1975, more than 70 percent had moved to a higher quintile by 1991, and one fourth reached the top 20 percent bracket.

• With education and training the rise up the income brackets can be very swift: more than half of the families who were in the bottom 20 percent in 1975 made it to a higher bracket within four years.


Please do read the entire article. It's well worth your time.

[Nihil Obstat]

I see a free market as the only system which can possibly bring Americans out of this devastating culture of aggression and stupidity. You can't legislate morality.

[Winchester]

[quote name='Jesus_lol' timestamp='1300553311' post='2221736']
well, technically Lamborghinis are available to the everyday man as well.
[/quote]
There is no government program to hand out Lamborghinis to the unemployed. Yet.

I'm not talking about theoretical medicine. I am talking about actual medicine really and truly given to people at no cost to the recipient and with no strings regarding maintaining ones health attached. If I smoke, my insurance goes up. If an unemployed government aid recipient smokes, his benefits do not change. His increased health care costs are passed to the rest of us who work and pay taxes (since nearly 50% of workers don't pay income tax).

[Maggyie]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1300557088' post='2221743']
I think you missed the point of the story. The idea is that the poor working class in America enjoys today what would have been absolutely obnoxious luxury in the 1700s. This is a great thing. Do you know why it happened? The industrial revolution. Our lives are thousands of times easier. The working class has leisure time. That would have been unheard of not too long ago.
The point isn't that we have cable TV. It's that the poor have cable TV just as surely as the rich.
However, your paragraph about market failures is entirely false and simply another example of how we young people have been educated. Guess who tells you all these examples of the government saving you from market failure? Oh right, government run schools.
Finally, to address the "gap between the rich and the poor", check this out:
[url="http://www.lvmises.ca/posts/articles/what-about-inequality/"]My link[/url]
Cox and Aim have demonstrated the upward mobility of the American labor force-and the uselessness of static income distribution statistics-as clearly as anyone has. To look at a representative socioeconomic sample of American society, the two Federal Reserve Board researchers used a University of Michigan tracking study of more than fifty thousand Americans that has been going on since 1968. Tracking the incomes of specific, individual families over time (in this case, from 1975 to 1991) provided an entirely different understanding of the degree of “inequality” in the American labor market from what static government statistics do. And the results were very revealing:

• Only 5 percent of families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution in 1975 were still there in 1991. More than three fourths of them had made their way up to the two highest income quintiles.

• The poorest families made the largest gains. Those who started in the bottom 20 percent in 1975 had an inflation adjusted gain in annual income of $27,745 by 1991; those who started in the top 20 percent in 1975 also improved, but only by $4,354. The “rich” are getting richer, the researchers concluded, but the “poor” are getting richer even faster.

• Less than 1 percent of the sample population remained in the bottom 20 percent during the entire time period under study.

• Among the second poorest quintile in 1975, more than 70 percent had moved to a higher quintile by 1991, and one fourth reached the top 20 percent bracket.

• With education and training the rise up the income brackets can be very swift: more than half of the families who were in the bottom 20 percent in 1975 made it to a higher bracket within four years.


Please do read the entire article. It's well worth your time.
[/quote]

How is it incorrect that the five day work week, eight hour work day, and so forth are products of the labor movement? This is not something industrialists came up with, it is something they went along with after years of unrest and in some cases federal laws being passed. In fact I believe it was first championed in England by some very aggressive socialists. I'm unaware of any historical revisionism (I'm talking serious academic papers here) on the topic. It's taught in schools because it's largely true. I promise to read the article later, I've got to run right now for wedding dress shopping



[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1300557160' post='2221744']
I see a free market as the only system which can possibly bring Americans out of this devastating culture of aggression and stupidity. You can't legislate morality.
[/quote]

"You can't legislate morality"- this is the same argument that socially liberal people make about abortion, gay marriage, and so forth. Where morality touches justice it absolutely needs to be part of our legal framework. This is what social justice (an integral part of the Gospel message) is all about.

Edited March 19, 2011 by Maggie

[Jesus_lol]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1300557160' post='2221744']
You can't legislate morality.
[/quote]

No offense Nihil, but this did make me laugh. On this generally socially conservative website, everyone seems to think legislating morality works just fine. as long as it is their morality.


[quote name='Winchester' timestamp='1300557919' post='2221747']
There is no government program to hand out Lamborghinis to the unemployed. Yet.
[/quote]

when i run for office, that is gonna be my platform Lamborghinis for all!!!

[quote]
I'm not talking about theoretical medicine. I am talking about actual medicine really and truly given to people at no cost to the recipient and with no strings regarding maintaining ones health attached. If I smoke, my insurance goes up. If an unemployed government aid recipient smokes, his benefits do not change. His increased health care costs are passed to the rest of us who work and pay taxes (since nearly 50% of workers don't pay income tax).
[/quote]
This is a problem with current medical handouts, but it would hardly need to remain that way. i can think of many ways that this problem could be solved that are less drastic than removing all government overseeing on healthcare.

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Maggie' timestamp='1300558839' post='2221753']
"You can't legislate morality"- this is the same argument that socially liberal people make about abortion, gay marriage, and so forth. Where morality touches justice it absolutely needs to be part of our legal framework. This is what social justice (an integral part of the Gospel message) is all about.
[/quote]


[quote name='Jesus_lol' timestamp='1300562304' post='2221759']
No offense Nihil, but this did make me laugh. On this generally socially conservative website, everyone seems to think legislating morality works just fine. as long as it is their morality.
[/quote]

Well that's just the thing. You can't force someone to be a good person. You can force someone not to murder (abortion), but you can't morally force a gay man not to shack up with his boyfriend, you can't force a college kid not to sleep with his girlfriend.
At the end of the day, the *only* way to force someone to do (or not do) something is by locking them up or killing them. Can you lock somebody up to force them to stop sleeping with his girlfriend? Or to stop masturbating? Or to stop missing Mass on Sundays.
You can legislate against murder, and against theft, and against kidnapping (etc.). You can't legislate morality any further than that.

To address the social justice aspect, this has been abused so much these last few decades that it is frightening.
All I will say is this:
I hold my economic beliefs because I believe that if implemented, they will be what is best for the poor, best for the middle class, best for absolutely everybody. One example of this: if prices go up, consumption goes down. Law of supply and demand (assuming a normal good). If a (binding) minimum price is enforced, it will result in a surplus of goods along with decreased consumption. This is as true in the labour market as any other, therefore I believe that a minimum wage only harms those who are already on the lowest end of the job market, i.e. the working poor. That is why morally I cannot support minimum wage legislation.

Do you think I am less than Catholic for saying these things?
"...economics and moral science employs each its own principles in its own sphere"
They are, of course, related quite intimately, but they are not the same, and they cannot be treated in the same way.
"Certainly the laws of economics, as they are termed, being based on the very nature of material things and on the capacities of the human body and mind, determine the limits of what productive human effort cannot, and of what it can attain in the economic field and by what means."
Reason is written into our hearts so that we might learn how to use economic laws to the benefit of all, especially the poor. When I say "privatize healthcare", I mean "privatize healthcare to help the poor." "End the Fed" means "stop destroying the economy by encouraging malinvestment, and stop leaching the savings of everyone though inflationary tax." I don't believe a minimum wage helps the poor. I don't believe that the Federal Reserve helps the poor. I don't believe public healthcare helps the poor either. I have economic reasons for saying so.
Of course I want to increase the standard of living of the poor. You and I differ on our methods, but that is what we both want. I believe that government intervention will lead to nothing buy a lowered standard of living for everybody. You disagree, but I don't care. We're allowed to disagree on that.

Archbishop John J. Myers:

"For example, our preferential option for the poor is a fundamental aspect of this teaching. But, there are legitimate disagreements about the best way or ways truly to help the poor in our society. No Catholic can legitimately say, "I do not care about the poor." If he or she did so this person would not be objectively in communion with Christ and His Church. But, both those who propose welfare increases and those who propose tax cuts to stimulate the economy may in all sincerity believe that their way is the best method really to help the poor. This is a matter of prudential judgment made by those entrusted with the care of the common good. It is a matter of conscience in the proper sense."


If the pope says that "cedar is a better building material than oak", are we bound morally to agree with him? He's not an architect or a carpenter or a builder. If he concludes that cedar is better, he might then say "therefore all houses should be made of cedar, not oak, otherwise they may break and people may be injured and killed." Well nobody wants people to be injured and killed. However, that doesn't change the fact that the pope may be mistaken that cedar is better than oak. If he's mistaken about that, then his conclusion is not accurate, even given that the moral element is true.


Pope Leo XIII himself said: "If I were to pronounce on any single matter of a prevailing economic problem, I should be interfering with the freedom of men to work out their own affairs. Certain cases must be solved in the domain of facts, case by case as they occur…. [M]en must realize in deeds those things, the principles of which have been placed beyond dispute…. [T]hese things one must leave to the solution of time and experience."
(Quoted in Katherine Burton, Leo the Thirteenth: The First Modern Pope (New York: David McKay Co., 1962), p. 171.)

[Nihil Obstat]

Before questioning the Catholicity of my opinions any further, anyone who is serious about this discussion should read these articles:

[url="http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods159.html"]http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods159.html[/url]
[url="http://www.insidecatholic.com/feature/economics-as-science-a-catholic-defense-of-the-free-market.html"]http://www.insidecatholic.com/feature/economics-as-science-a-catholic-defense-of-the-free-market.html[/url]
[url="http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods53.html"]http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods53.html[/url]
[url="http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods127.html"]http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods127.html[/url]
[url="http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods26.html"]http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods26.html[/url]
[url="http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods37.html"]http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods37.html[/url]
[url="http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods25.html"]http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods25.html[/url]
[url="http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/is-thomas-woods-a-dissenter/"]http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/is-thomas-woods-a-dissenter/[/url]
[url="http://www.thomasmoreinstitute.org.uk/node/24"]http://www.thomasmoreinstitute.org.uk/node/24[/url]
[url="http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods127.html"]http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods127.html[/url]
[url="http://www.tomwoods.com/on-chris-ferrara/"]http://www.tomwoods.com/on-chris-ferrara/[/url]

and also seriously consider reading this book:
[url="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0739110365?tag=lewrockwell&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0739110365&adid=0FHK0CZ2W3N6CS3T8TWH&"]http://www.amazon.com/dp/0739110365?tag=lewrockwell&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0739110365&adid=0FHK0CZ2W3N6CS3T8TWH&[/url]

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1300568433' post='2221782']
and also seriously consider reading this book:
[url="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0739110365?tag=lewrockwell&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0739110365&adid=0FHK0CZ2W3N6CS3T8TWH&"]http://www.amazon.com/dp/0739110365?tag=lewrockwell&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0739110365&adid=0FHK0CZ2W3N6CS3T8TWH&[/url]
[/quote]
I took a wild guess as to what book this would be. Dang I'm good.

[MIKolbe]

[quote name='apparently' timestamp='1300494936' post='2221638']
The article still is [s]not [/s]all about Canadian or in support of government run healthcare, chump.
[/quote]


[quote name='Winchester' timestamp='1300498232' post='2221642']
Your face is a chump.
[/quote]

get your hands out of my pocket.

[Winchester]

[quote name='MIkolbe' timestamp='1300577613' post='2221825']
get your hands out of my pocket.
[/quote]
If we put our hands in your pocket, we'd only get lint and silly bandz.

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1300577152' post='2221822']
I took a wild guess as to what book this would be. Dang I'm good.
[/quote]
I'm gonna keep recommending it until somebody reads it!

[MIKolbe]

and some barbie yahtzee dice, but that's irrelevant.