CDR: RE: why should it be trusted?
---------- Nathan Saper[SMTP:natedog@well.com] wrote: On Mon, Oct 23, 2000 at 08:37:42PM -0700, James A.. Donald wrote:
You cannot provide cheap insurance by punishing insurers, any more than you can provide cheap housing by punishing landlords. It has been tried. A
law compelling insurance companies to insure the unhealthy will merely raise costs for the healthy, resulting in more people going uninsured.
If you want to guarantee insurance for the unhealthy without ill effects
the TAXPAYER has to pay, and I suspect that if this proposition was put to the public, enthusiasm would be considerably less. Indeed the Clintons did put something very like that proposition to the public, and there was little enthusiasm.
Having socialized healthcare would be ideal. However, I think that the political atmosphere in this country pretty much removes that possibility.
[...] Nathan, have you ever actually looked at socialized medicine? It's fine for some things, but not for others. Illnessess which can be cured and which curing will return a person to productive labour get treated - after a while. Illnessess which strike late in life and/or require expensive treatment get much shorter shrift. Britain's NHS record on cancer treatment is a national disgrace. Why do you think Austin Power's teeth were a running joke? The state of British (ie, socialized NHS) dentistry lags *far* behind the US, especially in the area of orthodontics. Canadians like their socialized system, but any Canadian who gets sick knows that (for a price) they can get faster, better treatment in the US. There are more MRI machines in single US cities than in all of Canada, and the waiting lists up there can outlast an Albertan winter. The sad truth is that cost of the best medical care has exceeded the ability of the average person to afford it. (When I say 'average' I mean the arithmetic mean of incomes, so robbing the rich to treat the poor still won't get everyone the best possible care). Regardless of how we choose to finance it, there will remain many people whose lives could have been improved by treatments which were not performed due to reasons of cost. Once you recognize that medical care *must* be rationed, the question is how, and by who. The majority of the subscribers to this list are anarcho-capitalists and/or libertarians, and abhor any taking by force. Your socialist outlook is very much a minority viewpoint, and I don't think you're going to change anyones mind. The solution to this problem is not to propose different ways to slice up the too-small pie - it's to expand the pie. The greater the wealth, the more people who can afford good care. People who are responsible for their own welfare (and enslaved to the welfare of others) have the best chance of acheiving wealth. Peter Trei
"Trei, Peter" wrote:
Nathan, have you ever actually looked at socialized medicine? It's fine for some things, but not for others. Illnessess which can be cured and which curing will return a person to productive labour get treated - after a while. Illnessess which strike late in life and/or require expensive treatment get much shorter shrift.
This isn't really true. The NHS tends to be quite good at big stuff, serious interventions. The UK is also quite good for fixing small 1-off problems (the poor wait in line, the less poor just pay same as anywhere else). What it isn't so good at is chronic but not life-threatening problems. In other words, just the ones "which curing will return a person to productive labour". Of course these are also the exact same health problems that private health insurance is worst at.
Why do you think Austin Power's teeth were a running joke? The state of British (ie, socialized NHS) dentistry lags *far* behind the US, especially in the area of orthodontics.
Dentistry in the UK is almost entirely private & sometimes used as an example of why publicly provided healthcare is supposed to be better! Except for the poorest, we pay for it out of our own pockets (as adults anyway, there is a certain amount of public provision for children). Same applies to opticians & so on. There are a lot of problems (particularly local ones in London because nationally set budgets don't reflect the cost of provision here - the district I'm in has over 20% shortfall in the number of nurses on the staff because they aren't paid enough), but on the whole I think you'll find few Brits who would give up the idea of the NHS. After all we live longer than you do, on average (assuming you are USAn), are slightly poorer to start with & spend a *lot* less on healthcare per head, public & private combined. In fact you spend almost as much on "socialised" medicine as we do, far less cost-effectively. Ken
-- At 04:21 PM 10/25/2000 +0100, Ken Brown wrote:
This isn't really true. The NHS tends to be quite good at big stuff, serious interventions.
Serious interventions, for example coronary bypass for the elderly, are rationed. Furthermore they are corruptly rationed.
on the whole I think you'll find few Brits who would give up the idea of the NHS.
Stockholm syndrome. Named after the irrational response to some terrorists in Stockholm. When someone is able to kill with impunity, many people have a desperate desire to see him as wise and good and just, as more than human. In particular the vast majority of people subject to his terror have a desperate desire to see him as wise and good and just and reasonable, no matter how glaringly obvious that he is a vicious sadistic and capricious murderer. Even if he kills randomly without reason, for the mere pleasure of it, they invent good reasons for each killing. Once he is killed, or his power successfully opposed, most people then seem him as he really is, but not until then. We see the same phenomena in health care. When a government with a total monopoly over health care, for example the Canadian government introduces "health care rationing" people love it. When the VA (an American government operation which does not have a monopoly) rations health care, people hate it and are outraged and indignant. I saw the same thing in Cuba since tourism. In the interior, away from the tourist zone, I found that everyone loved their free medical health care system, and were very proud of it, though it is profoundly unimpressive. In the tourist zones, where Cubans can get real medical care by prostituting their daughters to tourists, etc, many of them hate and detest the Cuban medical system, and consider it one of the major evils of communism. I attribute their affection for their socialist medical systems, (as I saw in the interior) to the Stockholm syndrome. You are reluctant to think hostile thoughts about people who hold their life in your hands. Since Cubans in the tourist zone could buy black market medical treated diverted from the tourists only facilities, they were free to hate the monopoly medical system. Cubans in the interior were afraid to hate. We can see the same phenomena with the communist regimes. Before the Soviet Union fell, people in the West were shocked and outraged if you said unkind things about communist regimes. Now there is no problem. "Hey, of course the Soviet Union was the evil empire, do bears shit in the woods?"
After all we live longer than you do, on average (assuming you are USAn), are slightly poorer to start with & spend a *lot* less on healthcare per head, public & private combined.
You do not live longer than people in the US do. The hopelessly incompetent and improvident among you live longer than the hopelessly incompetent and improvident in the US. Doubtless the same is true of people in prisons. When the slaves were freed, their death rate similarly went way up, because many of them were too feckless to look after themselves. Nonetheless, few of them wished to return to the old system. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG smwbM0NqhxH6QzqEO5zPXX2xY1l2Hj/rQWvWNFx0 4hOOyfBLTrE6UOP7ius/r4q+UAsiSHfhHoaRfEPT+
On Thu, 26 Oct 2000, James A. Donald wrote:
on the whole I think you'll find few Brits who would give up the idea of the NHS.
Stockholm syndrome.
This particular argument works both ways and is exceptionally difficult to prove in either direction. It's not nearly as credible as the economic ones people seem to love, here. As for the WHO study, it indeed displays some queer characteristics: for instance, what on earth does mortality, per se, have to do with the quality of health care? It is true that better health care for a population, other things being equal, implies higher expected lifespan. This does not necessarily go the other way around. Some more specific measures based on mortality (like infant mortality, death from diseases related to affluency etc.) perhaps serve as decent indicators of the general quality of health care, but not the base measure. Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, Oct 25, 2000 at 10:10:29AM -0400, Trei, Peter wrote:
Nathan Saper[SMTP:natedog@well.com] wrote: On Mon, Oct 23, 2000 at 08:37:42PM -0700, James A.. Donald wrote:
You cannot provide cheap insurance by punishing insurers, any more than you can provide cheap housing by punishing landlords. It has been tried. A
law compelling insurance companies to insure the unhealthy will merely raise costs for the healthy, resulting in more people going uninsured.
If you want to guarantee insurance for the unhealthy without ill effects
the TAXPAYER has to pay, and I suspect that if this proposition was put to the public, enthusiasm would be considerably less. Indeed the Clintons did put something very like that proposition to the public, and there was little enthusiasm.
Having socialized healthcare would be ideal. However, I think that the political atmosphere in this country pretty much removes that possibility.
[...]
Nathan, have you ever actually looked at socialized medicine? It's fine for some things, but not for others. Illnessess which can be cured and which curing will return a person to productive labour get treated - after a while. Illnessess which strike late in life and/or require expensive treatment get much shorter shrift. Britain's NHS record on cancer treatment is a national disgrace. Why do you think Austin Power's teeth were a running joke? The state of British (ie, socialized NHS) dentistry lags *far* behind the US, especially in the area of orthodontics.
IIRC, dentistry in Canada is not socialized. Not sure about Britain... In a recent WHO study, the U.S. was ranked (IIRC) 15th in the world for healthcare (factoring in quality, availability, etc). This was behind many socialized healthcare countries, such as Canada.
Canadians like their socialized system, but any Canadian who gets sick knows that (for a price) they can get faster, better treatment in the US. There are more MRI machines in single US cities than in all of Canada, and the waiting lists up there can outlast an Albertan winter.
It is true that (for a price) faster care is available in the U.S. I'm not sure about better care, however. This has to be weighed against the greater availability of care in Canada.
The sad truth is that cost of the best medical care has exceeded the ability of the average person to afford it. (When I say 'average' I mean the arithmetic mean of incomes, so robbing the rich to treat the poor still won't get everyone the best possible care). Regardless of how we choose to finance it, there will remain many people whose lives could have been improved by treatments which were not performed due to reasons of cost.
Very true.
Once you recognize that medical care *must* be rationed, the question is how, and by who. The majority of the subscribers to this list are anarcho-capitalists and/or libertarians, and abhor any taking by force. Your socialist outlook is very much a minority viewpoint, and I don't think you're going to change anyones mind.
I've realized by now that my viewpoint is at best found annoying, and at worst hated. It seems that people here view me the same way: at best annoying, at worst despicable. ;-)
The solution to this problem is not to propose different ways to slice up the too-small pie - it's to expand the pie. The greater the wealth, the more people who can afford good care. People who are responsible for their own welfare (and enslaved to the welfare of others) have the best chance of acheiving wealth.
This assumes that wealth will be achieved by everyone. This is simply not true. Look at America. The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer.
Peter Trei
- -- Nathan Saper (natedog@well.com) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP & PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.5 and Gnu Privacy Guard <http://www.gnupg.org/> iD8DBQE593p92FWyBZrQ84IRAutpAJ9tNQ9S5WIkbBLy/Y0jYLlVfs7wNwCcDa3S +fnvSzvmiMrceShxGAVVjtI= =79tr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
From: "Nathan Saper" <natedog@well.com>
In a recent WHO study, the U.S. was ranked (IIRC) 15th in the world for healthcare (factoring in quality, availability, etc). This was behind many socialized healthcare countries, such as Canada.
From memory. From my ass.
I believe the US was ranked #37. The study seemed to rank countries based on some pretty useless things. For example, IIRC, it put a great deal of emphasis on relative levels of care within a country. Absolute or objective levels of care don't matter to the sick. That is why countries like Oman, Cuba, and Boobabooba outranked the US: almost everyone gets shitty, but equal, levels of care. Everyone gets to use that same needle. Also, it attempted to factor out the disabled, genetic freaks, the old and pathetic, etc. -- all of the people you care about. Chad can't afford to support these people, the US does, so it just wouldn't be fair if this were to be factored in. Those people just don't count!
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, Oct 25, 2000 at 09:55:52PM -0400, Me wrote:
From: "Nathan Saper" <natedog@well.com>
In a recent WHO study, the U.S. was ranked (IIRC) 15th in the world for healthcare (factoring in quality, availability, etc). This was behind many socialized healthcare countries, such as Canada.
From memory. From my ass.
I believe the US was ranked #37.
The study seemed to rank countries based on some pretty useless things.
For example, IIRC, it put a great deal of emphasis on relative levels of care within a country. Absolute or objective levels of care don't matter to the sick. That is why countries like Oman, Cuba, and Boobabooba outranked the US: almost everyone gets shitty, but equal, levels of care. Everyone gets to use that same needle.
Also, it attempted to factor out the disabled, genetic freaks, the old and pathetic, etc. -- all of the people you care about. Chad can't afford to support these people, the US does, so it just wouldn't be fair if this were to be factored in. Those people just don't count!
Maybe we're thinking of different studies. I'm pretty sure the U.S. did better than 37th in the study I'm thinking of. I'll do a search of WHO's website, and if they don't have it, I'll search Lexis-Nexis. - -- Nathan Saper (natedog@well.com) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP & PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.5 and Gnu Privacy Guard <http://www.gnupg.org/> iD8DBQE595jz2FWyBZrQ84IRAuaoAKCyJ2Yj9gXH+ctp8ItOjBkyim8ahACfUJ0+ OjjL03MMMnsP4mfLVK3uIB8= =dAhK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
From: "Nathan Saper" <natedog@well.com>
Maybe we're thinking of different studies. I'm pretty sure the U.S. did better than 37th in the study I'm thinking of.
Prob; these rankings seem to be a fav passtime among many .ints.
I'll do a search of WHO's website, and if they don't have it, I'll search Lexis-Nexis.
The who's site won't talk to me tonight. These are the first few things yahoo threw at me: http://www.commondreams.org/views/091500-101.htm http://www.worldbank.org/html/prddr/trans/May-Aug2000/pg41.htm http://www.cato.org/dailys/07-05-00.html
participants (6)
-
James A. Donald -
Ken Brown -
Me -
Nathan Saper -
Sampo A Syreeni -
Trei, Peter