For PAP smears the rate was 88.6% for American woman versus 72.3% for Canadian women.
Yes, but that does not mean that Canadian women are more likely to actually develop cervical cancer. Annual pap testing has no benefit over screening every three years. More testing is not necessarily better.
Anonymous: Are you saying less testing is better??? One reason that Canada may have a slightly lower survival rate is that they detect problems later. That and waiting periods before treatment can begin.
Second, there was no mention of an annual pap test in the article. So that is rebutting something not stated. The actual period of time was one PAP smear in the last three years, which is the time period you hold up. But the good thing is that by drawing my attention to that number I see an error. I accidentally used the mammogram percentages for PAP smears. The numbers are different but in favor of the US system. In the US 86.3% of women had PAP smears in the last three years while it was 75.1% for Canadian women. Again it was not annual, I never said that.
Are you an Austrian economist? If so, (or even if not) I was wondering if you'd kindly consider my general thoughts on the topic.
If I may theorize in a general way, it is my conviction that collectivist schemes like this are only as good as, and only exist by virtue of, the productive capitalist economy off of which they leech.
Since the underlying '1st world' economies being plundered to fund these government schemes are (relatively) highly productive and advanced, the schemes can maintain the semblance of viability which bamboozles the economically illiterate public-- although that semblance is, in reality, just an illusion.
All you've done is simply parisitize a 'host' market economy: since it is the market economy that produces such a (relative) abundance of wealth, it can tolerate the misdirecting of a huge portion of that wealth to fund the collectivist scheme--even as much of that wealth-- excess 'fat,' if you will--is wastefully dissipated via central planning (a huge unseen cost).
But, nevertheless, even after much of the expropriated, misdirected wealth is pissed away via inefficient bureaucratic central planning, what's left over is still enough to fund a SEEMINGLY viable system.
However, the scheme is seen for what it really is in a far less productive economy, such as Cuba's, for instance, in the form of dismal infrastructure and sanitary conditions: the host simply isn't healthy enough to afford such wasteful parasitism.
So in the end, SOCIALIST SCHEMES EXIST OFF THE BACKS OF CAPITALISM. It is through the miracle of capitalism that these schemes can exist at all--not anything, in any way, inherent in socialism/collectivism.
And the unseen costs of this fantasy are huge. As mentioned above, the enormous amount of wealth wastefully dissipated via central planning is, unfortunately, just one such unseen cost.
Since eliminating the price mechanism makes rational allocation of resources impossible, improvments, innovations, or increases in efficiency no longer occur. The system has to suck in more and more revenue from the host even as quality and efficiency stagnates or declines.
Of course, the only conclusion to be drawn is rejection of the collectivist scheme in the first place, allow the productive process, and let resources be allocated by price.
(I hope that wasn't all just really obvious; it took me a while to reach this in my thinking).
Josh: I think you are being a bit too simplistic in what you see happening in these countries. First, there is no doubt that many problems there are government induced -- govts in Africa are highly corrupt and totalitarian and the people suffer as a result.
And foreign aid tends to support that corruption, a point I have made here numerous times before. That doesn’t mean that malaria control programs are a bad thing nor that outside funding (I prefer it to be private) is a bad thing. I would rather see them fund malaria control than fund 90% of what else African govts do.
On the other hand you should also recognize that malaria in the US was controlled by similar programs. Why was that necessary? The economy was advanced and cultural problems that exist in Africa didn’t exist in the US. You seem to think “price mechanisms” are enough here. They are important but not sufficient.
Mosquitoes bite someone with malaria and then pass on the infection to people who don’t have malaria. Let us say you live in an area where a small number of people don’t take precautions for various reasons and don’t spray their homes, etc. If they become infected with malaria then every mosquito that bites them is potentially lethal to you. You can take reasonable precautions and spay your home. But if you walk outside after dark you can still be bitten and infected.
There is also a different situation in Africa due to climate, geography, etc. In lots of the US draining breeding grounds helps. In Africa that is almost impossible. The heavy summer thunder storms dump a lot of water and every crevice gets filled and replenished enough times to provide able breeding spaces to mosquitoes. You won’t be able to drain them, in fact you won’t even know where they are.
Contrary to the usual images people have Africa is the least populated continent next to the Antarctic. The population density for most of the continent is low compared to other continents. That means much of the geography is wild offering plenty of breeding space to mosquitoes outside the direct control of any one. In essence much of the land is unowned so there is no one to even do the draining there.
I see malaria control as a form of charity. I would prefer it to be privately done. And if the charity itself is not private then I prefer to see private agencies do the spraying due to the corruption factor in govt. There are lots of things that the price mechanism won’t solve and that means there are legitimate reasons for charity. Whatever crimes the ruling elites in Africa have committed against their own people is not a reason to punish the children -- the major victims of malaria.
Nor should we forget how the West impoverishes Africa -- not the ways the Left thinks it happens by the way. The West uses trade regulations to restrict Africa’s access to Western markets. This redistributes wealth from the poor of the Third World to wealthy agribusiness in the West. The West sends aid to oppr
Nor should we forget how the West impoverishes Africa -- not the ways the Left thinks it happens by the way. The West uses trade regulations to restrict Africa’s access to Western markets. This redistributes wealth from the poor of the Third World to wealthy agribusiness in the West. The West sends aid to oppressive regimes that restrict property rights and suppress the price mechanism. This allows those regimes to stay in power. Often the weapons they use against their own people was supplied by Europe or the US.
Of all the things that go on in Africa (some pushed on Africa by the West) very near the bottom of any list of problems is malaria control programs. They are mostly beneficial. And certainly the bully tactics that were used by the West to prevent local spraying programs from using DDT are reprehensible -- and that was actually the main point I made --actually it was a secondary point but the comments were turned into a debate on DDT, which was not the main point in the original article.
By the way the valid points you make about the price mechanism are not uniquely Austrian in nature. The Austrian school was not very different on the topic than most classical schools of economics at the time. What made the Austrians unique were other insights they had and nothing you mention falls into those categories. Second, many Austrians did not necessarily endorse classical liberal political theory. There is a group of neo-austrians in the US who have wedded Austrian economics to a particular form of anarchism -- and they pretend that the whole bag is Austrian economics. It isn't. In fact no real, major Austrian economist embraced their anarchocapitalism. Certainly Mises, Hayek, Kirzner, Lachmann, Bohm-Bawerk or Menger did not. The same group is now grafting on to their hodgepodge what smacks of racist ideology to me. They are not typical of Austrian economics nor are the they the upholders of pure Austrian economics. Quite the contrary.
My mistake, I guess I wasn't clear. I was making general comments for sure-- but specifically in reference to government 'health care' programs as they exist in Canada and the UK, and as proposed for the US, about which you have written.
Josh: In the context of the comments I assumed you were speaking about DDT, malaria and Africa. In relation to the US, Canada and the UK you are mostly correct. Unfortunately just deregulating pricing wouldn't solve the problem there are a plethora of other restrictions and regulations that would turn that into a disaster depending on the situation. For instance if govt. created a sole provider that was private for automobiles but deregulated the price you'd get high prices and low quality even though it was privately owned.
But certainly pricing is important as one of the reforms that have to be put through. IN the US the major reform is decouple insurance from jobs, to allow the insurance to follow the worker. Most "uninsured" are people who are between jobs and have "lost" insurance from their previous position before qualifying at their new position. This "fringe" benefit pushed through by trade unions is one of the major disasters in US health care.
Another is to allow competition for health insurance between the states. Many states forbid people to buy their insurance from out of state. That has a significant impact on premiums pushing them up artificially through the restriction of competitionl.
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