On 12/18/2014 10:16 AM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
*From:*[email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] *On
Behalf Of *Jason Resch
*Sent:* Wednesday, December 17, 2014 12:25 AM
*To:* Everything List
*Subject:* Re: real A.I.
On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 6:07 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[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]
<mailto:[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.
I agree with that statement. It is not just hospitals but the monopolies that have also
been established on the practice of medicine and dentistry. Why do the American Medical
Association (AMA), and American Dental Association (ADA) – both private (government
sanctioned and enforced) guilds or trade organizations have such power and control over
who can practice medicine; over how medicine can be practiced?
Because when they didn't anybody could hang out a shingle and claim to be doctor and there
were quacks everywhere pushing patent medicine and bleeding people (literally).
MDs in the US make on average twice as much money as MDs in other OECD countries – such
as Germany -- for example.
In Germany, as I understand it, insurance companies bid to insure classes of workers and
they then negotiate to control doctors fees. Most of the OECD countries directly regulate
or pay health care fees. Of all the OECD countries the U.S. has the most free-market
system, and the most expensive health care. It shows the fallacy of the libertarian
dream. When everyone pursues self-interest the winners will be those who form coalitions
whose objective is to eliminate other coalitions.
Brent
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