Can I get help to respond to this. Not a big deal, just looking for something concise.

[Lord Xar]

THEY WROTE:
..And my point is that while it will obviously never happen our healthcare, educational, transportation systems and corporate exodus that you call a brain drain wouldnt be so bad if we had local government. I'm in the Valley dude, we cant even seceed from LA and get no where near the return on just our local sales tax. The whole reason the valley is here is because of Hughes and GM; who left long ago because corporate profits mean more then the people who actually made the corporation a success. LMFAO at people so pessimistic to think that we cant do anything and that europes a failed state beause they invested in their American partners mortgage industry. They went broke because of the financial crisis we made and corruption, not health care which they love and could afford. My cousin in England shattered her spine, walks fine now, would be in a wheel chair and bankrupt if it happened here because the insurance would have dried up before she was ever better. So how do we have better healthcare then europe? Or am i just citing a reference? We have better doctors and facilities but cant afford to use them. You can do the Frank Luntz See I told you so europe sucks speel but its not the truth. People over there love their healthcare because its something tangible that they recieve from their taxes. What do middle class americans get for their taxes? Roads to drive on and...?the idea that we're safe in the form of cops, prisons and army's that need lots of money to defend us because... And they better find some shit to get into because this equipments expensive. Point being 36 million people, 1.9 trillion GDP beats frances 65 million people and 2.2 trillion GDP skew it however you want.

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Not sure why he mentions the Valley seceding and then advocates for big govt. etc.. (his previous posts suggest he is a hardcore liberal). The impetus for this convo was because he suggested that Cali should secede and I was saying it couldn't survive on its own because of various reasons.. (debt, pension liabilities, broke education/health industries) etc..

Anyways, curious how you would respond to the above. I just hate it when they cite europe as the bastion of hope.

 

[Acala]

They are correct that the American health care system is broken. But it isn't broken for LACK of government. It is broken because government and the health care industry have been in cahoots for decades and the result has been a massive hike in health care costs. Government regulation and licensure of every aspect of health care inhibits supply while government subsidies jack up demand. The result is econ 101 - prices respond to supply and demand. Government has rigged both sides of the equation to enrich the health care industry. The solution is not more government, it is dramatically LESS government.

 

[Steven Douglas]

I have a British friend in China who is an executive at a major pharmaceutical company with an office in Shanghai. He said, "Americans pay my salary, and subsidize all the drugs of the world. You Yanks pay 5-10 times more for your drugs than anyone else."

It's true. I made extensive use of the Chinese health care, and could buy "legitimate" U.S. drugs at a small fraction of what we pay. Likewise with services (which were both modern and fantastic) - since there is no artificial control on the amount of doctors who can be admitted into the education system, or licensed to practice medicine. Doctors in China are NOT the elites we have in the States. In China, doctors are above average paid workers. They make more, but not insanely more based on artificial scarcity, or the illusion that medicine somehow MUST cost an arm and a leg by default.

American Health Care is Protectionist From Within. VICIOUSLY. It all started with the AMA, extended out to the educational system, the patenting system, the insurance industry, and MYRIAD other fingers in the highly protectionist health care regime pie, to the point where we just accept "the rising cost of health care" no differently than we EXPECT and accept inflation, or rising cost of everything.

So while computer industry and other technology becomes routinely twice as complex at half the price, we attribute complexity in healthcare technology as but one rationale for exponentially rising prices. Go figure.

Because we are so mindlessly "insurance minded" we are also buffered from costs. In China, I can ask up front about the costs of everything - even when I'm covered by insurance. They will just tell you. In America, asking the cost of anything in advance regarding health care will get you a dumb stare: What do you care? Why are you asking? No, don't answer that, because the answer is obvious: you don't have insurance.

The real tragedy is that most politicians who talk about "the rising costs of health care" as an issue are NOT dealing with what caused those prices to rise in the first place (the real market dynamics, including artificial manipulations), or what could lay them to the ground. They are mostly talking about HOW TO PAY for something that should never have cost that much in the first place.

 

[phill4paul]

I have a British friend in China who is an executive at a major pharmaceutical company with an office in Shanghai. He said, "Americans pay my salary, and subsidize all the drugs of the world. You Yanks pay 5-10 times more for your drugs than anyone else."

It's true. I made extensive use of the Chinese health care, and could buy "legitimate" U.S. drugs at a small fraction of what we pay. Likewise with services (which were both modern and fantastic) - since there is no artificial control on the amount of doctors who can be admitted into the education system, or licensed to practice medicine. Doctors in China are NOT the elites we have in the States. In China, doctors are above average paid workers. They make more, but not insanely more based on artificial scarcity, or the illusion that medicine somehow MUST cost an arm and a leg by default.

American Health Care is Protectionist From Within. VICIOUSLY. It all started with the AMA, extended out to the educational system, the patenting system, the insurance industry, and MYRIAD other fingers in the highly protectionist health care regime pie, to the point where we just accept "the rising cost of health care" no differently than we EXPECT and accept inflation, or rising cost of everything.

So while computer industry and other technology becomes routinely twice as complex at half the price, we attribute complexity in healthcare technology as but one rationale for exponentially rising prices. Go figure.

Because we are so mindlessly "insurance minded" we are also buffered from costs. In China, I can ask up front about the costs of everything - even when I'm covered by insurance. They will just tell you. In America, asking the cost of anything in advance regarding health care will get you a dumb stare: What do you care? Why are you asking? No, don't answer that, because the answer is obvious: you don't have insurance.

The real tragedy is that most politicians who talk about "the rising costs of health care" as an issue are NOT dealing with what caused those prices to rise in the first place (the real market dynamics, including artificial manipulations), or what could lay them to the ground. They are mostly talking about HOW TO PAY for something that should never have cost that much in the first place.

+rep. I've read a couple of your posts now Steve and I must say that you have a remarkable ability of explaining things in layman terms. Consice and easy to understand. I've pretty much rebutted w/ everything that you have posted but somehow it runs into pages of diatribe as opposed to brevity. TY.

 

[Melissa]

And my mom lived in Britian and the wait is horrible for getting regular treatment so the whole British model shows it can be done is laughable. Also the people that do get good medical over there have to BUY extra insurance if you want good care so good care is not free anyway. It would be the same here long lines at free clinics and then those that can afford it will buy private insurance to get what we have now.

 

[mojobo]

The fact that our health care system is worse than socialist healthcare systems is upsetting. One common trait of government coming in and making something more "affordable" is that the costs go up and or the quality goes down. Think of education, housing and the stock market. The main reason behind this is that they use credit to make these things more affordable. They normally make loans more available to consumers and discount the importance of market set lending standards. Think about the early tech boom when all the prices were going up and it seemed like we were all getting rich. What was really happening was that the price for a given amount of earnings/equity was going up. If you are an owner of that stock its great because you get to sell/borrow against an inflated asset. If you are not in the market though you have to pay a higher amount for the same amount of earnings/equity which is bad fundamentally. Unless it keeps going up you are getting ripped off for that stock.

Housing was pretty much in the same boat. Politicians wanted to make it more affordable and for a short amount of time they did. Everyone was happy... home owners saw more equity in their homes, more loans were made available to buyers, politicians looked good. The problem is people were paying more for an asset that would soon come back down to earth. College is very similar too. Loans were made more available to students to make it more affordable. Prices go up and quality goes down. Since everyone has a degree it isn't really a valuable signal to employers anymore so it went up in cost and lost any real value it once had.

We don't want to make health care more affordable by increasing the governments role in it as they almost always jack up the cost and lower the quality. We want to make it more affordable the way the computer industry did it. Compete to bring a higher quality/lower cost good to the public or else you will lose your roll in the health care system to someone who will. Don't make it more affordable by increasing the credit or subsidizing it as that will only lead to a higher cost lower quality care.

 

[Steven Douglas]

+rep. I've read a couple of your posts now Steve and I must say that you have a remarkable ability of explaining things in layman terms. Consice and easy to understand. I've pretty much rebutted w/ everything that you have posted but somehow it runs into pages of diatribe as opposed to brevity. TY.

Thank you. I have always had the same problem, and still do. I am actually here, specifically, to be learn and be corrected, even as I learn how to distill everything into its most potent, accurate, irrefutable (or at least, easily arguable) forms that are understandable to anyone - because deliberate obfuscation and unnecessary complexity is literally killing us, both as a nation and as a world.

 

[Steven Douglas]

We don't want to make health care more affordable by increasing the governments role in it as they almost always jack up the cost and lower the quality.

The AMA, with its CPT (Current Procedural Terminology) monopoly and other Congressional delegated and independent powers, is one of "The Federal Reserves" of the medical industry. For years their argument for deliberately limiting the number of doctors who could enter the educational system and be admitted into practice was to "maintain the quality" of health care by deliberately making doctors more scarce in order to drive up costs. Where the Fed inflates the money supply artificially, the AMA caused constant deflation of the Doctor Supply. It got to the point where doctors became SO much in demand (even and especially now) that rural areas suffer because they cannot not attract decent doctors. It also paved the way for numerous Specialists - a further point of scarcity which further drives up value, as doctors branch out into their own niches, and can't be bothered with the average routine health care needs that make up the bulk of the demand for the medical industry. The net effect is a division of labor that multiplies the costs, given the number of doctors needed to handle what was otherwise routine.

Only recently has the AMA changed its official position, and started to sound the ominous "doctor shortage" prediction alarm - as if they had nothing to do with what caused it in the first place.

Yeah, the first step toward making health care more affordable is to question the core of government's involvement - even when it translates to an ABSOLUTE LACK of involvement (delegating money to the Fed, delegating control of health care to the AMA).

Our government is a veritable crowd of Pontius Pilate hand washers and accountability evaders, and has been for some time. Too much autopilot, too many foxes in far too many henhouses, and too many inmates running the asylum for them.

And left and right are both complicit.