Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Leafsnail]

I believe I can offer the like-for-like comparison he desires.  Or at least as close to one as you can get when you aren't sure how the other person came to their figure.

Inflation adjusted, around $3,000 (source can be provided on request). Lower than the vast majority of those countries provided in your chart, and without any of the associated problems that come with single payer systems (waiting lists and so on).

I might need a source so I can work out what's pushing that figure so high.  The figures for 1960 NHS expenditure (inflation adjusted) seem to be way, way lower.

http://www.nhshistory.net/parlymoney.pdf

Page 14, 1960/61.  In today's money the expenditure on the NHS was £15bn.  Divide that between the 52 million people who lived in the UK at that time and you get around £300, which is clearly a lot less than $3000 even at the roughly 3:1 exchange rate of the time.  I guess that doesn't take into account private healthcare (I really can't find any source on that), but expenditure on that is very unlikely to have exceeded expenditure on the NHS, considering that even in modern times we don't spend £15bn on private healthcare per year (closer to £10bn).  So even if we're really generous and assume that somehow private healthcare had the same amount of expenditure as the NHS the UK system still seems cheaper in 1960.  It's also worth noting that the sources I can find agree that the UK had a higher life expectancy than the US at the time (I'd rather a waiting list than an early death due to never having a chance to be put on a waiting list).

Looking at the table, you'll see that the cost of the NHS has gone up in spite of the government involvement not increasing.  I propose that this is due to more treatments being available (thanks to scientific advances).  Quite simply, we have to provide more healthcare to more people who are getting older (and thus more expensive to maintain).  This is true all around the world, and I think you'll see an increase in healthcare costs in virtually any developed nation regardless of what their government did with regards to healthcare.

[kaijyuu]

IE dead people cost less.

[Mr. Palau]

I feel like that is a dodge.  While the private does not exist in isolation we do know that it has failed miserably as is.  Why does it make sense to not blame it for it's own failures?  If we compare to other countries we see that they are better at controlling costs.  If we look within this country we see that single payer (medicare, medicaid) is better at controlling costs then private and that socialized medicine (Veterans Health Administration) is better at controlling costs then single payer.  What reasonable reason would there to be to not blame the private market?  Where it is absent, costs are lower.  The rest of the market is better at controlling costs.  None of this is proof but it's as close as you can reasonably expect to get.  Strictly speaking the theoretical success of the private system in isolation is non-falsifiable like intelligent design or climate change denial.  But the real world evidence implies pretty heavily that it would be a horrible failure if tried.

Just to do GJ's work for him, the private market is not operating as well as it could, thanks to governmnet regulation. Our market is not a true private market so it is unfair to look at our market and say the private market has failed us.

[mainiac]

Just to do GJ's work for him, the private market is not operating as well as it could, thanks to governmnet regulation. Our market is not a true private market so it is unfair to look at our market and say the private market has failed us.

Well yes, I understood you the first time.  But as I've said repeatedly now, there's no actual evidence for that.  It's just not a falsifiable statement because completely free market hasn't been tried for the simple reason that it's a really bad idea.  I might as well say that nuclear power would be perfectly safe if we allowed to operate completely without government oversight.  It's obviously not true given that less oversight leads to more accidents but you can't actually prove me wrong because we've never seen the nuclear power free market in action.

Given that we don't have a perfect example the reasonable thing to do is to look at the best examples we have.  And the best examples we have is cross country comparison between the more private insurance based and more government run systems.

[SHAD0Wdump]

Considering how many times I've heard small businesses closing their doors due to over regulation by the government in my local area, I'd like to back up that point as having some bearing on how crapped up the economy is.

Not going to pretend I have much if at all any insight into matters as a whole, but there's that.

[Neonivek]

Considering how many times I've heard small businesses closing their doors due to over regulation by the government in my local area, I'd like to back up that point as having some bearing on how crapped up the economy is.

Not going to pretend I have much if at all any insight into matters as a whole, but there's that.

Well maybe if the small buisnesses had billions of dollars to fund the government they wouldn't have to deal with soo much red tape.

[Toady One]

There have been several reports about various uncivil arguments that have arisen through the last many pages of this topic, and it's too gummed up to clean.  Locking the thread.