Healthcare

Apparently that guy was a Dem till last year

oh great, I was so used to you being a spiral galaxy, now I'm going to confuse you with one of the other mods. XD

And the mandate was also a compromise between the republicans and Clinton, who wanted to mandate that all employers provide insurance.

I disagree. Getting shit done is the goal, jobs are the things that accomplish that goal but require some meat bags to do them. Would you object to genetic modification that completely obliterated poor eye sight and destroyed the jobs entailed with things beyond making a vial of injectables?

That's a flawed analogy... not because the point isn't apt, but because economics doesn't work that way. If we cured bad eyesight overnight across all of humanity, the money people spend currently on eyewear would instead be spent on other things. It doesn't vanish from the economy, it is diverted elsewhere. To be sure, a lot of optometrists and lens makers would be out of a job, but people would still need eye doctors for problems related to injuries and illness.

Money spent on healthcare is parasitic in a very real sense. It generates value, yes, but that value is centered around keeping people healthy and productive. If you spend $1000/month in medical bills to keep you able to function in your life, that money is unavailable to spend on, well, enjoying your life, or making your business more successful, etc.

We should seek to spend the minimum possible amount of money on healthcare consistent with maximizing the quality of life for as many people as possible. The current system abjectly fails at this; therefore it needs to be replaced with something that works better.

edited 2nd Apr '12 6:33:12 AM by Fighteer

Well, I do want to point out that when radically changing the market, those "gains of utility" from fixing bad eyesight go somewhere, but it may not be evenly distributed.

The optometrists obviously lose out, because their fields have been made less relevant, so the demand curve is modified quite substantially. That affects their purchasing power, which affects the market in other complex ways.

And the money people used to spend on optometrists and eyeglasses will now go to other areas of the consumer market, increasing demand in those areas and causing hiring. It's complex, but in the end it's predictable.

The argument that we shouldn't attempt to advance because it puts people out of work is one that gets trotted out all the time, but in the end it's as fallacious as any other Appeal to Tradition.

Increasing human productivity is almost always a net gain for everyone involved.

edited 2nd Apr '12 8:31:06 AM by Fighteer

I'm saying it's not a "Put all optometrists out of work or don't develop cures for eye problems" situation. You can phase new technologies in over time you know. I'm also pointing out that while society as a whole advances, depending on who gets the patent rights for miracle cures, it's entirely possible that the majority of the gains to society go to all the wrong people (read: lawyers and patent trolls)

The proper treatment for them is the same as it is for traditions, fire and lots of it.

No, that was my point. If some jobs stand in the way of gains (economic or technological, doesn't really matter), then destroying those jobs is the right thing. Destroying jobs isn't a means, it's an end goal.

The goal is to maximize utility, but that's not "in the long run" OR in the short run. So if by destroying jobs by being more efficient, you're damaging the economy in such a fashion that it then leads to OTHER inefficiencies (homelessness etc), there's a cost to that-and it means that you need to find the best-fit equilibrium point.

Or we could provide homes and over essential stuff for the people even if the jobs they were doing have been taken over by robots.

Yeah, that's my preference.

I prefer organ harvesting. But I hate people.

Oh Deboss~ <Theme music plays>

I think that the issue would be that you refuse to have temporary socialism to get back to a free market situation.

Nah, just auction off the organs to the highest bidder, bam. Not that I disagree with the general point. Until the job annihilation rate passes the retraining for something useful rate, then it's organ harvesting time!

...At this point, what the fuck.

ANYWAY.

Someone crunched the numbers, and found that 15 million people would've recieved 2 billion dollars in rebates if the ACA was enacted in 2010.

And this is why they fought it as hard as they did. Once the electorate realizes reforms help them, they're impossible to undo.

Yeah, I mean, health insurance that even begins to come close to any Canadian provincial plan costs something in the order of $6000-$7000 a year per person. Once you start to realise that healthcare plans cost $2500 per person when it is socialised, then you see real money in your pocket, you can never go back to private.

Too bad even with the ACA, we're nowhere near socialized medicine.

eyup...

well...

it's a bit boring in here without a dissenting voice.

I remember when one libertarian poster was around, arguing that socialized medicine was not all it was cracked up to be. When people quoted problems with American healthcare, he insisted that we stop doing so because the world is not America.

edited 7th Apr '12 9:28:26 PM by Enkufka

Stupid lone pillar, screwing up the echo in our chamber.

As I keep echoing (snark), the Echo Chamber is only harmful if it keeps out good ideas and reinforces bad ideas.

You can come back to the Taiwan thread, where we are at each other's throats!

So, I've seen plans by Blue Cross Anthem and Kaiser, both are extremely expensive and get you very little. Is it just that Americans have never ever once bothered to look at plans in UHC countries or something?

Are you suggesting another country could do something better than America, breadloaf? Silly rabbit, a lack of nationalism's for kids!

Though blind nationalization probably has something to do with it, that seems a bit "empty" of a reason. I suspect there's something else behind it-other than just "big money" that we're not seeing here.