Republican Fear Mongering about Medicare Changes is Working Despite Being Lies

[npts2020]

It's is necessary to attract investors. It's unnecessary in the sense that you're not getting what you paid for because of it. This is a tell tale sign of a highly demanded good/service operating in an artificially uncompetitive market.

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Yup.. this is the problem with the much touted CBO report. They underestimate future costs, and therefore the effect of the taxes that must be levied to pay for them. We'll save money, compared to the current system, but only if all things remain equal. Supporters are overlooking this last part.

 

 

 

I don't buy this. Is anybody worried about the price of computers in 2020 and demanding the gov't take over? What about cars or car insurance? What about something even more important than health care: supermarkets and farms?

 

I don't agree with the heuristic that gov't ownership can control costs... It can institute price controls, but this general leads to shortages.

 

I keep hammering this point over and over again. Without profit, there's little incentive for innovation. I don't understand how, when the US gov't spends more on health care than any other govt in the world, people can still say, with a straight face, that the problem is with free markets.

 

There is too much bad regulation in place for the market to be considered, in any way, a free one.

 

Does that mean we ought to do away with the National Institutes of Health?

[ecoli]

Does that mean we ought to do away with the National Institutes of Health?

I get your point and it's a strawman. I'm talking about innovations in the insurance business, not health care technology. That's a discussion for a different thread.

[ParanoiA]

Obvious question -- didn't they already fail to do just that?

 

No, for two reasons. One, as I've repeated in the past here, the current system is more of a socialized bubble within a capitalist framework. Most of us get our insurance from our job, not by free choice. With this kind of association, insurance companies don't compete for individuals, they compete for whole companies with a different view of quality than an individual might - and a somewhat smaller base to be sure.

 

McCain tried to fix this but was maligned for it. Ever since WWII companies have used the tax-free benefits of healthcare in lieu of pay - the employer's dollars going further than an individual's. And of course, the sheeple that we are, we just go right along with it. McCain tried to eliminate that tax advantage, which would have caused a tax on the employee - that's the part they used to malign him and conveniently leave out the whole purpose. Which was to eliminate the advantage the employer has over the employee with healthcare benefits. That's why McCain suggested the $5,000 tax rebate so it would cancel most of the newly incurred taxes.

 

But no one could see the forest from the trees. And Obama's plan that just passed is even worse, because now we're fully committed to insurance companies being middle men for every single american, for every single bill, at least in theory Wow. How incredibly stupid. Even wal-mart customers and drug dealers now how much of a drain middle men are.

 

Two, because people receive service without paying for it, it strikes right at the heart of free market trade. Free market principles cannot work when we undermine the assumptions they depend on. We undermine this system for noble purposes, to be sure, but we have to realize we are introducing unnatural foundational conditions for a system that relies on them to function.

 

 

These two reasons are among the list that I believe undermine otherwise natural cost controls in the market. Now, the only thing that will manage costs is government force, from time to time, trying to figure out how to run a market that's so distorted from anything free; manufacturing a check for every unnatural force they introduce.

 

I keep hammering this point over and over again. Without profit, there's little incentive for innovation. I don't understand how, when the US gov't spends more on health care than any other govt in the world, people can still say, with a straight face, that the problem is with free markets.

 

Here, Here.