Can you fill in the blank?

[Occam's Banana]

h/t Bob Murphy: http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2014/06/potpourri-211.html

My latest Mises CA post points out that Krugman has a very low bar for ObamaCare. David R. Henderson made different points about the same Krugman post, but I wanted to focus on just one issue in my post.

About That High-Quality Insurance
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/06/about_that_high.html
David Henderson (09 June 2014)

[...]

So let me tell you a true story about a friend of my wife's in coastal California. Her husband is a contractor and so they buy their own insurance. Their old insurance policy didn't comply with the new ObamaCare rules and so they had to buy insurance through Covered California. Here's a vent she recently posted on Facebook. (I have her permission to quote but not by name.)

[see the article at the link for the actual quote - a paraphrase follows, with emphasis added]

Mrs. X goes to the doctor for an annual exam.

Receptionist: "The doctor is no longer taking Blue Cross/Covered CA."

Mrs. X asks why.

Receptionist: "The doctor has not been able to negotiate a fee with Blue Cross. Blue Cross wants to pay less than what MediCal pays. So you will have to pay the full out-of-network price." [MediCal is California's Medicare program.]

Mrs. X: "Then what do we have insurance for?"

Receptionist: "There are very few doctors that are taking insurance purchased under Covered CA. The doctors are not being paid fairly so they are choosing not to take Blue Cross."

Mrs. X adds that she doesn't blame the doctors.

So I looked into it further and found out that this is not a cheap policy. Their children are grown and not on the parents' insurance. For both of the adults, they pay a total of $886.94 a month, which is $10,643 a year.

One anecdote? Yes. But it's not just about 2 people. It's about a whole area, the area around Monterey. Note the receptionist's statement: "There are very few doctors that are taking insurance that was purchased under Covered CA."

So due to what were clearly "market failures," the government started regulating, cartelizing & subsidizing the medical industry.

One of the many negative results of this is that some people can't afford (or just don't want) medical/health insurance.
This is clearly another "market failure" - so the government starts forcing people to buy (subsidized) insurance.

One of the many negative results of this is that doctors refuse to take the insurance that people have been forced to buy.
This is clearly another "market failure" - so the government starts ________________________________________.

(Can you fill in the blank with the correct answer?)

 

[Origanalist]

One of the many negative results of this is that doctors refuse to take the insurance that people have been forced to buy.
This is clearly another "market failure" - so the government starts ________________________________________.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the government is going to start forcing the doctors to take the insurance. Crazy, I know.

 

[Henry Rogue]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the government is going to start forcing the doctors to take the insurance. Crazy, I know.

That would be my guess as well. If it's Califoria's government, then doctors will exit California. Hard to imagine a whole state looking like Detroit, but given enough government, anything is possible.

 

[Occam's Banana]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the government is going to start forcing the doctors to take the insurance. Crazy, I know.

Ding! Ding! Ding! So now we've got:

One of the many negative results of this is that doctors refuse to take the insurance that people have been forced to buy.
This is clearly another "market failure" - so the government starts forcing doctors to take the insurance.

And thus we progress the next item in the sequence ...

That would be my guess as well. If it's Califoria's government, then doctors will exit California. Hard to imagine a whole state looking like Detroit, but given enough government, anything is possible.

One of the many negative results of this is that doctors flee the state in order to avoid being forced to take the insurance.
This is clearly another "market failure" - so the government starts __________________________________.

(Bonus Question: What would we do if we didn't have the government to protect us against all these pesky "market failures?")

 

[Origanalist]

(Bonus Question: What would we do if we didn't have the government to protect us against all these pesky "market failures?")

Ooh, ooh, pick me!!!

(ahem) We would have a free market?

 

[Henry Rogue]

Ding! Ding! Ding! So now we've got:

One of the many negative results of this is that doctors refuse to take the insurance that people have been forced to buy.
This is clearly another "market failure" - so the government starts forcing doctors to take the insurance.

And thus we progress the next item in the sequence ...



One of the many negative results of this is that doctors flee the state in order to avoid being forced to take the insurance.
This is clearly another "market failure" - so the government starts __________________________________.

(Bonus Question: What would we do if we didn't have the government to protect us against all these pesky "market failures?")

Fill in the blank question: Force Doctors to remain in state, by??? Relocation tax?? IDK, but if that becomes the situation, people won't enter the field to begin with.

Bonus Question: Origanalist beat me to it again. I was going to say voluntarily interact.

 

[Henry Rogue]

Fill in the blank question: Force Doctors to remain in state, by??? Relocation tax?? IDK, but if that becomes the situation, people won't enter the field to begin with.

Bonus Question: Origanalist beat me to it again. I was going to say voluntarily interact.

I got it. Government Doctors.

 

[Henry Rogue]

I got it. Government Doctors.

Or subsidation of Doctors.

 

[Ronin Truth]

(Bonus Question: What would we do if we didn't have the government to protect us against all these pesky "market failures?")

No alternative but to move back into the caves and subsist on wild nuts and berries until the next ice age comes and causes our species extinction.

 

[Occam's Banana]

One of the many negative results of this is that doctors flee the state in order to avoid being forced to take the insurance.
This is clearly another "market failure" - so the government starts __________________________________.

Force Doctors to remain in state, by??? Relocation tax?? IDK, but if that becomes the situation, people won't enter the field to begin with.

One of the many negative results of [a relocation tax, etc.] is that not enough people decide to become doctors.
This is clearly another "market failure" - so the government starts __________________________________.

 

[Tod]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the government is going to start forcing the doctors to take the insurance. Crazy, I know.

"Well, they HAVE to, because the doctors are just too greedy. We can't have people dying because of medical greed, now can we?"

/sarc

 

[Tod]

One of the many negative results of [a relocation tax, etc.] is that not enough people decide to become doctors.
This is clearly another "market failure" - so the government starts __________________________________.

....to implode.

Everyone with any common sense knows central planning does not work and I predict government collapse before the government can institute any further draconian measures.

 

[Henry Rogue]

One of the many negative results of [a relocation tax, etc.] is that not enough people decide to become doctors.
This is clearly another "market failure" - so the government starts __________________________________.

Assigning career destinations to graduates. This would result in poor job performance, I'm not sure what the cental planners next move would be to this market failure, my guess is they wouldn't have any idea either (I never predicted more than three moves ahead when playing chess, to many variables). At this point society would be in complete collapse. I think subsidizing Doctors is the governments move in the previous question as they stiil have to contend with cultural norms combined with voter approval and lobby interests. It takes a while for the state to engineer new cultural norms. So the result of Doctor subsidies would be rising Doctor fees and possibly poorer quality of care, so lets reboot the last question, please.

 

[Occam's Banana]

Assigning career destinations to graduates.

... or even assigning fields of study to students. After all, if the government's gonna subsidize your education (K-12 and college), shouldn't they have some say in the matter? (For the "greater good," of course ... and to fix the "market failure" of not enough med-school graduates ...)

I think subsidizing Doctors is the governments move in the previous question as they stiil have to contend with cultural norms combined with voter approval and lobby interests. It takes a while for the state to engineer new cultural norms. So the result of Doctor subsidies would be rising Doctor fees and possibly poorer quality of care, so lets reboot the last question, please.

I suspect you are correct that subsidizing doctors is probably the most likely "next step" at that point - but that would cycle things back around to the original "government ... regulating, cartelizing & subsidizing the medical industry" that kicked off whole mess we're in. So I wanted to draw things out a little further - especially since doing things like forcing people to study medicine and become doctors would so perfectly epitomize the draconian essence of socialistic central planning ...

 

[juleswin]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the government is going to start forcing the doctors to take the insurance. Crazy, I know.

No way, the govt abolished slavery of any kind in the US long ago

 

[Henry Rogue]

... or even assigning fields of study to students. After all, if the government's gonna subsidize your education (K-12 and college), shouldn't they have some say in the matter? (For the "greater good," of course ... and to fix the "market failure" of not enough med-school graduates ...)



I suspect you are correct that subsidizing doctors is probably the most likely "next step" at that point - but that would cycle things back around to the original "government ... regulating, cartelizing & subsidizing the medical industry" that kicked off whole mess we're in. So I wanted to draw things out a little further - especially since doing things like forcing people to study medicine and become doctors would so perfectly epitomize the draconian essence of socialistic central planning ...

Exactly, the tendency is to exacerbate the problem through repetition. Markets deviate from expectations, Black Market etcetera. The market tries to self correct, not until the market is sufficiently distorted and cultural shifts take place will planners have the green light for state dominance in any and all economic activity. That is when suffrage kicks in to high gear.