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Mario, the Guv plan works well in Japan, hardly a commie country. You might want to check out what Japan spends on healthcare versus their GNP and compare it to the US. I think we double it.
The private sector is looking for help on this in order to compete on the world stage. To much of the cost of a product is tied up in healthcare.
Mario, you sound really anti-business on this one, although I don't believe you are. Perhaps THIS is what you meant to say:
"Sometimes you've got to wonder if Governor Richardson's administration is actually aware that the "great" private medicine experiment of the United States FAILED." (Richardson is STILL NOT seeing this, by his insistence on trying to keep basic medical service a PRIVATE good by forcing the service to be funded through an insurance market, rather than recognizing that insurance serves NO PURPOSE in the basic health market).
Markets ARE GREAT. Just not in basic health services, anymore than they are cost effective for private police, fire fighters, and the judicial system.
There is NO other industrialized country that hasn't figured out that health is a public good (see Paul A. Samuelson 53 year old article(1954): "The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure". Review of Economics and Statistics 36 (4): 387-389.
If we want to be competitive in the global economy, we will be forced to accept market realities.
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Here's the thing. As a nation, I believe too many individuals are shirking their personal responsibility to live healthy and responsible lives.
We eat to excess. We don't exercise. We fill our bodies with toxins. Then, we want to tax our neighbors to pay for our health care bills.
Sorry, that's not right.
I heard something on the radio this morning that one in two men over fifty has prostrate problems. It was suggested that this is a direct result of the high fat diets, so many people enjoy. Childhood diabetes is on the rise because parents don't take the time to care what their kids eat.
Sorry, I just can't get behind "universal" health care.
That's right Mario. It's all the the fault of those fat people.
As I have suggested before, the US needs to send all our middle-aged obese to Iraq. They will lose weight if they survive their 5 year tour of duty and the rest will have died for the glory of this great nation.
Personal responsibility.
They interviewed the spouse of the woman who drove off the road near Seattle and lay there for quite a while before being rescued. He said that her medical bills were at least $500,000. When asked if she had medical insurance he said no. He has it at work, and she could have been added to his policy but they felt she was healthy and chose not to pay the money to put her on his policy.
They are now asking the public to donate money to pay the bill.
A tragic situation.
There's nothing wrong with doctors making a good living but the insurance and drug companies are reaming the populace. Everyone is entitled to health care and we need to wake up and start doing something about it. While I agree with you on some things, other times I just think you've been co-opted by neo-con thinking.
Mike,
That story is tragic, but I think you prove my point...
"she could have been added to his policy but they felt she was healthy and chose not to pay the money to put her on his policy."
You didn't say they couldn't have afforded it, simply that they made a choice to spend the money elsewhere. It wasn't a good choice. Personal responsibility.
And Mario, you make My point (and that of economists who understand there is a reality). It is not up to us to decide what is a public or private good anymore than it is up to us to decide at what temperature water freezes and boils. If you read Samuelson's article, you will discover that whether a good is private or public is intrinsic within the characteristics of the good itself. USSR imploded because it was not understood that agricultural goods are private (ie, it matters a great deal whether one is the first, second, or third to eat an apple. Whether one is the first, second, or third to learn that there is a correlation between prostrate cancer and fat matters not at all. The first is best provided through private markets, the latter through some process whereby NONE are excluded. The first allocates resources efficiently. Attempting to restrict supply of public goods is self defeating. If we can't distinguish between what is public and private, the USA will implode for the same reason USSR did.
What is to be gained by restricting knowledge of the good behavior you so clearly recognize by making health knowledge a private commodity? And once we fail to do that, to "solve" the problem by private services? Do we let those who didn't pay suffer? Or absorb the costs through ER or public charity, after the fact, and at a cost far greater than addressinhg issues at the preventative state. What is clear to all but those with market blinders, thinking they have found a holy grail that solves each and every problem, is that the Cuban model of prevention and non-denial of service is magnitudes cheaper. Cubans obtain essentially the same level of health care as do Americans, at a fraction of the cost.
Please read the Samuelson article or at least Wikipedia on "Public goods" "private goods" before trying to reinvent the wheel and ignorinbg decades of good American economic work in this area.
BTW, my URL links to Robert Franks graphs. Robert Frank having co-authored a number of good economic texts with Ben Bernanke, the current Federal Reserve chair. Both are top notch economists, having taken the time to learn what economists have accumulated through the ages.
oops. too fast. It is demand for an optimum supply of public goods that is illogical to restrict, not supply. Supply of public goods, still having production costs, are not infinite, but supplied up to the point where the demand for a given quantity (ie sum of individual demands at a given price, since consumption by one does not diminish consumption by another), just equals its marginal cost.
Mario,
Fat in a man's diet is just one possible contributing factor to prostate problems. Ethnicity and family history are two other factors and of course, they happen to be the factors men (and women) have no control over. Just thought you'd like to know, but you also need to know that if you live long enough, you will likely develop the damn thing yourself. Take this from someone who is being treated for PC. And that ain't political correctness. ;>)
As to the "government" setting physician and other healthcare fees ... you have heard of medicare and medicaid, haven't you?
Erichwwk, I will put your suggestions on my reading list.
Chuck, no surprise here, but I'm not a big fan of the way medicare and medicaid have evolved.
Also of interest might this intro to last years (2007) "Nobel" prize in economics, on market mechanism design.
Footnotes 1 and 2 on page one have a succinct definition of public and private goods:
http://tinyurl.com/23px8b
The footnotes:
1 Goods are called private if one person’s consumption of them precludes their consumption by another person. Typical examples are food and clothes.
2 Goods are called public if one person’s consumption of them does not preclude consumption by others. Typical examples are television programs and (uncongested) roads.
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