JCC

Pundits Are Wrong: Healthcare Reform Will Increase Profits

Guitanguran - I agree with you that free markets might work in healthcare, but not under the current situations. For a free market to work, you would need to get rid of the FDA and all of the regulation. Let the buyer beware and let capitalism do it's thing!! If someone can't afford care they pay the price. If a treatment fails, they buyer loses it all.

The problem is that this will never occur, and furthermore our moral constraints would never allow us to go to this extreme.

Competition on healthcare in the USA is a non-achievable pipedream.


On Sep 18 01:19 PM Guitanguran wrote:

> two things:
>
> Free markets can work in healthcare. Consider Lasik surgery. As out
> of pocket expense, the consumer (patient) has to choose wisely. The
> result is that technology, efficacy, and choices have gone up, and
> prices have gone down. Why? Because the person getting the procedure
> has to pay for it. And, the person providing the procedure has to
> compete with other providers.
>
> Why not take the tax break now given to employers on health insurance,
> have them pay the employees the equivalent difference of healthcare
> cost to them as salary, give the tax break to the employee, and open
> up insurance options across the country? Indigents, widows, and orphans
> can be taken care of by tax credits on 'pro-bono' care. Portability
> and pre-existing issues could be dealt with by letting the individual
> buy and keep their policy forever if they like.

Pundits Are Wrong: Healthcare Reform Will Increase Profits

OK Wisdom - In the US the government currently pays ~50% of healthcare costs. Insurance companies pay 35%. The rest is out of pocket. Our regulations are onerous and certainly support high profit for healthcare providers.

So in case you didn't notice, we already have a quasi-socialist system without competition and rising prices of ~10% per year. What makes you think that this is sustainable? What makes you think that the current US system is capitalist? Our healthcare results are comparatively inferior to countries!

So what are you defending, except for an unsustainable system that does not provide adequate care and will strangle the USA with rising costs!!


On Sep 17 07:00 PM Wisdom vs. Information wrote:

> check the scoreboard: european standard of living has steadily been
> falling behind the US since we pulled the defense nurse bottle away
> and is now 30% lower; japan has been in recession since 1990, same
> time frame. what do you socialist not get about 'does not work'?
> you have the evidence in your face and you just keep plowing along
> with your head in sand, loving the taste of dirt
>
> if socialized medicine is so great, why can't euro and japanese corps
> compete with US corps? not only is your theory ridiculous on its
> face, evidence directly contradicts you. embarrassing