Why did you mock me like this? Are you so proud of the fact that you were able to find a whole three charts and then draw incredibly tangential and erroneous conclusions from them?
What you are arguing is that private healthcare is more efficient. You do this through roundabout assessment of a bunch of completely irrelevant statistics and drawing a bunch of unsubstantiated inferances; i.e. government spending is rising so they must be doing something wrong. But we already have an empiracle judge of exactly what you think you are so clever for leaping to massive conclusions to find. We have the cross country comparisons. We don't need your just so incredibly insightful opinion on this matter, we can look at the facts.
So let's stop being cute and look at how your theory holds up in the real world:
I say: The American healthcare system is very bad because of a variety of factors (blah blah INSURANCE blah blah MEDICARE blah blah AMA etc) which in turn result in increased cost without associated increases in quality, but single payer systems are hardly the ideal solution as shown by the instances of X, Y, and Z
You say: But Justice, your charts detailing American healthcare costs are flawed because blah blah blah!
I say: No, you're misinterpreting what my charts say, it's pretty clear that my points are still valid
You say: PFAH! AMERICAN HEALTHCARE IS MORE EXPENSIVE THAN HEALTHCARE IN MOST COUNTRIES! YOUR ARGUMENT HAS BEEN CRUSHED
Except you haven't proven that I'm wrong, you've erected a strawman of me crowing the benefits of the present quasi-fascist healthcare system the US has going right now, called that a "free market", and proven him wrong. That's a rather silly attempt right there, like comparing 1930s Italy with the 1930s Soviet Union and coming to the conclusion that Fascism is better than Democracy (since the USSR claimed to be "democratic").
Yes, the weird creature of American healthcare is far more expensive than it needs to be, no, it is not so because of "evil businessmen".
This is a vastly better test of what you are blathering on about then anything that you have said. Here we see how your theories work in the real world. And they are an abject failure. The US is vastly, vastly overpaying for healthcare.
Oh man, you really beat me good. Please, have mercy, I can't handle this terrible intellectual beating you're leveling on my pitiful arguments.
You, sir, are arguing for a turd. A complete turd that is creating huge waste and suffering because people like you prop it up. And then when I point out that your comparisons suck you say that I'm not going to empirical evidence. But there is empirical evidence, it just shows how wrong you are. Whine all you want about a bunch of ancillary statistics that you don't understand. Just understand the main statistic. And the main statistic is that what you are saying is dramatically, dramatically wrong. I could point out all the many smaller ways that you are wrong but until you get that main big central issue I don't get the point.
I don't get the point.
Well, you've certainly been missing it quite grandly so far, so I kind of see why.
I don't think I'm going to convince you. The only way you would have learned is if you actually had an interest in learning about this subject. Given the incredibly bad comparisons you have been making to this point I do not think you have such an interest. But you mocked me so I just want to point out how incredibly bad your ideas are.
You have yet to point out an actual problem with my ideas, you've just basically copy and pasted an argument against the present American system in favour of a single payer system.
Your ideas are bad to the tune of $4,000 a person per year. That means that for the average household they are bad to an extent of more then $10,000 a year. $10,000 dollars a year out of the average american household wasted in inflated medical bills, wasted tax dollars and economic inefficiency affecting consumer prices and investment across the economy. That's 1/5th of the median households income being pissed away because people like you who are so smug about how great that free market system is. And rather then learn basic mico-economics you want to double down on this stupidity and insist that what we need is a more free market approach. No, what we need is for people to actually look at how ideas hold up in the real world.
BLAH BLAH BLAH THE AMERICAN SYSTEM IS TERRIBLE BLAH BLAH BLAH
You're still going on a tangent as you clearly haven't bothered to read much about what I advocate. But, seeing as how you might want evidence, how much do you think the average household paid for healthcare before the mid 1960s, when the government was comparatively uninvolved in the industry?
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). See, when you don't whip out a strawman, you have to actually put some effort into arguing point by point, rather than making a blanket statement.
Why did you mock me?
Because you aren't trying to argue with me, you're trying to argue with a caricature of my views and sliding past what I'm actually saying, which frankly annoys me. I put a fair bit of time into reading what other people have to say before blurting out my own opinion, so I expect others to treat me with the same courtesy.
Hold it. I'd like to bring to your attention two problems with what you're saying:
1. Your graph for the percentage spent by the government stops in 1991.
Now here's more reasonable criticism.
Yes, I know my graph for the percentage of government spending in healthcare ends in 1991. That isn't an attempt to cherry pick data, that literally happens to be where the chart ends. If I find a nicer one going up to modern day I'll post it, though I seriously doubt that out-of-pocket spending has suddenly risen.
2. The share done by private insurance has been increasing since 1968 according to your graph, and 1968 is around the time that the cost started to go up. Surely by your own logic this would suggest private insurance is to blame.
A good observation. A couple of things to keep in mind:
1. Private insurance rates were higher for a while, and from 1968 to 1974 or so were just recovering from a decline after 1965, and increases in private insurance have been comparatively slow and steady since then
2. As I said earlier, private insurance in the US healthcare industry for the past 60-70 years hasn't really functioned as insurance, it's functioned as a third party payment plan for healthcare due to various mandates, incentives, and so on. Because of the ways insurance functions in the US, it has little incentive to look for the cheapest or most cost-efficient option. What you get is people paying for insurance, and then they use insurance to pay for their doctor's visits/checkups/drugs, and then the doctor recommends the most expensive/"best" option (like the drug that increases your chance of survival by 1.5% more than another drug but costs 100x more) due to various other laws that hold the doctor responsible if he considers the cost over the success rate alone (so the guy who has a problem when the doctor could have prescribed him something way more expensive and infinitesimally more successful, that guy can sue and probably beat the doctor for absurd amounts of money). In turn, the insurance companies respond to increased need to spend by jacking up rates and denying payouts to everyone they can get away with. For all the problems single payer systems have, this is one they generally avoid outright, and likely a contributing factor as to why their expenses are presently lower.
So yeah, to a point private insurance is to blame. However, the problems caused by private insurance in the US are only possible due to US government intervention.
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Topic: WHOOOO HEALTH CARE RULED CONSTITUTIONAL (Read 25608 times)