Kamala Marx
- Thread starter snarlcakes
- Start date
Re EMTALA, I thought that was Obama's best argument for his desire to change the system: that path is way too expensive. We need to get people into preventative care, to save on overall health costs.
Re Singapore, I'm always sceptical of comparing the US to smaller nations like that with different demographics. Too many variables that we don't even know about. Not sure how it would help the larger number of unemployed here. But I agree with the notion that we need to get consumer buying decisions into the healthcare market, I'm just not sure how to do it.
I said it all. Who likes it adds nothing to or changes nothing about what I said.
You wouldn’t understand it if you read it. A TTT would need to tell you what they think it meant which likely would be wrong as usual.
The thing that Dems do best, by far, is chant. On everything else they're pretty worthless.
Approaching healthcare (among other issues) state-by-state would help in this regard. I do get your point, and it's a valid one. But, then, it's kind of hard to compare the US to most any other nation in a demographic sense.
The underlying concepts and principles are ultimately what matters most. The form they take matters, too. But, IMO, there’s no form that can make up for faulty guiding principles in public policy.
And I think failures in public policy almost always trace their way back to defective principles than they do the forms and manners in which they were implemented.
For example, if you begin with the principle that access to healthcare goods and services is a basic human right, whatever policy framework you design to facilitate that principle, it will ultimately fail.
And that’s because it’s literally impossible for a necessarily scarce resource such as healthcare goods/services to be allocated in such a way that genuinely makes it a right….as much as we might want that to be the case.
Can you better explain your last paragraph. As it stands I think healthcare is viewed or treated as a right and a commodity today.
Well, first, a right and a commodity are two very different things. Oil and beef are commodities. But I doubt any serious person would ever suggest they were something anybody had a right to.
That said, many people do view healthcare goods/services as something people have a right to -- or, at least, as something that people should have a right to. And they usually pair this with what they claim as the lone alternative: a privilege. In other words, if you don't think people have a right to healthcare goods and services, then you must believe that healthcare is a privilege....you heartless, greedy pig.
As clever as that framing is, it's a load of shit. The truth is that healthcare is neither a right nor a privilege -- just as beef is neither a right nor a privilege. It's just a scarce resource that everybody wants/needs at various times and other people labor to supply efficiently to that level of demand at a profit in order to earn a living.
"But, wait, most countries in the world have some form of universal healthcare....wherein people do, in fact, have a right to the goods and services they may need."
Really? Well, if that were the case, then there would be no such thing as a denial of claims in these countries. After all, we Americans all understand that we have the right to free exercise of religion and we instinctively understand that doesn't just mean on Sunday. There is no limit to the right to exercise religion...
Because religion is not a scarce resource, with alternative uses, and for which there is indeterminate demand.
In other words, however much or little you choose to utilize your right to exercise religion zero bearing on how much I can utilize mine. And that holds true no matter how many people are or aren't exercising that right. But the same doesn't hold true for housing, food, energy, clothing....and, yes, healthcare.
When those who view healthcare as a right encounter this, they'll often respond by saying people do have a right to healthcare goods/services, but merely that it's not unlimited. But doing that requires them to lose the language. That's a simple semantic sleight of hand that actually reflects a radical change in meaning.
Because any such thing is not actually a right. It's now become something to which we have some measure of entitlement -- subject to whatever limitations somebody else dictates and controls. Slaveowners invariably fed their slaves -- but don't ever confuse that with slaves having had a right to food.
Over the past 60 years, we've endeavored to realize healthcare as a right at least for those over the retirement age -- and understandably so. But Medicare wouldn't actually clear that bar even if its finances were the picture of financial efficiency and fidelity. Even with all its limitations, nobody can take a sober look at its finances and tell me that we've actually succeeded in birthing the proverbial unicorn.
There are multiple republicans who don’t like Trump for almost 8 billion in debt while talking about the “greatest economy ever”, some of us read the pilot testimony from Maxwell trial stating under oath Trump was “frequent flyer on Lolita Express” and Trump seems to mainly gravitate to non democratic autocrats. I’ll write in Mickey Mouse and vote for true elephant down ballot. Never Trump here
They are two different things but I think captured in the current system. I think Obamacare reflects the notion that healthcare is a commodity. It’s its own marketplace controlling supply and demand and prices etc. services are being commoditized as well with competition to traditional healthcare providers.
But we’ve also built in rights. Pre-existing can’t be denied. And more fundamental rights such as Medicaid down to zero cost. Emergency treatment as a right etc. you can’t be denied at the door if you present with a bullet hole.
I’m tired and hungover today and feel like I’m maybe missing your point or thrust. I don’t see how it’s scarce and if we collectively deem it a right how we can’t guarantee same. Are you saying that if a right, demand would potentially overwhelm supply and that’s why it’s scarce or could become scarce? That declaring it a right or implementing it as a right is practically untenable
I think I’m catching on in re-reading your post
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This is the idea you need to focus on.
I assure you: healthcare goods and services are scarce. If they weren't, then none of this would matter to any of us. We'd all have all the access to whatever healthcare goods and services we needed, wanted, or even might come to want...without any limits, delays, considerations, sacrifices, etc. It wouldn't be a political issue in the least. How often do we have political fights over things we know exist in virtually infinite supply....like, sunlight? Air?
We don't. There's no need to. We take for granted that we'll get all the sunlight we might ever want or need (subject to natural limitations, of course)...pretty much irrespective of, say, how many solar panels our next-door neighbor constructs.
I obliquely referred to Lionel Robbins' famous definition of economics, based on the idea of scarcity, above. But here is it, in Robbins' own words:
"Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses."
Or, for a more contemporary, humorous, and appropriately cynical take on this same idea, Thomas Sowell had this to say about it:"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."
If you don't believe healthcare goods and services are scarce, you would be well-served to reexamine the issue with the understanding that they most certainly are. And understand that I'm not using the term "scarce" here to stand in for rare. I mean that they are finite -- that there is not, and will never be, enough of them to fully satisfy all those who want or need them.Similar threads
