You say that now, but I guarantee you the moment you get diagnosed you change your mind. Especially considering so many terminal illnesses can in fact be cured with (very expensive) treatments.
Also, what about all the non-terminal illnessess? What happens if you break your leg? Or get stabbed? Or get in a car accident? Or any of the millions of other things that can happen?
By definition, they aren't terminal illness then. In any case, in the US (or many other countries), those treatments are unavailable or will literally make someone homeless (and preclude them ever getting insurance again). There's also the question of if it's worth it - will the end result provide proper quality of life or not.
Breaking a leg is a specious analogy as it is neither terminal nor permanent; but if something worse did happen and it would permanently affect my quality of life, yes, I'd still feel the same.
Universal healthcare exists (and works, with various degrees of success) in most countries that are otherwise very similiar to the US in terms of culture, form of government, and in some cases have worse corruption and bureocracy.
As in many things with democracy and social security, there would be inefficiencies, abuses and problems, the real issue is, in my opinion, if the people would be better off in the end, all things considered.
That doesn't mean the new system is inherently wrong.
The data, comparative experiences, and commons sense, disagrees with you.
Single payer is easier to audit. Because it's more simple.
Healthcare Fraud: Auditing and Detection Guide [2012] http://www.amazon.com/Healthcare-Fraud-Auditing-Detection-Gu...
Healthcare Fraud: Auditing and Detection Guide [2007] http://www.amazon.com/Healthcare-Fraud-Auditing-Detection-Gu...
And before you say "tort reform", single payer and universal coverage largely eliminates need for malpractice insurance. Again, because we have existence proofs (every country that has single payer) that discerning people can use to inform their opinions.
Centralized economic solutions work better for some things. Free market soluctions work for other types of things.
The USSR was a dictatorship where everything was managed by the State. This is not what it is being proposed.
Further, most transactions are private or semi private, meaning not conducted via an open market. The amount one business unit (or agency) charges another for goods and services may be informed by a market price, but not necessarily.
I could also say that 2 and 2 not always is 4. Please give concrete examples.
Prisoners Dilema type problems. Concrete example: Cigarette advertising bans. (I'll clarify that this is better for the companies involved on a competition between company basis and "better" for the public in the form of a shrinking tobacco market)
More to the point a real concrete example is healthcare costs. Per person they are cheaper in comparable countries to the US such as UK, Australia, Canada all countries with public healthcare systems (this is including the tax money spent). I would also point out that if you are going to argue that health outcomes are better in the US than those other systems (Maybe that's true, I couldn't say) you are missing the key point of what these non free market systems can be good at (that is capturing externalities, like in this instance bankruptcy or inability to afford service).
And yes the US Government involvement and regulation in the Healthcare industry in the US destroyed it too. Up till 1960s and invention of Government intervention into US healthcare system, the healthcare in the US was cheap, affordable and the US kept #1 spot for longevity in the world. After medicare, medicaid and all the other Government involvement and regulation in healthcare in the US (i.e. 10% of GDP in the US goes to healthcare) we have #50 in longevity and nobody can afford it. Blaming capitalism for that just shows your ignorance.
Healthcare was cheaper before cigarettes were heavily regulated or after?
Which is it?
Or perhaps you're arguing that corporate profits are more important than people?
And no, Government regulation isn't more important than people.
Secondly you grossly misrepresent what I say with the first few sentences of your reply which makes me worry about whether you paused to give any thought to what I said or just decided to be argumentative and pick out random words you disliked. Nonetheless I'll go through your points.
>You claim cigarate bans helped tobacco industry?
No I claimed ADVERTISING bans on cigarettes helped the companies by reducing expenses related to competition between cigarette companies. I also claimed that outside of the industry it had other positive effects. However you will have noticed the quotes around "better" in ' "better" for the public' because I felt I should qualify that a non smoker generally costs the health system more by living longer.
> CFC helped grow corporations?
I'm sorry, perhaps I shouldn't have assumed you knew what CFCs are and why they are relevant to the conversation. CFC are a widely useful range of chemical compounds that were used in a great many products, they also deplete the ozone layer. The regulation of CFCs which phased out their use is an example where government intervention was required and the free market solution of localized profits failed. I have no data on whether it helped grow corporations, it is however known that the requlations reduced the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere which led to the shrinking of the hole in the ozone layer.
>Because if all you are saying is that regulation is destroying industries, well that's actually my point.
You're the one that's taken the hardline position of saying that centralized solutions never work better than pure free market and as I reject your reframing of better to be only industry, I am pointing out that centralized/regulated solutions do work better in some cases. Even if I didn't reject your definition of industrial production as the basis for better, wartime america with centralized planing on production was a 'better' idea than the free market system it had before it, being much more productive.
>And yes the...
It may have been cheap and affordable but that doesn't mean everyone was getting it, in fact that's the reason the government stepped in. So sure the system got screwed up by regulation, because it was the wrong regulation, they should have gone whole hog on the nationilization like the other countries and then the US would have a better system. (And by better I mean has a positive effect on the the most peoples lives, not maximises the money spent on basic healthcare, or the total wealth of the "healthcare industry")
I'm sure I've persuaded you that your original statement about the free market system always being the best system is an untenable position. If you still disagree could you explain to me how a system without regulation deals with atomic weapons. (Now a flippant question because I really would believe it to be absurd to hold to the unregulated premise at this point (I hope you realise I'm poking fun at the premise not you)) Do they always go to the highest bidder cash wise or do they only sell them if there's a sales contract not to blow up the seller... and whatever court the breach of contract trial would be held in?
You give concrete examples of decentralized (unregulated) markets working better than open (regulated) markets.
I could also say that 2 and 2 not always is 4.
I don't doubt it.
And then I take corporations competition every day over Government regulation.
You've got all the bad parts of centralized bureaucracy without any of the good bits.
(edit: also, it's hard to tell how many layers of sarcasm your post has, but economists generally agree on centralising certain aspects of healthcare. Insurance is a fairly well studied topic in general.
The reason people bring it up is because it's just straight up propaganda preventing them from thinking. Single payer is inarguably more effective, efficient, and cheaper. Also, "I'm against a public system because it's corrupt"? But this private system is a-ok, no corruption at all! FFS.
You can't, and should not, ever; spoke about corruption on a media were a south american/african could read you. US got corruption? We got it worst! Much much much worst. Worst in a level were the King of Soccer (Pelé) can say on national television that the money that would be stealed during the construction of the stadiums for the world cup would came back as tourists money.
And, beside that... we have universal health care. (It's not fancy nor without big lines of people or up to 5 hours waiting to a doctor but it exists, and works. Specially for serious illnes like cancer, HIV or Hepatitis).
Wrong, there's still a large part of the population who will end up dying of what we call "natural causes" such as Heart attacks and stuff like that. These are very inexpensive, because you don't see them coming, usually. So, no, not everyone on Earth dies from Cancer.
Oh nice, they should put that on the brochure.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_poverty#Cardiovasc...
So, yeah, you might be lucky enough to unexpectedly drop dead before some other scourge takes you
However if you don't happen to fortune into a sudden unexpected death, your body will inevitably decay to the point that you will become a large financial and emotional burden on someone. (Or die homeless and friendless). But we can't take care of those people, cuz socialism! They should have had the common courtesy to just hurry up and die.
I'm not arguing probabilities here, I'm arguing deductive reasoning. You are a decaying meatsack. So am I. At some point something very bad will happen to that decaying meatsack. Such an event will be absurdly expensive to treat. Since I think we'd all agree that for pretty much anyone it makes sense to have health insurance, the obvious next step is: just give everyone health insurance and take it out of tax, and simplify these things 1000 fold. (Not to mention that a single payer would have WAY more leverage, and thusly could negotiate way lower prices. And that's not a hypothetical.. that's how it works in pretty much every country that isn't the US).
His/her argument is, AFAICT: "Because insurance companies can profit, that shows that less than a majority of people die after a prolonged, expensive illness.
Therefore the earlier statement that "it is 100% certain you will have a long, expensive illness at some point in life" is not true.
Plenty of people die of sudden stroke or heart attack in their 70s after a relatively healthy life up to that point.
The lowest hanging fruit, biggest bang for the buck, best ROI, the most logical common sense way to control US healthcare costs is to switch to single payer with universal coverage.
Sure, do all the other kabuki, like quality of care, healthcare insurance exchanges, price transparency, generics, whatever. Because better is better. But know that you're weeding the flower beds while the house is burning down.
They wouldn't have that ability in a European like country sponsored insurance since everything would be covered.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/why-an-mri...
You may be thinking "OK, the system is not great but I'm fine because I've got a good insurance", but that's not true. Even with a good insurance you're getting ripped off before of the cost before insurance of healthcare.