walmart and medical cost

[Athena]

Hello everyone, arguing about monopolies and open markets is missing the point. If I could walk into Walmart and pick up my supplies like I can buy colthing, furniture, kitchen appliances, etc.. There would be no problem. First off Walmart would force the producer to make an affordable product. You know, as Walmart refused to sell brand name vacuum cleaners, unless they were produced them cheaper, so the manufacture shut down its US factory and moved over seas, where it could produce a cheaper vacuum. I am not sure this is a good thing, but I do think many things we buy are way over priced, and our whole nation is looking at an economic crisis because of the rising cost of medical care. We need to look at reducing medical cost.

 

Secondly, the problem is getting the supplies I need. It would be so much easier to walk into Walmart and pick my supplies than be forced to rely on a supplier I can not rely on. Before I can supplies from anyone, I must have a doctor's prescription. There is no possible way anyone is going to be hurt by a machine that blows air into a tube or the supplies that go with it. Why does this require a prescription? Even if there is a good reason for this, why should it require a doctor's okay every time supplies are purchased? I can't even get get an air filter without a prescription. Give me a break, this is excessive controlling.

 

I can not buy from just anyone, but can buy only from vendors who have a contract my with insurance company. I don't think you all are understanding the business/government tie. My medical care is tied up with Medicare and it is a nightmare of someone else controlling my ability to buy a filter or hose for my CPAP machine. These vendors are set up to do business with government and insurance companies, not with customers who walk in off the street to buy something. I waited over 2 weeks for the paper work to be done, to switch from one vendor to another, only to find out the new vendor doesn't carry the product I want! It is going to take weeks to get anything from another vendor. I would not have changed vendors, if the first one had filled my orders without screwing up the paper work every time for years. Walmart has to please the customer. How do I explain, when you need something like CPAP supplies, you are at the mercy of the vendor, government regulations and insurance rules. These guys have a lot of paper work they have to exchange before a person can get supplies, and I am sure it is pain for the doctor's office who got paid 8 years ago and is not getting paid for the paper work every time I need supplies.

 

How about this. Communist could not make a worse nightmare out of getting medical supplies. Instead of arguing, can you suggest what can be done to correct the problem?

[john5746]

Athena,

 

You can't get a cpap machine, but I think you can buy the supplies without a prescription if you do not use insurance, at least I do.

[lemur]

No, I was arguing that patents do not constitute a monopoly and do not eliminate competition. But since you contend there's always a product to substitute, even when you have a monopoly, that makes my point.

 

Free market is your argument, not mine. "Competition = no barriers" and "barriers = no competition" are not self-evident. False statements aren't self-evident.

Barriers to entry can be partial. You can create an elite market where the barriers to entry are high but no sufficient to produce a monopoly. The businesses that shoulder the high entry costs will have an interest in exploiting their advantageous position to avoid price competition as much as possible. This leads to oligopolistic behavior where firms will form a pecking-order instead of undercutting each other to dominate the market.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly

 

Take the case of Coke again. When they changed their original formula (~100 years ago) they, like other companies, decided not to patent it, because they did not want it freely available once the patent protection ran out. So they treat it as a trade secret. Now that's a big barrier to competition. I can't make an exact copy of Coke. I have to come up with my own formula. That's a barrier to market entry, so from your definition it's not free market, but I'll be damned if I can see how that's not the free market in action.

If you really wanted to produce Coke using Coke's (secret) recipe and brand-name, logo, etc. the secrecy of the recipe and the trademark on the name and logo would indeed be a barrier to you competing except by promoting a different brand as tasting the same or better.

 

I don't think we should pursue your definition of a free market. Businesses pursue profit, so if intellectual property can be stolen, then it has no value and therefore they should not invest in it. Innovation is very risky, high costs but with possibly big payoffs in terms of profit margin and market share. You will be taking away most of the payoff without removing the costs. That is a huge barrier.

I'm not saying that a free market is necessarily the best way to nurture innovation or r&d. It might, but that's a different discussion. My point is that you shouldn't confound terminology by calling price-competition a barrier to entry. The way the supply curve works is that as the price decreases, producers are willing to produce less. If the price goes below the costs, no produce will produce the product because it is irrational to lose money. The demand curve has to begin somewhere though, so if there are at least some people willing to pay a high price for something, some producer may be willing to supply it at that price, though they will be able to sell very little. What happens is that once a producer makes one, it usually makes sense for them to make more and because they want more money, they discount the price to attract more buyers. Then, when other firms see there is a market for the product, they enter the market and attempt to sell as much of the product as they can produce. So at some point, the price gets low enough that some companies give up trying to lower their costs any further, at which point the remaining companies can begin behaving as a monopoly or oligopoly. If, however, such oligopolies are maintained due to high barriers to entry/exit or collusion to eliminate competition that doesn't cooperate in maintaining the most lucrative market for everyone, then prices can be maintained at artificially high levels. Patenting products is one way of maintaining such artificially high prices, whether or not it's a good thing or a bad thing to eliminate patenting for this reason is technical discussion. You shouldn't obfuscate the basic logic of free market economics to assert that some form of market control makes for a better economy. Just argue that instead.

 

 

[john5746]

I'm not saying that a free market is necessarily the best way to nurture innovation or r&d. It might, but that's a different discussion. My point is that you shouldn't confound terminology by calling price-competition a barrier to entry. The way the supply curve works is that as the price decreases, producers are willing to produce less. If the price goes below the costs, no produce will produce the product because it is irrational to lose money. The demand curve has to begin somewhere though, so if there are at least some people willing to pay a high price for something, some producer may be willing to supply it at that price, though they will be able to sell very little. What happens is that once a producer makes one, it usually makes sense for them to make more and because they want more money, they discount the price to attract more buyers. Then, when other firms see there is a market for the product, they enter the market and attempt to sell as much of the product as they can produce. So at some point, the price gets low enough that some companies give up trying to lower their costs any further, at which point the remaining companies can begin behaving as a monopoly or oligopoly. If, however, such oligopolies are maintained due to high barriers to entry/exit or collusion to eliminate competition that doesn't cooperate in maintaining the most lucrative market for everyone, then prices can be maintained at artificially high levels. Patenting products is one way of maintaining such artificially high prices, whether or not it's a good thing or a bad thing to eliminate patenting for this reason is technical discussion. You shouldn't obfuscate the basic logic of free market economics to assert that some form of market control makes for a better economy. Just argue that instead.

 

OK, we are arguing the definition. I think property rights are a foundation of a free market. I include intellectual property as a property right. I think this is necessary to have much of a market in the first place - at least ones that require any innovation. Maybe I am wrong. Is there an accepted definition out there that excludes it?

[lemur]

OK, we are arguing the definition. I think property rights are a foundation of a free market. I include intellectual property as a property right. I think this is necessary to have much of a market in the first place - at least ones that require any innovation. Maybe I am wrong. Is there an accepted definition out there that excludes it?

When I took microeconomics, I learned that there were certain ideal conditions for free markets to function perfectly but I don't really know if these conditions were directly described by Adam Smith or someone else. Either way, it shouldn't matter because there's simply a logic to the supply and demand curves. For example, it is logical that suppliers will want to produce less as the price goes down, but if there is a barrier to exiting the market they will continue to produce at the lower price. Likewise, if firms avoid price-competition for some reason, for example because they are afraid of retaliation from competitors, then the quantity firms are willing to produce won't necessarily increase as costs decrease because market-controllers are trying to ensure a certain amount of scarcity to keep prices as levels that create higher profit margins instead of allowing price-competition between firms to bring prices down to minimum profit-levels.

 

If you think about it for a while, you will see that there is rationality behind various market behaviors. People want to maximize profit, minimize costs, etc. In free market supply and demand, these rational choices are supposed to result in competitive forces that act like an invisible hand regulating both production and consumption through price-setting. However, both producers and consumers may seek means to deviate from abiding by the market-price dynamics and thus attempt to manipulate markets to maintain higher prices for greater revenues/profits/wages/etc. and/or the demand side can shirt its responsibility to behave rationally and instead choose non-rational reason to favor certain businesses or employees, for example. The free market ideal situation, however, is that prices emerge from free market interactions and that no one does anything to manipulate anyone else's behavior; they just look at a given price and decide how much they want to produce or buy at that price or they look for something else to make/sell/buy.

 

 

[Marat]

You should have a look at the book by Bryan Caplan, 'The Myth of Rational Democracy.' In it he argues that democracy is irrational because it fails to institute policies which would make the market maximally efficient in responding to demand. It is all very pretty and quite economically sophisticated, but it somehow leaves out human beings in its analysis. I say that because all the time it is talking about matching supply to demand, it simply doesn't consider the problem that there are real human needs (such as for medical supplies, in the present case) which cannot always be represented as a demand in the market since people don't have enough money to 'vote' for their need in a way that will make the market respond. Markets exist not to maximize their own efficiency and rationality, but to serve real human needs in the most humane way possible. If they cannot do this, then the market economy has to be limited or abolished.

[lemur]

You should have a look at the book by Bryan Caplan, 'The Myth of Rational Democracy.' In it he argues that democracy is irrational because it fails to institute policies which would make the market maximally efficient in responding to demand. It is all very pretty and quite economically sophisticated, but it somehow leaves out human beings in its analysis. I say that because all the time it is talking about matching supply to demand, it simply doesn't consider the problem that there are real human needs (such as for medical supplies, in the present case) which cannot always be represented as a demand in the market since people don't have enough money to 'vote' for their need in a way that will make the market respond. Markets exist not to maximize their own efficiency and rationality, but to serve real human needs in the most humane way possible. If they cannot do this, then the market economy has to be limited or abolished.

The problem is that for market freedom to be limited or abolished, regulators have to transcend their self-interest to exploit their position of relative power/control for their own benefit. In the absence of competition, people tend to try to get more and give less than they would if they knew someone else was willing to give more and take less. Communism holds the ideal view that people will voluntarily commit their labor to maximizing social good, but how many people will actually do this given the privilege/power to gain bargaining leverage instead?

Edited June 2, 2011 by lemur

[Marat]

You're no doubt familiar with the basic Marxist premise that the ideological assumptions about how people should 'naturally' and 'rationally' want to behave are themselves the product of the material relations of the culture in which those people form their attitudes and desires. If we live in a capitalist world that thematizes and encourages rapaciousness, competition, and selfishness as principles of rationality guiding sensible decision-making, then we grow up assuming that these are the only possible motivations for us which could make sense.

 

In fact, however, many societies have operated on more altruistic principles. The ancient Egyptians may have built the pyramids out of service to religious values, as did those who built the cathedrals of medieval Europe. Female school teachers years ago used to work for ridiculously low wages because they received in return the emotional benefits of participating in the activity of raising children even though they were generally unmarried. Artists starve in garrets because they love their work. Amish build barns for other members of their community out of pure solidarity and for no pay. In an emergency, people eagerly pitch in to help without being offered money, even though the work may be dangerous and difficult, and people even try to exceed each other in bravery and exertion to ensure the resuce of those in peril. All these situations and more show that people can be motivated to work hard by things other than material self-advantage.

 

If society were organized on principles of solidarity, like one giant Amish community, perhaps people would find it natural to want to help and would even be offended at the idea of personally profiting from their efforts.

[lemur]

You're no doubt familiar with the basic Marxist premise that the ideological assumptions about how people should 'naturally' and 'rationally' want to behave are themselves the product of the material relations of the culture in which those people form their attitudes and desires. If we live in a capitalist world that thematizes and encourages rapaciousness, competition, and selfishness as principles of rationality guiding sensible decision-making, then we grow up assuming that these are the only possible motivations for us which could make sense.

 

In fact, however, many societies have operated on more altruistic principles. The ancient Egyptians may have built the pyramids out of service to religious values, as did those who built the cathedrals of medieval Europe. Female school teachers years ago used to work for ridiculously low wages because they received in return the emotional benefits of participating in the activity of raising children even though they were generally unmarried. Artists starve in garrets because they love their work. Amish build barns for other members of their community out of pure solidarity and for no pay. In an emergency, people eagerly pitch in to help without being offered money, even though the work may be dangerous and difficult, and people even try to exceed each other in bravery and exertion to ensure the resuce of those in peril. All these situations and more show that people can be motivated to work hard by things other than material self-advantage.

 

If society were organized on principles of solidarity, like one giant Amish community, perhaps people would find it natural to want to help and would even be offended at the idea of personally profiting from their efforts.

I think Marxism would use the same principle to explain communitarian altruism as an ideology that serves the beneficiaries of the economic order by pacifying the workers in performing more labor for lower compensation. The only thing Marx really seemed to favor was total communism, where there would be no private property and all workers would contribute all their labor to the common good. Ancient Egyptians would have thus abandoned the pyramids in favor of utilitarian pursuits. Schoolteachers would devote themselves to educating students in utilitarian pursuits and the value of contributing to the common good. Artists would either choose forms of art that promoted communism or create art from trash or in some other way contribute to the common good using their art. Amish would not help each other out of solidarity but for the purpose of increasing the means of production so that everyone would benefit.

 

Free market capitalism was designed to achieve the same good maximization through rationality and efficiency as communism, only the will to maximize production to make more money and the will to reduce consumption to save that money were supposed to be the mechanisms of self-interest that stimulated people to maximize public good. Capitalism would probably indistinguishable from communism by now if the will to save hadn't been replaced with the will to spend and flaunt one's money. Likewise, instead of continuously expanding to provide ever more people with capitalist goods, business strategies have shifted to limiting themselves to the most prosperous markets in order to avoid working for low levels of revenue. Enterprises like Walmart and other low-cost suppliers are the closest thing capitalism knows at this point to expanding to serve ever poorer markets, but these enterprises are attacked and regulated to generate higher dividends, wages, etc. for those who would rather increase the wages of westerners than expand capitalism into poorer economic regions.

 

 

[Marat]

I don't understand why you would say that capitalism hopes that people will reduce consumption to increase savings, since it depends on its ability to sell things in order to make profits. Why is capitalism so eager to spend money on advertising to stimulate demand and offer credit so as to increase borrowing to buy more goods if it really wants people to reduce consumption and save? The goal of capitalism is to make profit for those with capital to invest; the common good is not strictly a goal of capitalism, though that may be an acceptable by-product of the generation of profits.

 

The problem of capitalism is that it is trapped in the cycle of investment-production-and profit that it creates. There is no point in investing and risking capital unless it can produce a profit by selling items for more than their true value and employing people for less than the true value of their labor to produce things. This process generates, over and over again, ever larger profit accumulations. These accumulations have to be profitably invested, since otherwise they become dead capital and are eaten up by inflation. But since there is now more capital for investment than before, more goods have to be produced -- and purchased by the public -- to generate sufficient profit to meet the increased return demanded by that additional capital. Yet at each turn of this cycle, the fact that goods are sold for more than they are worth, and workers produce more value than they are paid -- with the difference soaked up by the capitalists as profit, the profit and the wealth of the capitalists grows faster than the buying power of those who have only their labor to sell.

 

Thus in 1960, real wages in the U.S. made up 52% of GDP, while by 2005 they had fallen to only 46% of GDP. In 1985, the richest 5% of Americans controlled assets worth 2.05 times the total GDP; in 2010, they controlled 2.74 times the total GDP. With workers whose incomes were making up a smaller proportion of GDP than ever, how were these even wealthier captalists going to find sufficiently productive investments for their surplus wealth?

 

This created a top-heavy economy with too much capital for investment and not enough buying power to allow it to be invested at adequate return, so the market had to be artificially stimulated by advertising and easy credit encouraging increasing indebtedness of the poor and middle class (e.g., sub-prime mortgages in the U.S. in the early 21st century.) When the problem became extreme, capitalists contrived artificial profit-making vehicles, like bets on market performance (e.g., exotic financial instruments in the early 21st century.) Thus in 1945, 8% of the U.S. economy was invested in finance, while 54% was invested in manufacturing; in 2005, 40% was invested in finance and only 3% in manufacturing. When capital accumulation finally outstrips consumption power beyond the capacity of the market to adjust, there is a collapse, such as we had in 2008. This wipes out some of the massive capital accumulation so the cycle can begin over again with less internal strains -- at least for a while.

 

But in all this we see that capitalism always needs increasing consumer demand to continue operating.

[lemur]

I don't understand why you would say that capitalism hopes that people will reduce consumption to increase savings, since it depends on its ability to sell things in order to make profits. Why is capitalism so eager to spend money on advertising to stimulate demand and offer credit so as to increase borrowing to buy more goods if it really wants people to reduce consumption and save? The goal of capitalism is to make profit for those with capital to invest; the common good is not strictly a goal of capitalism, though that may be an acceptable by-product of the generation of profits.

I'm talking about the original ideals of capitalism as it evolved from protestant ethics (the Max Weber view). The logic of capitalism as an ethically virtuous economic system made sense in the sense that saving was the individualist equivalent of Marxist communism's devotion to the collective good. For Marx, good communists take little and give a lot. Good capitalists do the same, only the mechanism motivating them is making more money and saving it instead of spending it. You're right that capitalism has been usurped by all sorts of deviation from the original protestant ethics. People use it as a free-for-all to milk as much money as they can out of anyone for any reason in any way and lots of people have lost the saving ethic, although it persists in terms of things like 401k retirement accounts, insurance, etc. Yet, wherever there is a big pool of money, there seems to be a flock of vultures trying to kill it and consume it instead of allowing it to survive as savings.

 

The problem of capitalism is that it is trapped in the cycle of investment-production-and profit that it creates. There is no point in investing and risking capital unless it can produce a profit by selling items for more than their true value and employing people for less than the true value of their labor to produce things. This process generates, over and over again, ever larger profit accumulations. These accumulations have to be profitably invested, since otherwise they become dead capital and are eaten up by inflation.

The accumulation only occurs because of insufficient competition to continually drive down profits. If that occurred, everyone would be so impoverished that the bar for new enterprises would be pretty low. Anyone would start anything to make money instead of restricting their investments to the highest CAPs, PERs, etc.

 

But since there is now more capital for investment than before, more goods have to be produced -- and purchased by the public -- to generate sufficient profit to meet the increased return demanded by that additional capital.

Hence mass-markets characterized by wealthy elites (and their managerial class aristocracy) vs. poor masses, more reminiscent of the middle ages than what you would expect from a true free-market. There's nothing wrong with mass-production really, since it's efficient, but it's odd that free market competition doesn't push profits down to levels that prevent capital accumulation among investors and managers.

 

Yet at each turn of this cycle, the fact that goods are sold for more than they are worth, and workers produce more value than they are paid -- with the difference soaked up by the capitalists as profit, the profit and the wealth of the capitalists grows faster than the buying power of those who have only their labor to sell.

Yes, I see that you subscribe to Marxist economic naturalism where capitalism is concerned. But if you would read about ideal free market behavior, you would see that workers aren't supposed to get disenfranchized of everything except their labor because anyone is supposed to be able to gain competitive access to markets, which undercuts capitalists' ability to maintain exclusive ownership of the means of production. There are numerous deviations from pure competition that cause workers to accept their subordination to capital, which is the means by which the capital-owners avoid competing with ingenuous workers starting their own businesses. High wages, benefits, conveniences of not having to be accountable for one's labor, high liability and corresponding insurance costs, etc. all keep workers deferring their productivity to corporate authority.

 

Thus in 1960, real wages in the U.S. made up 52% of GDP, while by 2005 they had fallen to only 46% of GDP. In 1985, the richest 5% of Americans controlled assets worth 2.05 times the total GDP; in 2010, they controlled 2.74 times the total GDP. With workers whose incomes were making up a smaller proportion of GDP than ever, how were these even wealthier captalists going to find sufficiently productive investments for their surplus wealth?

They do it by implementing redistributive policies that fuel a new investment competition so they can go on betting against each other for relative supremacy. Tax policies that target the rich are like requiring an ante at the casino to stimulate the rich to start betting and getting the cash flowing. Otherwise capitalism would quiet down significantly and make room for grass-roots market activities to emerge.

 

 

[Incendia]

Setting up and NHS would fix this problem, and a lot of other problems...the taxes are less that the medical bills, your taxes help a lot of people out, and it will save the US government 1 billion dollars.

[Athena]

You're no doubt familiar with the basic Marxist premise that the ideological assumptions about how people should 'naturally' and 'rationally' want to behave are themselves the product of the material relations of the culture in which those people form their attitudes and desires. If we live in a capitalist world that thematizes and encourages rapaciousness, competition, and selfishness as principles of rationality guiding sensible decision-making, then we grow up assuming that these are the only possible motivations for us which could make sense.

 

In fact, however, many societies have operated on more altruistic principles. The ancient Egyptians may have built the pyramids out of service to religious values, as did those who built the cathedrals of medieval Europe. Female school teachers years ago used to work for ridiculously low wages because they received in return the emotional benefits of participating in the activity of raising children even though they were generally unmarried. Artists starve in garrets because they love their work. Amish build barns for other members of their community out of pure solidarity and for no pay. In an emergency, people eagerly pitch in to help without being offered money, even though the work may be dangerous and difficult, and people even try to exceed each other in bravery and exertion to ensure the rescue of those in peril. All these situations and more show that people can be motivated to work hard by things other than material self-advantage.

 

If society were organized on principles of solidarity, like one giant Amish community, perhaps people would find it natural to want to help and would even be offended at the idea of personally profiting from their efforts.

 

 

I have decided I want to join you at a retreat and discuss economics and human values with you. I especially like your post after this one, showing the change of percentages in investments. I seriously want more information about this. However, here I must respond to human values verses materialistic values.

 

The middle class of the US was never so strong, as it has been since WWII, and right now, it is questionable if we will continue to have a large, strong middle class. Remember when women stayed at home and a man could support his family well with one pay check? The elderly who are dying today, never thought they would be paying income taxes, because they did not expect to earn enough to be taxed.

 

We thought of low income workers as the backbone of America, and we valued people for their character, more than materialistic position. It wasn't just teachers who were paid very little, but especially women worker for very low wages, and they were expected to do a lot for others for no pay at all. Most women stayed home to care for their families, and were lucky if their husbands gave them an allowance to spend as they pleased. They were the industry of the family, making almost everything the family needed, sewing and knitting their clothes, gardening and preserving food, caring for the young, old and sick. Old family laws, held family responsible for family. There were some charities, but no government assistance programs. The man supported the family and the woman took care of everyone. That is just the way it was. So if she worked outside of the home, it was shameful for her ask to be paid! Prostitutes ask for pay, but not a woman of quality. Her position in the home was highly valuable to her family and the community, so if she did work as a teacher or nurse, she must do so for high humanitarian values, not dirty money, like a prostitute. It is not fitting for a woman to do many things, that are for the man to do. Being divorced was a terrible shame, and could lead to employment problems for both men and women. Men were more apt to be advanced, if they were good family men. Before WWII, a divorced man could not be trusted, as we can trust a man with family responsibilities. WWII changed that radically!

 

My grandmother was a teacher and when she was forced to retire by her age, she volunteered. Her generation was defending democracy in the classroom. The text books taught human values, such as cooperation and charity. Public education created a very different culture than it has created since the 1958 National Defense Education Act.

 

Now, if we continue to invest very little in the US industry, and fail to create full employment, things might get very interesting. We could return to education for the humanities, and adjust our values, or we could remain on course and ride out the storm on a ship that might be going in the wrong direction? I wonder what a modern day revolution would look like, and what the aftermath could be?

 

I am really blown away by the insanity of needing full employment and investing so little in industry. I remember being in school when the 1958 Act was implemented and a teacher told us we were preparing for an technological society, where machines would do so much of the work, that people might not need to work. We are not geared for people working less. We no longer have the industrial economy we once had, and are more dependent then ever on a fully employed population, and consumerism that is far beyond anything people in the 1940's could have imagined. My grandmother's generation wasn't working for themselves; they were working for America.

 

Our whole social order is now about doing as we please for ourselves, even the family is about the individual, not the whole. I think we are running into an unexpected moral crisis, as self serving people know no better. Our modern consciousness is not prepared for the concept of working for the good of all and getting an intrinsic value out of working and giving. Education since 1958 has not prepared us for this.

 

Setting up and NHS would fix this problem, and a lot of other problems...the taxes are less that the medical bills, your taxes help a lot of people out, and it will save the US government 1 billion dollars.

 

 

Old family law made family responsible for family. I wonder what our political decisions would be, especially decisions about medical care and the longer term needs of the elderly, if we returned to the laws that held family responsible for family? Maybe people would vote laws that took care of their parents' needs if they knew they would get would stuck the bills and care needs of the parents? Or how about we assume, grandparents are equally responsible for their grandchildren? So if a grandchild needs surgery, the grandparents could be billed. Someone looses a job, oh well, how many people will fit into a bedroom? Family is responsible for family. That was law. And please, don't tell me gay marriage weakens the family. Compare to our past, the family is already too weak and any further weakness could hardly be noticed.

 

By the way what is NHS? National History Solutions

Edited June 16, 2011 by Athena

[Incendia]

 

Old family law made family responsible for family. I wonder what our political decisions would be, especially decisions about medical care and the longer term needs of the elderly, if we returned to the laws that held family responsible for family? Maybe people would vote laws that took care of their parents' needs if they knew they would get would stuck the bills and care needs of the parents? Or how about we assume, grandparents are equally responsible for their grandchildren? So if a grandchild needs surgery, the grandparents could be billed. Someone looses a job, oh well, how many people will fit into a bedroom? Family is responsible for family. That was law. And please, don't tell me gay marriage weakens the family. Compare to our past, the family is already too weak and any further weakness could hardly be noticed.

 

By the way what is NHS? National History Solutions

 

What are you talking about? Family law? When did gay marriage come into any of this? When did family weakness come into this? Are you sure you put the quote of my post in the right place?

 

 

NHS: National Healthcare Service ...you know? ... like the one in Britain.

You may know it as Universal Healthcare. All of Europe has it. So does Japan...and Russia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_healthcare

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Europe

 

If a similar service were set up in the US then the government would save 1 billion US dollars; no one would need health insurance; and 0% of bankruptcies would be due to medical bills (in contrast to the current ~60% of US bankruptcies being due to medical bills).

 

Another benefit is that hospitals would become non-profit. You wouldn't have greedy hospitals trying to make as much money from people's insurance as they can. (Testing people more than necessary, increasing prices of medicine and surgery, etc.)

 

Bankrupted because of surgical bills? How horrible. A Universal Healthcare system could and does prevent such problems.

[Athena]

What are you talking about? Family law? When did gay marriage come into any of this? When did family weakness come into this? Are you sure you put the quote of my post in the right place?

 

 

NHS: National Healthcare Service ...you know? ... like the one in Britain.

You may know it as Universal Healthcare. All of Europe has it. So does Japan...and Russia.

http://en.wikipedia....rsal_healthcare

http://en.wikipedia....hcare_in_Europe

 

If a similar service were set up in the US then the government would save 1 billion US dollars; no one would need health insurance; and 0% of bankruptcies would be due to medical bills (in contrast to the current ~60% of US bankruptcies being due to medical bills).

 

Another benefit is that hospitals would become non-profit. You wouldn't have greedy hospitals trying to make as much money from people's insurance as they can. (Testing people more than necessary, increasing prices of medicine and surgery, etc.)

 

Bankrupted because of surgical bills? How horrible. A Universal Healthcare system could and does prevent such problems.

 

What is family law? If you go to your state's or community law library, you can learn the family laws of your state. It determines the rights of duties of family members, and people can be fined or thrown in jail for violating family law.

 

DNA testing has been very important. In the past a father could not prove he was a father, and he had no rights to a child, unless he was married. On the other hand, the man married to a woman automatically became the legal father of children born after the marriage, and could be held responsible for child support, even if he was not the biological father. Either way, this can really bite for a man.

 

In the past, family law held the adults of the family far more responsible for other family members than we do today. Here is one for you. It is from a 1941 copy of "The Oregon Law of Family Relations" by Roy M. Lockenour

 

Code 63-301 makes parents "liable for the support of adult children when they are poor and unable to work to maintian themselves."

 

and how about this one...

"29. Right of Husband to Wife's Services and Earnings. Oregon law gives wife the right to her separate earnings. Cold 63-204 Ore. Const., Art. XV, Sec. 5. In other words, she has the same rights respecting her money that she earns as her husband does. She and her husband are equally entitled to the earnings of their children. Code, 63-394. However, the common law still gives an Oregon husband the right to his wife's services in connection with the discharge of her ordinary marital and domestic duties. Theoretically. the wife has no right to desert her marital and domestic to go out to earn money, leaving her husband to care for the home or compel him to employ someone for that purpose. But the only practical way of enforcing this right is to obtain a divorce and marry another woman who will perform her obligations.

Edited June 19, 2011 by Athena

[Marat]

The law has historically imposed gender-specific burdens on both wives and husbands. Husbands, not wives, were obligated to pay spousal support after a divorce, regardless of which person had the greater economic resources. This was only very gradually altered in Canadian law in the 1980s. The assets of husbands, not wives, could be pledged by the other spouse to support a debt obligation, and upon separation or divorce husbands had to publish a legal notice in the newspaper, called a notchel, to inform creditors that they were no longer legally obligated to honor debts incurred by the spouse. Husbands, not wives, could be prosecuted for manslaughter for failing to provide necessaries to their wives if the wives died because of this, since wives were deemed dependent on husbands but not vice versa, whatever the relative capacity of the two spouses.

 

The law used to be based on a complex system of special advantages and disadvantages assigned on the basis of gender, though since the 1970s it has been assumed that unless the law pretends that gender differences are unreal it is discriminatory. But the law could be equal even if it recognized differences between the genders and assigned them each a complex of special roles, gender-specific privileges, and gender-based duties, as long as the advantages and disadvantages of each gender balanced out. Now it tends to be assumed, in contrast, that unless we operate with the entirely unreal abstraction that men and women are identical the law must be discriminatory.

 

The most important point, and the error feminists often make, is not to select only the historical legal disadvantages of women and start shouting that these prove a history of discrimination, even without bothering to study the comparative legal disadvantages of men historically. Even today, women win the vast preponderance of child custody cases on divorce because courts simply assume the anti-male stereotype that women make better parents. Similarly, in 75% of divorce cases the woman's lawyer charges the man with sex abuse of the children, and with this leverage in play and the courts' prejudicial assumption that only men can be abusers, the women can always leverage a better settlement by agreeing to drop the child abuse assertion.

[Athena]

You certainly do make a good argument about the complexity of family court decisions. I am not quite sure how we got here, but I really like the direction this thread has taken. Personally, I think the traditional role of wife and mother, is an extremely important role that is deserving of our support.

 

I think I began this thread as a comment about the modern day change in personal power, because of my frustration in trying to get controlled medical supplies. I have another view this problem today. I am visiting an elderly man in a rehabilitation center. A CNA person asked if I might help with the man's shower, because he is not being cooperative, but he works with me because we have a long established relationship. Anyway, the CNA and I were trying to determine a good time for me to come and help with the shower, when the head nurse asserted her "authority", and began to order me around. My response was to announce that I had to walk my dog, and I left. I walked away thinking, She is not my supervisor, nor am I a patient, and she has no authority over me. When we were supported housewives, no held authority over us. If we helped each other or not, it really depended on how well we got along. During this period of my life, I did a lot of volunteer work while the children were in school, and it seems to me volunteers are usually treated much better than common laborers. Not only is it nice to be able to walk away if I don't like how someone treats me, but this also shapes how I relate to others, who can also walk away. I don't know if I am expressing this well, or anyone can relate to what I am saying. I do know, the quality of our relationships is changing. I know what I am saying is behind my desire to buy my medical supplies through a retailer like Walmart, as opposed to having to get them through someone who contracts with my insurance company, and processes people, instead of trying to win customers by giving good customer service.