Original Message: ----------------- From: John Williams jwilliams4...@gmail.com Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2009 12:46:44 -0700 To: brin-l@mccmedia.com Subject: Re: DeLong on health insurance reform
On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Doug Pensinger<brig...@zo.com> wrote: > The link was broken for me, but from what you quoted above it seems > we'd all need 2 or three insurance policies, I'd love to have enough choice with health insurance to have multiple policies tailored to my needs. > a medical account and > state and federal income tax deductions. You mean a tax-exempt HSA account? Like an IRA? Sounds good to me. > And since insurance > companies are worried about making money for themselves, not the > health of their customers, you can bet we'll probably need a lawyer to > keep them honest. Then we'll need an accountant to help keep track of > it all. Aren't almost all companies "worried about making money for themselves"? Seems to work out all right to me. >> Why would we do all that crap when we can jealously look at other >> countries and say "Damn, why don't we do something like that. It >> costs less and it works better"??? >Do you mean, why would Americans choose freedom when they can instead >have their money taken from them and told what to do with their money >and have their health care choices dictated by their rulers? Actually, that's not what the opposition to health care reform is coming from. Its from folks who are already on government health care, wanting no cuts in it and wanting no one else on it. The freedom you are talking about in a real free market is the freedom to die for many people. People with insurance and second stage cancer do better than people without insurance and first stage cancer. That's one reason why measuremables place the US far down the list of industrialized countries in health care provided, even though we top the list on health care cost. In your idealized world, people happily choose good choices. Historically, we've had market ecconomies with minimal governmental interference in the past; and the choice for the majority was rock or hard place. Now, you've argued that's its the intangibles that matter most, which is convenient, because they are so much harder to measure than tangibles. I guess it's a difference in perspective; when arguing about emperical quesitons; I tend to like measuremables. Dan M. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com What can On Demand Business Solutions do for you? http://link.mail2web.com/Business/SharePoint _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
