NB….. You can pretend the US government does not compete with the free market if you want. The comparison for GM was after the bankruptcy in which the company is closing plant after plant. Closing down entire lines of vehicles (see saturn).

Dude look at my name.

I’m from Detroit. I can tell that not only would Saturn be dead without government intervention, so would all of GM. That would take down a half-dozen parts suppliers non-Detroiters have never heard of, which would in turn destroy companies like Toyota that depend on their parts.

That’s why pro-market Republican approved the initial loan to GM.

The Marine corp was a joke…

No ones ever compared the military to mercenaries except of course now you are doing it and actually being sincere in believing your winning a point on the debate stage.

Somebody isn’t the brightest crayon in the box, is he?

You did it on October 8th at 8:55 PM.

And I’, still waiting for you to defend the rest of your list. Unless you’re going to claim mtrak was all my idea.

Im here to bring the other side of the debate. Something sorely lacking around here. Keep on debating Marines vs. Blackwater. It was actually funny stuff.

Note to you:
If you think offering a detailed argument, waiting for each point of that argument to be individually refuted, and then claiming you were misinterpreted on one of those points is “bringing the other side of the debate” you’re sadly mistaken.

That’s so weird it’s not even a logical fallacy. It’s kinda like “disproving a minor point,” but you aren’t disproving one of my minor points you’re disproving your own. Which adds a strawman element. But

To bring “the other side of the debate” one must debate. Which you are not doing.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the windfall profits tax idea “very preliminary,” saying she’s asked House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to look at how much the tax could raise.

Cut and pasted…..To prove for the umpteenth time that the Democrats dont want insurance companies in America. They hate corporations. They hate Corporate welfare. They can do a better Job keeping the Poor……..POOR!!

NB….. You can pretend the US government does not compete with the free market if you want. The comparison for GM was after the bankruptcy in which the company is closing plant after plant. Closing down entire lines of vehicles (see saturn). The Marine corp was a joke…

No ones ever compared the military to mercenaries except of course now you are doing it and actually being sincere in believing your winning a point on the debate stage.

Im here to bring the other side of the debate. Something sorely lacking around here. Keep on debating Marines vs. Blackwater. It was actually funny stuff.

GM went bankrupt as a private firm and was saved by the government.

The USMC costs a lot less than Blackwater per soldier. Ordinary Marines never get 6-figure salaries. Heck you have to be a General-Officer, or a Bird Colonel with two decades experience to get Blackwater money in the USMC.

Amtrak is not comparable to any other railroad. It carries people. The rest carry freight, primarily low-value, heavy, commodities. In fact the only real example you could point to is Conrail. CR was a 1976 consolidation of many bankrupt Northeastern Railroads, and turned a profit in 1987.

The Post Office was doing fine before the economic crisis. Do you send you Christmas cards buy FedEx?

Medicaid is government funded, but at least in Michigan it’s run by private companies.

Welfare vs. generic charities. Doomed, which Charities? Which Welfare program? If you wanna impress us here at Donklephant generic talking points ain’t gonna work.

Medicare is not bankrupt yet. Neither is Blue Cross. But if you look at the actual numbers Medicare is doing much better than Blue Cross. It’s costs grow slower, it’s users like it more, etc.

401ks have taken a beating lately. They’re tied to the stock market, and that’s been in a funk. Almost everybody with an actual 401k has lost money over the past few years. Usually five or six figures worth. Most of the rest broke even, despite continuing to contribute thousands each year. Social Security is doing much better than 401ks. It will run out of money if the Feds don’t tweak it a bit, but that’s peanuts compared to the beating my parents have taken. To rescue most 401ks we’d have to go back in time and convince Greenspan to regulate the mortgage-backed securities that caused this mess.

When an academic journal uses language like “the vast majority,” they’re weighing in strongly towards one side.

I don’t see how corporate, profit-driven health care and big pharma can stay in the game by actually curing people, making them healthier, making them better–to do so would effectively shrink their customer base. How can you increase profits with a shrinking customer base?!?

The healthier we get, the higher we raise the bar. We take for granted hosts and hosts of medications that previous generations would regard as utter miracles. The healthcare industry doesn’t seem close to curing death. And every additional year of life is bought at a higher price than the last. Even if healthcare could totally cure every ill, they’d be extremely busy doing so, along with focusing even more on providing extra years of life to failing bodies.

It’s IMO extremely unrealistic to expect that medicine can make us immortal. But there seems to be virtually infinite potential for profit in extending the human lifespan. Doctors are mechanics for the human body. As long as there are people, we’ll break down and need doctors to try to fix us. I just can’t see any possible way for the customer base to shrink as you seem to forecast.

Also, kranky, I agree wholeheartedly with your concerns about the so-called, dubiously-named “free market.” I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: I don’t see how corporate, profit-driven health care and big pharma can stay in the game by actually curing people, making them healthier, making them better–to do so would effectively shrink their customer base. How can you increase profits with a shrinking customer base?!?

Barring a meteor hit, will our nation’s population get bigger every year?

Will everybody still get sick hundreds of times during their life?

Do we all die at some point?

Because the answer to all three of those questions will always be yes, insurance companies will always be in business. End of story.

My point was this:

““Although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not.””

Some do, some don’t–as with most everything else, the Truth lies somewhere in the middle. Not black, not white… but grey.

Also, kranky, I agree wholeheartedly with your concerns about the so-called, dubiously-named “free market.” I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: I don’t see how corporate, profit-driven health care and big pharma can stay in the game by actually curing people, making them healthier, making them better–to do so would effectively shrink their customer base. How can you increase profits with a shrinking customer base?!?

Right now, the government is neck-deep in a massive rollout of flu vaccines, trying to actually prevent people from getting sick, or for certain individuals, even dying from a potentially-fatal virus.

And what’s “Big Pharma” been up to lately?

Oh, nothing but the most important stuff. Critical, valuable, life-saving medicine. You know… stuff like this.

Agnostick
agnostick@excite.com

Folks like Mike who ask whether winners and losers is an appropriate model for healthcare have my sympathy.

My guess is that the numbers can be debated up or down from either side. Whether it is the role of government or not leads to a more IMO honest debate to start from. If you think government should not be involved, you’re just fishing for a reason to be against something you would never be for. If you think government should be involved, then sit down at the table and make your cases for an approach.

I think alot of people wouldn’t vote for health care if Jesus came back and drew up the plan. It’s fine to take that opinion but be honest about the why of the disagreement.

I believe strong regulation is needed to keep the markets people oriented rather then free market oriented.

It is precisely this problem though that makes it so hard for the free markets to do their jobs in the health care industry. When red tape and regulation protects one or two health care providers per state then those providers are given most favored status and can pretty much charge what they want.

Putting a public option into this mix with a highly regulated health care system will pillage the private insurance companies who are hopelessly buried under debt of red tape. Inflexible and unable to compete they will have to cut jobs, shed expenses to compete at the cost of performance. As their performance struggles more turn to the government whom has no regulations and no desire to make money.

The public option is single payer in 10-15 years. Even Obama has admitted such on camera in interviews. Remember he is an Alinsky Radical…..their tactic is to convince you they are moderate while being a radical……I have stopped falling for their facade.

Seriously though, my own study of the insights of economics and free market ideas makes me sure that they provide insight into the world’s workings. And I have no doubts whatsoever that many of the conservative-envisioned negative side effects of a healthcare system with more government involvement will come to pass. None.

The current system has not been, so far, that crappy for me personally even though I realize it has many flaws, namely the cracks that others have fallen through. But I can see the trends and where they point. Going on as we have been going seems to me to represent more risk, both personally and systemically.

And make no mistake, the economics of this, being math, will be as ruthless as math always is. We can choose the nature of what the bottom line will be, but there will be a bottom line based on whatever choices we make, and a price tag associated with it. Over the long-term, we can’t get anymore than we are willing to pay for.

There is no circumventing the basic conundrum of a limited supply of healthcare and resources to pay for it on one hand, and an infinite demand for it. The kinder, more generous, and expansive we make out bottom line, the more adversely it will affect human enterprise in all other domains. And by enterprise, I do not mean just start-up businesses, I also mean things like education, public safety, and federal gov’t solvency, just to name a few.

Whatever we get now we’ll get the rest later. Don’t forget: Republicans started by screaming that Medicare was socialized medicine and now they vow eternal allegiance to Medicare.

Correct. This is the most frightening thing about it. Once the government takes over a social institution, there is no turning back. A cycle of dependency ensues, and more and more people concede more and more power to the government to fix the problems that the government has then created.

This is precisely why we cannot allow the government to take control of health care in this country now.

Yeah, because we might end up like the French: getting the same health care for half as much money. Oh horrors!

What people like you consistently refuse to get is that we have a lousy system. Lousy, cruel, stupid, wasteful. The French, the Swiss, the Dutch, the Danes, they all manage to have universal coverage and all live as long as we do and all have better infant mortality rates and all of them spend half as much.

The degree of idiocy required to defend a system that covers only a portion of the people and yet bankrupts both the country and the citizenry is astounding. Our system sucks. Our system is lousy. Our system is quite frankly moronic. We are the only developed nation on earth that thinks when you lose your job you and your family should also lose health care.

Here’s where I lean towards agreeing with Mike and away from Jimmi, although perhaps not with Mike’s zeal. And that’s a whole lengthy chautauqua that I’ll spare folks from. Here’s the short version. The free market hypothesis loves to blame the government for why healthcare doesn’t work, saying that the current system is so far away from a free market that it’s ludicrous to call it a market failure.

But I find that an almost faith-based argument. Free marketeers have yet to come up with any sort of good answer for oligopoly, the mature market dominated by a few major players that performs for all intents and purposes just like the slow, expensive, craooy-performing gov’t systems we don’t like.

The only answer they have is that the market needs to be made more free, and then they go right to the free marketeers bible for a bunch of canned cant about regulations being bad and needing small nimble competition etc etc.

Complex evolved systems don’t go backwards whether they are gov’t systems or not. Entropy and inertia are not solved by the free market. Perhaps in theory, but never in fact. The system we have now is effed up. I don’t think the conservatives have a very good answer that is composed of specific and realistic ideas. They just have cant, and complaints.

Jimmi, I’m as frightened of a big gov’t solution as you. But I’m at least as frightened of an unreformed or more free market system that would undeniably seek to leave me, high, dry, and on my own as I get older and inevitably become one of the people who needs to consume more services. I’ve already done most of my time as person who was a net profit center. By and large, the folks my age who don’t have this fear are those who have done very well and accumulated a bulletproof nest egg.

The free market hypothesis thrives on competition, and on winners and losers. Folks like Mike who ask whether winners and losers is an appropriate model for healthcare have my sympathy.

Not sure if I missed your point or you missed mine. I was being a bit sarcastic. My bad. I’m trying to highlight to everyone that:

•many folks think wish and hope that preventative care is a win-win proposition, that its BOTH a good idea for folks and a net saver of money for the system

•the people who know, who have studied it, who have done systematic comprehensive assessments of it? They say its a canard, that while preventative care is indisputably a good for patient health, it doesn;t save money and may even cost more

I put this kernel into fact-finder/mythbuster category. Myths like these are the basis for avoiding acknowledgement that healthcare reform requires making difficult choices. I don’t think that this is a conservative or liberal viewpoint. It’s a mattter of being realistic about what we know, and being financially responsible.

Does that help? I wish that preventative care by and large also saved money. It would be great news. But it seems asa though the people who believe that it does have only anecdotes for ammunition. The people that say it don’t have expertise and data.

I don’t know all the models and hypotheses used by the CBO to arrive at these numbers. Preventative care? Maybe–but last year, the New England Journal of Medicine said, “Although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not.”

kritter responds:

Shh. you’ll get tossed into the drain-circler’s buzzkill club with me. Many pro-form folks are deeply committed to the notion that preventative care is a win-win that’s good for your health _and_ saves money. Michael Reynolds for one is sure that the NEJM just must be wrong because he can name several cases where he believes it’s cost effective.

I quoted one sentence from the NEJM–one. Grand total of 18 words, one comma, one period, and a pair of quotation marks.

Are you (and perhaps Michael, as well) sure that you read all 18 words? Maybe some folks are only reading 15 or 16 words?

–Ag

Okay how about the marine corps vs blackwater. Cost to run the marine corps…staggering…cost to hire out blackwater…a few 100 million. Listening to anti Republicans discuss politics….priceless.

Lets look at General Motors vs Ford…….Bankrupt.

But lets try Amtrak vs any other railroad………bankrupt

Lets look at the post office…..Bankrupt

Lets look at the Medicaide vs Anybody…..bankrupt.

Lets look at wellfare vs. charities. Staggering spending with no end in site and no accountability.

Lets look at Medicare vs Blue cross, Blue shield……bankrupt.

Lets look at Social Security vs. 401k, annuities, roth IRA, teamsters retirement, Pepsi retirement, teachers retirement………Bankrupt.

Really? Name some.

I’ll start: US Marine Corps vs. Blackwater.

It’s a stupid thing to say, Doomed because of course there are almost no areas where the federal government competes directly with private industry. So you have no basis for your conclusion. And please don’t try Post Office vs. FedEx. The PO gets a letter anywhere for 40 cents. What does FedEx do for 40 cents?

And so the plan is and always has been to remove competition from the mix.

Single payer.

The question becomes…what to do with all those millions of employees who will be phased out over the next 10-15 years.

As Obama said….I envision an end to health insurance companies…Hes on record, in front of a camera saying it….clearly and without excuses.

Yeah, because we might end up like the French: getting the same health care for half as much money. Oh horrors!

What people like you consistently refuse to get is that we have a lousy system. Lousy, cruel, stupid, wasteful. The French, the Swiss, the Dutch, the Danes, they all manage to have universal coverage and all live as long as we do and all have better infant mortality rates and all of them spend half as much.

The degree of idiocy required to defend a system that covers only a portion of the people and yet bankrupts both the country and the citizenry is astounding. Our system sucks. Our system is lousy. Our system is quite frankly moronic. We are the only developed nation on earth that thinks when you lose your job you and your family should also lose health care.

And guys like you demand, insist that we keep it rather than improve it. It sucks: let’s keep it!

Ignorant jingoism.