Quote:
Originally Posted by aerohead
The fact is that the government can operate publicly-owned enterprise at one-third the cost of free-market capitalists.I can't follow your arithmetic.
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If you're referring to Medicare, it's way more complex than 1/3 the cost. That is operated at a loss and made up on everyone else with money. Many places stop taking Medicare and Medicaid because it doesn't make financial sense.
I'm not entirely opposed to a single payer medical system, because clearly ours isn't good. It isn't really a free market solution either, as the government incentives employers to offer health insurance, which should be illegal. It's insane to have insurance dependent on a particular employment. It should have always been individual, because it covers individuals. We don't have employer provided car insurance.
Without going too far into health insurance... there's nothing the government can do cheaper than the private sector. It's like Venezuela outlawing starvation. Nobody dies of starvation if you make it illegal to list that as a cause of death. Similarly, nobody can provide cheaper healthcare if you outlaw higher prices for 1 arbitrary group of people while allowing any price for everyone else. Sounds like an institutional ageist law to me. The very definition of institutional ageism. Why are we privatizing space transport if it's more expensive than government programs?
I know my grand kids will wonder what we were thinking back when we had institutional racism, sexism, and ageism written into our laws and informal practices and think of us as backwards Neanderthals. I'll go on record as being ahead of the progressive curve. People are sovereign individuals who own their bodies, labor, and associations. It's their great responsibility to utilize those things to the best of their ability, because individuals are most capable of directing those aspects of their life.