Mon, 08/10/2009 - 10:03am — lambert
Irony not dead, though apparently invisible to some:
Supporters cheered. Brown finished by telling the crowd that Gladney is accepting donations toward his medical expenses. Gladney told reporters he was recently laid off and has no health insurance.
Maybe PNHP could take up a collection for him?
On the principle that everybody deserves care, no matter who or what?
Maybe I'm not kidding!
NOTE Via OpenLeft.
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Yes, you are right.
Everybody does deserve healthcare. Even (sighs) Cheney.
Reporter to Mahatma Gandhi: What do you think of Western Civilization?
Gandhi to reporter: I think it would be a good idea.
And these are the folks we should be so scared of?
They delegitimize themselves all the time, yet lefties want to make them legitimate by pretending they are more significant than they are. I guess if you want the Dems to go even further to the righ, we should focus on a dwindling group of extreme folks and make that the standard by which we compare Dems.
Only tyrants rig elections.
Not Ironic
I know nothing of this story, but from a third party perspective it appears that he may be making a smart criticism. He is asking people to voluntarily fund his health-care. Health-care legislation would actually force people to do this. Perhaps the commentary here is that if proponents of government health insurance are not willing to donate the funds themselves, then perhaps they are hypocritical for advocating the funds be taken from people without thought to their personal preference.
You mean like roads, libraries, and so forth?
Just asking...
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
I don't believe he was
protesting those things. Stay focused!
I do see this as a libertarian approach to health care
People pay for your health care only if they feel like it.
Then, quality health care is available only to those with means or good marketing. Not my idea of a good health policy, but not really ironic, I agree.
Hey Thanks.
That's all I was saying and you nailed it. Lambert - I understand your followup and admit it was a dodge, but I wasn't about to get into another theoretical road funding discussion. I understand you're in philly, so if you want to have it out wiht an anarchist hit up my email and we can do it at eternally politcally neutral rittenhouse and i bet it'd be fun.
How do people on this site feel about removing the tax shelters employers have in regards to healthcare to, for lack of a better term, introduce liquidity in regards to consumer choice back into health insurance? I would argue that lack of consumer choice/feedback is a large component of the current "problem" but that the current solutions will not change this lack of feedback whatsoever and purports to be better based off of economies of scale moreso than anything else. Thass me though.
Single-payer advocates...
Which, as best I can tell, encompasses darn near everyone associated with this site -- don't think the market is a good mechanism for providing fundamental health care. Good as in humane, cost-effective, getting the best results.
Premium services -- fancy rooms, elective surgery (though that's a slippery slope), etc. could be a different matter.
But it is understood...
that the current system is not a market system, right? The strength of any free market is in the ability for consumers, through spending, to communicate what they feel is valuable to them. When the government creates an environment where employer coverage can be acquired much more cheaply than individual or family coverage, it's clear that the defining characteristic of market efficiency is no longer present.
So what I fail to see in the single-payer approach is an explanation for the following: a strong reduction in competition through employer tax breaks has placed us in our current predicament, what is the reasoning behind eliminating competition altogether and what free market systems has this projected outcome been compared to?
I guess the second question would have to be, what program run by the Federal Government has a longstanding track record of quality service and 0 projected longterm liabilities that makes people comfortable with eliminating non-government solutions?
Health insurance is not an iPod
Here.
It's not a commodity that you can comparison shop for, or even decide to pass until the cost comes down. It is life or death.
Just out of curiousity, have you ever tried to buy flood insurance?
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond
Oh jeez.
I haven't tried to buy flood insurance, I have negotiated for flood coverage within a real estate deal... I do know that the coverage we shopped around for was not the function of an employer or even the local community as no legislation was in place giving tax breaks to these groups vs individual coverage buyers.
Saying it's not a commodity to shop for and that it's life and death, well maybe there's a point in there, but it's not an argument for elminating competition entirely as far as i can tell.
No flood insurance
Is sold by the federal government, b/c there is no money to be made in selling it, b/c the people at highest risk for floods, are too expensive to insure.
Health insurance is a similiar racket. It costs too much to insure the people who need it most.
That's why there will never be a "market" solution to health care.
Deal with it.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond
Neat.
So do people build homes in higher risk flood areas as a result of this subsidy? Do you think not linking insurance payments to individual behavior will have a simliar result in the health insurance industry? If not, why not? If so, how is this not a sign of financial impracticality - and before you say "people are dying" remember - financial impracticality = reality = people actually dying from lack of incentive to remain healthy.
Hi, Samuel. People build homes where they want them
floods happen anyhow.
The government is the sole provider for flood insurance because your precious market finds it altogether unprofitable. Altogether. Unprofitable.
I don't live in a flood plain. My neighbor next door (well, actually, across the alley, but next door anyway) does.
Why do I know this? I've been here since 1997 and there've been two "100 year floods" in that time. The first one came midsummer several years ago -- the most rain we'd had in one go since 1940-something. The last one came last September; eleven inches of rain in one day, where I live, and almost fourteen where I then worked.
In between these two events the government sent in federal flood insurance survey teams to determine where, in our town, deed restrictions requiring flood insurance needed to be added for future sales. Why? Playas.
She has to notify anybody, if she or her heirs ever sell her house, that the house sits in the floodplain for a playa. I don't, 'cause I'm on the other side of the ridge and slope.
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
Are you arguing the economics of this?
Maybe I'm misreading the tone dramatically...
Are you suggesting that by offering flood insurance in areas in which the insurance would otherwise not be offered (which just means rates would be really really high relative to the current government offer - and that the realization of these rates is only not present because competition with a non-profit entity is impossible) that people would still build homes in these areas and that the prices of these homes would not be greatly affected?
"The government is the sole provider for flood insurance because your precious market finds it altogether unprofitable. Altogether. Unprofitable." Wrong. The government, I'm told, is the sole provider of flood insurance because it has the resources (tax collection, bond issuance) to operate an insurance policy at a loss and in doing so has driven away all competitors that would propose a sustainable model for insuring against floods.
Though in relative terms this is a tiny tiny example, how is this fundamentally different than the federal government backing AIG's market volatility insurance (other than it's much more of a racket with a friggen AIG as a middleman)? Godlmans Sachs would never have built their homes on shaky foundations had they not known they'd be bailed out with taxpayer money.
you were told wrong
the market's idea of 'sustainable' in this case is 'able to extract unlimited amounts of money from a captive population'. whihc is unsustainable in real life. which is why we have govt regulations in real life.
people live in flood zones for all kinds of good reasons. rivers are sources of water and the area around them good for growing food. coasts provide locations for ports which allow large-scale trade with other nations. and to carry on these activities you need to have people living there. and to operate grocery stores and clothing stores and amusement parks and ... for the people living in flood zones you need to have grocery stores, and clothing stores, and amusement parks, and ... located in flood zones.
people living outside of flood zones benefit from the activity of people living in flood zones, and for the tiny price of helping to pay for flood insurance [through the govt] they can go on receiving those benefits.
Health care is not
a bowl of cherries.
Please come back when you've read Arrow's argument - or Krugman's breakdown of the problems with the market "cure" - and can tell us what you think is wrong with it. Arrow has more to say about the current situation in a recent interview.
We can't afford not to have single-payer!
Krugman rebuttle...
to a recent article of his I'm just pulling rather than rewriting for that specific blog post.
-------------
So here's some of that brilliant argumentation by Krugman:
"And you can’t just trust insurance companies either — they’re not in business for their health, or yours."
Just as home insurers aren't in business to pay claims, but they do anyway. Plus, government providers aren't in business for their citizen's health either. They're in the business of winning elections.
"This problem is made worse by the fact that actually paying for your health care is a loss from an insurers’ point of view — they actually refer to it as “medical costs.”"
This point is literally retarded. Any form of insurance has the same dynamic. If my car insurer didn't view payouts as a cost, it would quickly fail. This is almost as stupid as his description of the Austrian Business Cycle.
"This means both that insurers try to deny as many claims as possible, and that they try to avoid covering people who are actually likely to need care."
So they don't just open the checkbook with every claim? Do single-payers systems? And they don't want to "insure" people who are already really ill? Shocking! Imagine a home insurer who refused to cover someone who built a house in a flood plain that flooded every other year. Shocking! Maybe insurers should agree to give full coverage at the usual rates to anyone who decided to buy insurance after getting Hodgkin's.
"Both of these strategies use a lot of resources, which is why private insurance has much higher administrative costs than single-payer systems. And since there’s a widespread sense that our fellow citizens should get the care we need — not everyone agrees, but most do — this means that private insurance basically spends a lot of money on socially destructive activities."
As we know from our experience with Medicare, the Iraq War, and any other government enterprise, the costs are being low-balled. And if Krugman wanted to see that everyone got care, he and his rich friends could pay for something themselves instead of free-loading all the time.
"The second thing about health care is that it’s complicated, and you can’t rely on experience or comparison shopping. (“I hear they’ve got a real deal on stents over at St. Mary’s!”) That’s why doctors are supposed to follow an ethical code, why we expect more from them than from bakers or grocery store owners."
This is more raw idiocy. Has Krugman never heard of hospital rankings? Why does he think that patients go to Seattle from throughout the US and Canada to receive cancer treatments? Maybe they compared hospitals?
"You could rely on a health maintenance organization to make the hard choices and do the cost management, and to some extent we do. But HMOs have been highly limited in their ability to achieve cost-effectiveness because people don’t trust them — they’re profit-making institutions, and your treatment is their cost."
STUPID. How can Krugman trust Toyota to make a road-worthy Prius? Doesn't he realize that Toyota is a PROFIT-MAKING INSTITUTION and therefore doesn't care if he rams into a wall at freeway speed? (Only non-profit institutions care about doing a good job.) His brakes are their cost! His crumple zones are their cost! His pyrotechnic pre-tensioners are their cost!
"Between those two factors, health care just doesn’t work as a standard market story."
Because he and his ilk have sold a Utopian idea.
"All of this doesn’t necessarily mean that socialized medicine, or even single-payer, is the only way to go. There are a number of successful health-care systems, at least as measured by pretty good care much cheaper than here, and they are quite different from each other. There are, however, no examples of successful health care based on the principles of the free market, for one simple reason: in health care, the free market just doesn’t work."
Krugman has already said before that we're halfway to socialized medicine and the reasons are obvious: 46% of health care in the US is paid for with government-stolen money and the tax structure is FDRdiotic.
"And people who say that the market is the answer are flying in the face of both theory and overwhelming evidence."
Right... people can't make choices to exchange money for goods, insurance, or services more intelligently than Lynn Woolsey, Lynn Westmoreland, or Maxine Waters.
-----------
I mean, do you just think that's ludicrous or something? I know it's attitude laden, sorry, but can we say that maybe the principles that define the market are inescapable and a bureaucracy cannot deny that reality?
I'll try to look at the Arrow stuff later and get back to you in another thread if it's ever relevant! Thx.
Oh never mind
You are one of those people, who are find with other's dying because they can't afford treatment, just so you can save a buck, and therefore are pointless to argue with.
I'm done with this distraction.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond
Totally wrong.
And really rude. Think my reasoning through and differentiate between sentimentality and reasoning on your part. I empathize with your sentiments, I really do, I was once in full agreement regarding single-payer. Unfortuneately not all lives can be saved in a world of finite resources and the government has no special ability to determine how to allocate these resources, they just don't. If preserving human life is your goal, it's silly to turn to such a violent and murderous entity for this service and in the process grant them more power than they have ever held.
Well, between two violent and murderous entities...
.... it's certainly a reasonable position to choose the one where I have a vote.
The market is, of course, also murderous. Arrow is quite relevant, and you should read him.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
GMTA!
You are echoed by the comment I just quoted:
We can't afford not to have single-payer!
Will read, no joke.
But two things I must address:
".... it's certainly a reasonable position to choose the one where I have a vote." - That's my precise point about removing employer provided health coverage tax shelters. Then you'd REALLY have a vote (making health coverage like iPods to use another's example). Right now, I have a vote on a lot of things...hell we voted to get out of Iraq via the same representative leaders and that did nothing...you realize your vote is essentially meaningless right?
The market is murderous as much as reality is murderous...there's a difference between finite resource allocations through a pricing mechanism and carpet bombing countries.
Calling a private company violent in this country in the same regard that the government is violent is ridiculous. Companies, barring the assistance of governments, rely on voluntarism. Government kick down your door and shoot you. Do you disagree with that distinction?
Anybody who watched the bailouts play out...
... has to laugh at the idea of companies relying on voluntarism.
Or do you think that money flows don't kill and maim people just as effectively as guns?
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Exactly!
That's not companies, that's not capitalism, that's no voluntarism. PRECISELY! The government redistributed that money by utilizing the only tool at it's disposal, FORCE. In a free market, where someone cannot print money against my will, that would only have occurred through voluntary means. Big government does that stuff, not companies! Yea, there's crossover, but Goldman Sachs didn't make the dollar creation monopoly that truly enabled that bailout.
Ofcourse money flows can kill people. What I'm trying to distinguish is voluntarism from violence. If a volunteer my dollars to buy me a sandwich that's not violent, even if someone could have used that sandwich somewehre else and I didn't NEED it. I'm not saying that's right, I value human life (which is why I'm against Single-Payer - same goal, different reasoning is all).
If I take a Navy to the middle east and start an embargo, forcing the collapse of money flows into and out of Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of children, that's an initiation of force because I'm not allowing others to reach mutually beneficial agreements voluntarily.
What's a rebuttle? Something to do with vinegarmaking?
hasn't anything to do with debate.
Unless you meant, ah, 'rebuttal'?
Command of the language you're arguing in, or attempting to, is important if you want to be taken seriously.
I'm just sayin'.
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
No, that's re-BOTTLE
Rebuttle is what the butler does when he does whatever it is that butlers do, except again.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
That must have been what he meant to write
Re-bottled.
[Brace yourself before you click]
We can't afford not to have single-payer!
If you were truly concerned with truth and logic
I imagine you would engage me regarding my points. I assure you that I am interested in and, if I find my self in disagreement, willing to respond to your points in a somewhat civil manner.
If name-calling and whatnot is really the way it works for you, I ask that you do not support any government policy that would result in further confiscation of what is mine, as the reasoning for support of such a BOLD action needs to be articulated rigorously if it's proponents are to be considered respectful of those their decision...well marginalizes.
Which is the points, specifically, did you take issue with?
well then let me make it clear as all hell, Samuel
the points I take issue with are the demand on your part that all things arise from the free market and your insistence that government can do nothing well.
The free market will not provide anything it cannot profit from, because the free market is a predator. As a predator it far prefers immediate gain to long-term and, most abhorrent to the sensibilities of the free-marketeer, "common good" investments. One of the ways the free market builds its profits is by collection of fees
or dunnage in contracts -- and then finds ways not to honor its obligations in turn, allowing the freemarketeer to, for all intents and purposes, profit from betrayal.
And because the only force capable of meeting the unbridled violence that greed -- which is the drive behind the "free market" advocates, in every single case -- will muster when checked is government, I also take issue with your contention that government is of no value.
Of course, I'm not interested in your definitions of "truth" or "logic."
I'm one of those awful liberals who believes in such puerile concepts as "the common good" and "inalienable rights," which include the "the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and other possessions" -- not the least of these being the most basic possession of all, one's body (aka person), which is not secure at all when one is denied, for whatever reason but especially by the greed of the marketeer, care needed to ensure its health and functionality -- even if that health and functionality is ensured through pregnancy termination.
And my mind's made up on those points. Good day to you.
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
hey, there, a little night ... I am reminded of the injunction
not to put new wine in old bottles lest they burst and all be lost, eh?
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
FYI, since the commenter did not provide this information
the "rebuttle" was lifted wholesale from a comment at cafehayek.com (nope, no link) on a post titled "Health-Care Lies". You can find it easily enough if you want to.
The gist of the post is that it's already easy to find affordable health insurance through the private, individual market; complete with anecdote.
We can't afford not to have single-payer!
much obliged, a little night ...
why'm I not, by the way, surprised the comment's lifted wholesale sans credit?
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
Haha, there's credit - think about it
Free market predator, rrrrr! Got it.
No projected long-term liabilities?
Is infinite free lunch your yardstick?
No, not by anymeans.
What I should have said is that the net balance at the end of every fiscal year should be $0.00 = revenue(tax not bond issuance) - payouts. Right now I have zero indebtedness from my coverage and I would not like to be associated with additional liabilities.
It ain't a free lunch if you took it from someone's table without their permission!
Life's too short to engage in libertarian fantasies
Where perfectly-pure market schemes are fully realizable, but government intervention of any sort is always damnably imperfect.
Your comment fails to capture
my point correctly before dismissing it.
I did not say anything about the market providing a "perfect" solution. Finite resources in the universe: I think we agree that no solution could ever be perfect for everyone.
My argument is that the elimination of consumer choice in the realm of health coverage in the US should in the least be supported by examples of longterm, sustainable ($0.00 year end balance, allowing for fluctuation y to y) government service.
I can't be sure what you think I mean when you put the words "damnably imperfect" in my mouth but I can assure you that it is not necessarily my belief that in the short-term the government cannot handle something more efficiently than a private enterprise...hell, government and private enterprises are the same thing, people. What I do contend, and I believe empirical evidence is well on the side of my contention, is that, in the longterm government involvement in industries or government provided services becomes less and less efficient and liabilities balloon year to year. I urge you to find an empirical example of a government entity gaining in efficiency over time - be it schools, SS, medicare, welfare.
Beyond empiricism I find the logic that a buerocrat's interests are somehow more with the people than the connection between firm, profit, consumer choice in spending. That logic being partly influenced by the events of the last few decades in this country.
Personally I believe that less regulation (no more tax breaks for employer coverage!) will restore consumer say when it comes to their coverage. I recognize that does not help everyone, but there are a means to do this other than handing over a monopoly to the feds. I personally support charity, hell even let people gamble in a health futures market with the understanding it's a negative some game (just had the idea, half serious?). Be creative.
Before you start hatin on me don't forget that we both want the best coverage for the most people and our only difference is on the means to obtain it! I really respect that the people on this site are (for the most part) driven out of a respect for all human life. I also understand, or at least purport to understand, the frustration that comes with what seem like callous market solutions...to just about everything. Remember, the "market" is a concept describing all human interactions. "Government" is a concept describing a group of individuals managing human interactions through force. That's not to say government is bad (I would, monopoly on violenct, etc) but are those definitions agreeable?
"are those definitions agreeable?"
no.
market is a concept applicable to some human interactions. government is another concept applied to some human actions.
governments can be used by used a few powerful people to impose, among other things, dysfunctional [for all but the richest] markets on the rest of the population. or governments can be used by the populace at large to rein in the few powerful people who would impose otherwise intolerable conditions on the otherwise powerless.
Most definitely not agreeable
Remember, the "market" is a concept describing all human interactions.
What does this even mean? Do you know, or did you pull that out of a Libertarians for Dummies reference book?
The "market" is a social construct, just like government. And it can be used by the few or the many. Currently, both markets and government are in the hands of a few, who are preventing actual reform, through their stranglehold on the media, the legislature, and wealth.
The market will never create equitable treatment, because it is a social construct designed to prevent equality. The government, while also not perfect, can be influenced by the will of an electorate, for a while longer at any rate.
But government can only be as effective, as the citizens who are engaged with it, and too many are not engaged, because of the widespread corruption, or a failure to import this civic duty in the citizenry.
And you're polluting the discourse, with Randian fantasies, doesn't really help matters.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond
Another aspect of the story
Is that his attorney, may not be an attorney.
Also, interestingly enough, the STL story you link to, says Gladney was in a wheelchair. But, in the Fox story, linked here, he isn't in a wheelchair, and that's a day before the above story.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond