On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 6:07 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 12/16/2014 10:15 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > Hi Liz, > > On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 7:51 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> What is funny - as well as sad and frightening - is the number of people >> here who apparently don't believe in democracy, even in principle. >> Democracy is the idea that we can elect people to do things for everyone >> else (the NHS, conservation, social security, infrastructure, regulations, >> police, army science etc etc). >> > > All of the things you mention are run by unelected bureaucrats with long > careers, who see politicians come and go. > > I highly recommend the British show "Yes, Prime Minister!" to learn > about this: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmXzGI0XP7M > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeF_o1Ss1NQ > > >> Yet all I can see here is people saying that it doesn't work. I think >> the truth is that it can be hijacked and THEN it doesn't work. The NHS >> (despite everything) was one of the greatest achievements of the 20th >> century, after all. And it was introduced by a government because of its >> beliefs and principles. >> > > The NHS is the sort of thing that should worry an Ecologist, because > it's based on infinite growth. Both the European system (based on infinite > demographic growth) and the Anglo (based on infinite economic growth). I > also feel that it serves mostly to fix a problem created by the government > itself in a previous regulatory wave. The barriers to competition in the > practice of healthcare are so high that it becomes unaffordable without > insurance or subsidy. > > > Health care isn't well regulated by competition because the consumer is > ill equipped to judge the necessity or the quality of service and the most > expensive service tends to a one-time event for the consumer. >
Worse, the healthcare industry has gotten the US government to pass laws making it exempt from monopolistic practices, price fixing, charging people different amounts for the same service, forbidding reimportation of medicine, restricting the number of MRI machines in a given area. It's what leads to people being charged $60,000 for two bottles of anti-venom that cost $200, or be charged $9,000 for a few stiches in a finger. (these are real life examples <http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229605> and not exaggerations). Experimental clinics like The Surgery Center of Oklahoma, which cut out insurance companies, and publishes their prices are 5-10X cheaper <http://reason.com/reasontv/2012/11/15/the-obamacare-revolt-oklahoma-doctors-fi> than what other hospitals charge (and about equivalent to prices charged in Japan and India). If medical costs were this cheap, many people wouldn't need insurance to pay for all but the most catastrophic of illnesses. If hospitals were required to adhere to the same anti-trust rules as any other business, to publish their prices and charge the same amount to everyone, we would see about 80% of the cost of healthcare evaporate overnight. It's a sad state of affairs when for every doctor in the country there are two people working in the medical insurance industry. Jason > > It's one of the several resource confiscation traps that have been > emerging under crony capitalism. > > > What does that mean? > > > I know, I know. You're going to say that lots of deaths have been > prevented by these regulations. This is true. But how many deaths have been > caused by poor or inexistent access to healthcare? > > > In the U.S. it's been estimated as at least 40,000/yr. > > How many have been caused by the glaciar pace of innovation imposed by > such regulations? > > > What innovation has been delayed by regulation? thalidomide? abortion > pills? > > > By patents? People refuse to recognise that this trade-off exists. > > I dream of flat guaranteed income based on a real currency (not the > current pyramid schemes that we call Dollars or Euros). Possibly a > cryptocurrency with a smart algorithm that hopefully cannot fall under the > control of the bandits. > > > Isn't there already an effective guaranteed "income" in terms of food, > shelter, health care. I doubt people are allowed to starve or freeze or go > without medical treatment. Of course I would agree that there should also > be a guarantee of as much education as a person wishes to absorb. > > Brent > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
