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The biggest issue facing America

lewmoorman.com

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Re: The biggest issue facing America

#31

Post by ibsulon »

sketerpot wrote: post #29
furburger wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NO ONE WANTS A FREE MARKET SOLUTION FOR HEALTHCARE. get over it. a free market solution means dying baby gets turned away when parent has no money. otherwise it is not a market solution. no one wants this. no one. move to somalia, you can implement your plan there, life is cheap. healthcare is not a business. no civil society is going to let you decline cusomters who cannot pay when it comes to keeping the baby alive…

I would think that not killing babies would be the kind of publicity advantage that really sets a business apart from its competition.

Only when it's a paid customer's baby.

Re: The biggest issue facing America

#32

Post by LogicHoleFlaw »

anamax wrote: post #28
furburger wrote: post #19

some points: - healthcare is not a business. get over it. the law says you cannot decline emergency care. there is no business model here, any more than there is in running the navy. its a cost. - you care about public health. meaning, you care if other people are healthy. do you go to the mall or restaurants? if you do, you care if the person next to you has TB. infectous diseases doesn't care about your fully-paid…

> water is rationed. ... bandwidth is rationed. Nope. I'm pretty sure that I can buy as much water as I want and I know that I can buy as much bandwidth as I want.

I can buy as much water as I want

Try saying that in... Colorado and see how far you get before you get your lights punched out.

Water rights and rationing are serious business.

Re: The biggest issue facing America

#33

Post by david927 »

furburger wrote: post #19

some points: - healthcare is not a business. get over it. the law says you cannot decline emergency care. there is no business model here, any more than there is in running the navy. its a cost. - you care about public health. meaning, you care if other people are healthy. do you go to the mall or restaurants? if you do, you care if the person next to you has TB. infectous diseases doesn't care about your fully-paid…

Thanks for banging the drum on this! You're absolutely right. I'm an American who has lived in Germany, Switzerland and now the Czech Republic, and I'm astonished how much better healthcare is over here.

We need to keep banging the drum. America deserves better than this.

Re: The biggest issue facing America

#34

Post by david927 »

lionheart wrote: post #24
lmoorman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

baby boomers hit the 60-80s. and most healthcare costs are in your later years.

But if the trend hasn't started yet, how can the graph possibly hope to extrapolate it with any degree of accuracy?

It doesn't, but I think you can do the back-of-the-napkin math yourself. Baby Boomers are the 80 million "pig in the python" and they starting to retire right about now (2007-2009).

Re: The biggest issue facing America

#35

Post by wlievens »

sketerpot wrote: post #29
furburger wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NO ONE WANTS A FREE MARKET SOLUTION FOR HEALTHCARE. get over it. a free market solution means dying baby gets turned away when parent has no money. otherwise it is not a market solution. no one wants this. no one. move to somalia, you can implement your plan there, life is cheap. healthcare is not a business. no civil society is going to let you decline cusomters who cannot pay when it comes to keeping the baby alive…

I would think that not killing babies would be the kind of publicity advantage that really sets a business apart from its competition.

Reputation-based consumer feedback isn't a desirable mechanism in an industry where unsatisfied customers are dead customers (as opposed to e.g. dead batteries).

Re: The biggest issue facing America

#36

Post by patrickg-zill »

patrickg-zill wrote: post #18

It is a good start, but he doesn't have the detail at the local level to see what is going on - the prices are all over the map and there is no way to rationally determine what is expensive. I have a weird plan where I pay a percentage of the total cost, but have to pay for everything first and then get reimbursed; but ultimately a more expensive operation ends up costing me more, so it always makes sense to shop aro…

I should add, that I think that part of what is going on with the hospitals, is to make cash payments so cumbersome, that people are herded into the arms of the insurance companies.

Re: The biggest issue facing America

#37

Post by xiaoma »

klein_waffle wrote: post #15
noonespecial wrote: post #4

This might actually be a problem that politics just fails monumentally as a tool for fixing. Like trying to repair an MG with a herring. There will come a time when technology will make it possible to keep someone alive indefinitely so long as you spend exponentially more money to do so. Everyone has been conditioned to think that they deserve the best healthcare regardless of what choices they've made in their lives…

Can we discuss health care without the science fiction and doomsday scenarios? I realize that the USA is used to looking inward for solutions, but other governments are solving these problems, better, today . Every discussion I have with Americans about healthcare leads directly to these imagined totalitarian futures, as if "everybody" knew that this was what happens. I don't understand it. Where did you all learn th…

>Every discussion I have with Americans about healthcare leads directly to these imagined totalitarian futures, as if "everybody" knew that this was what happens. I don't understand it. Where did you all learn this narrative?

Pre-WWII footage of Nazi health programs, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the movie Soylent Green and pretty much everything William Gibson has written. We've seen just about every distopian outcome imaginable.

Star Trek counters this to some degree, but it's considered "nerdy".

Re: The biggest issue facing America

#38

Post by anamax »

ibsulon wrote: post #30
anamax wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The simplest thing to do is pick out the best healthcare system in the world, and then replicate it exactly. So bring in the top officials from Singapore, put them on an independent commission to redesign the healthcare system, and force Congress to pass exactly the plan they come up with. You'd have to also replicate the covered population and make sure that there's a "USA" outside paying for drug development and…

As much as people speak of the drug development problem, how many copies of Viagra do we need? How many more statins? The drugs don't even seem to get better, they just are finding ways to extend patents! Past that, most of the competition is not in innovation, but rather in marketing. "The researchers’ estimate is based on the systematic collection of data directly from the industry and doctors during 2004, which sh…

> How many more statins?

Are you claiming that the existing statins address all relevant cases?

> which shows the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spent 24.4% of the sales dollar on promotion, versus 13.4% for research and development, as a percentage of US domestic sales of US$235.4 billion

That's a non sequitor.

> Finally, the NIH is picking up most of the tab for fundamental research

"fundamental research" isn't a significant fraction of the cost of drug development, aka "getting a drug into the pharmacy".

Re: The biggest issue facing America

#39

Post by anamax »

LogicHoleFlaw wrote: post #32
anamax wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> water is rationed. ... bandwidth is rationed. Nope. I'm pretty sure that I can buy as much water as I want and I know that I can buy as much bandwidth as I want.

I can buy as much water as I want Try saying that in... Colorado and see how far you get before you get your lights punched out. Water rights and rationing are serious business.

> Try saying that in... Colorado and see how far you get before you get your lights punched out.

I said "buy". Even Coloradans have mastered the fine art of saying "no thanks" when someone offers to buy something for a price that they don't like. And, when the price is acceptable, they sell.

Yes, Water rights are for sale in Colorado.

And, most people don't live in Colorado (or the Mojave).

Re: The biggest issue facing America

#40

Post by CalmQuiet »

anamax wrote: post #39
LogicHoleFlaw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can buy as much water as I want Try saying that in... Colorado and see how far you get before you get your lights punched out. Water rights and rationing are serious business.

> Try saying that in... Colorado and see how far you get before you get your lights punched out. I said "buy". Even Coloradans have mastered the fine art of saying "no thanks" when someone offers to buy something for a price that they don't like. And, when the price is acceptable, they sell. Yes, Water rights are for sale in Colorado. And, most people don't live in Colorado (or the Mojave).

On points 2 & 3: True.

But more and more of the country (and world) are having the same issues that Colorado (or the Mojave) have.

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