Originally posted by sh76
I agree with KN.

Healthcare is not the same as other markets. As a society, it's immoral to let people die that could be saved because of a lack of money. Once that's established as a principle and we can't let people suffer the consequences of their decisions, as manner must be sought to most efficiently provide health benefits while sharing the cost in the most sensible way.

It may be immoral, but it happens everyday and this mandate isn't going to do a thing about it.

Originally posted by sh76
I agree with KN.

Healthcare is not the same as other markets. As a society, it's immoral to let people die that could be saved because of a lack of money. Once that's established as a principle and we can't let people suffer the consequences of their decisions, as manner must be sought to most efficiently provide health benefits while sharing the cost in the most sensible way.

Health care differs from other market due primarily to long term deformations of the free market. One of the biggest was the labor movement getting employers to pay for health insurance, and then health care, and allowing that compensation to be untaxed. Employers could pay for health care with no additional taxation of employees, while if the employee payed for his own, it was with after tax funds. Then came government health care, medicare and medicaid, removing the consumer from the picture with a third party payor system controlling a large portion of the market.

It has been during these deformations that health care costs have escalated far above the already high rates of inflation caused by out of control government spending. Anyone who thinks government will control health care costs, or provide more or better care is delusional.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
[b]Kids suffer from bad parents in all sorts of ways, in fact in worse ways than having no health insurance.

False dilemma.

Perhaps you should have the government raise our kids for us since so many parents do a bad job of it.

Non sequitur.[/b]

It's not false at all. Perhaps you just haven't seen it first hand.

Originally posted by sh76
It's all fine and good to blame the execs, but that doesn't solve the real life problems. People are going to try to do what's best for their bottom lines. The question is how to reconcile that reality with policies that improve the lots of the largest numbers of people.

The ACA required employers to buy good health insurance for full time employees or pay a nk a robust public option would have been a better idea, but that's a different issue.

With all due respect, this has a great deal to do with the exec's. If a company shows a profit, and can afford to pay their exec's a 7-8 figure income (along with all the other corporate goodies) they can afford health care for their employees. This applies to many companies that are now crying "pity poor me" regarding healthcare costs.😉

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Most industrialized nations provide free or very cheap health care to the poor, and there is no empirical evidence suggesting this makes them stop working or stop seeking work. A country like Norway, with very generous benefits, has roughly ten percentage points more of the working age population actually working than the US does.

I am tired of being confronted with Norway, or Finland, or some other rather small nation with nationalized health care, as being exemplary of how things ought to be.

They aren't the United States and don't have the other complicating factors economically and politically that exist here. And their systems are young in real terms. If they are still doing well in a century, maybe its time to copy them. In other centralized, government run health care, things aren't so rosy, even in nations without the drain of a massive military like the US.

The OP is demonstrative of the unavoidable free market consequences of mandates. The deformations of central planning are creating consequences which in total make a health care crisis look miniscule by comparison. When the next fiscal bubble bursts, the US is likely not to be an industrial nation any longer, but a basket case like Detroit already is.

Originally posted by bill718
With all due respect, this has a great deal to do with the exec's. If a company shows a profit, and can afford to pay their exec's a 7-8 figure income (along with all the other corporate goodies) they can afford health care for their employees. This applies to many companies that are now crying "pity poor me" regarding healthcare costs.😉

A great deal of this is due to several decades of the Fed coddling big business, and crony capitalists with excessively low interest rates, and bail outs on demand.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
[b]Kids suffer from bad parents in all sorts of ways, in fact in worse ways than having no health insurance.

False dilemma.

Perhaps you should have the government raise our kids for us since so many parents do a bad job of it.

Non sequitur.[/b]

Eladar make both points well, your objections notwithstanding. Removing responsibility from social equations seldom, if ever, has good results.

Originally posted by sh76
I agree with KN.

Healthcare is not the same as other markets. As a society, it's immoral to let people die that could be saved because of a lack of money. Once that's established as a principle and we can't let people suffer the consequences of their decisions, as manner must be sought to most efficiently provide health benefits while sharing the cost in the most sensible way.

I agree. Sadly, Insurance companies and HMO's don't see it this way. As a young business student, one of the first things I learned was the purpose of a corporation (and most companies) is to maximize profit, and minimize loss, and I can assure you the bean counters at these companies are not the least bit interested in who get's "saved". They'll set up a program that insures a tidy profit, while "saving" just enough lives to deflect the bulk of the public outcry. Corporations that employ workers have the same mindset when it comes to healthcare, so I hope you're not buying the vision the well financed PR folks put out about the benevolent employers being taken advantage of by those big mean Liberals in the Government.

Originally posted by normbenign
I am tired of being confronted with Norway, or Finland, or some other rather small nation with nationalized health care, as being exemplary of how things ought to be.

They aren't the United States and don't have the other complicating factors economically and politically that exist here. And their systems are young in real terms. If they are still ...[text shortened]... likely not to be an industrial nation any longer, but a basket case like Detroit already is.

I am tired of being confronted with Norway, or Finland, or some other rather small nation with nationalized health care, as being exemplary of how things ought to be.

Ok, so make your point using the empirical evidence available.

Originally posted by normbenign
Eladar make both points well, your objections notwithstanding. Removing responsibility from social equations seldom, if ever, has good results.

Can you be more specific about how ensuring access to health care does not have "good results"?

Originally posted by Eladar
It's not false at all. Perhaps you just haven't seen it first hand.

Perhaps you don't know what a "false dilemma" informal fallacy is. I suggest you look it up.

The (rather bleedingly) obvious fact that you can never shield children completely from "bad parents" does not imply that ensuring children have access to health care is a bad idea.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Can you be more specific about how ensuring access to health care does not have "good results"?

Moral hazard. In insurance terms, adverse selection.

Originally posted by normbenign
Moral hazard. In insurance terms, adverse selection.

Can you be more specific than the rather vague "moral hazard"? There is no need to hypothesize - universal health care is rather common, so its drawbacks should be quite apparent. Can you point out trends, facts, figures, examples, research, anything?

Originally posted by bill718
I agree. Sadly, Insurance companies and HMO's don't see it this way. As a young business student, one of the first things I learned was the purpose of a corporation (and most companies) is to maximize profit, and minimize loss, and I can assure you the bean counters at these companies are not the least bit interested in who get's "saved". They'll set up a pr ...[text shortened]... volent employers being taken advantage of by those big mean Liberals in the Government.

Sadly, insurance companies wouldn't exist, if there were no profit motive. In fact why would young men and women invest years of their lives and a fortune in tuition, room and board and other expenses if there were no financial rewards in medicine?

By the way, the HMO was the invention of a liberal Democrat and government regulation, not the free market.

Having studied business, you must realize there is always a tension between producer and consumer. Producers endeavor to maximize profits, and consumers endeavor to get products as inexpensively as possible. Neither gets to dictate to the other its way, unless government steps in.

The problems with health care are too much government, not too little.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Can you be more specific than the rather vague "moral hazard"? There is no need to hypothesize - universal health care is rather common, so its drawbacks should be quite apparent. Can you point out trends, facts, figures, examples, research, anything?

In the US, universal care is Medicare and Medicaid. Both are swamped with fraud and overuse issues relating to moral hazard. In property and casualty insurance, insurable interest must be demonstrated. Adverse selection involves people with extreme risk, or already apparent loss wanting to buy insurance, or rather shift costs away from themselves. The perfect example is preexisting conditions.

A personal example, from Ontario, Canada, is when I had my cataract surgery. There were three methods of payment, Ontario Care (for which I didn't qualify being a US citizen), Medicare (for which I was too young by a year), and cash. Cash got me an appointment in less than a week. Medicare would have been a 6 to 8 week wait, and Ontario Care 3 to 6 months wait, maybe longer according to the doctor.

An example from a National Enquirer article I read on the crapper last week. A 'Cancer doctor' was convicted of fraud, for treating a terminal patient with an herbal concoction. The patient had already exhausted all of the chemo and radiation options, no doubt at great expense, and then was discarded as "terminal" by the establishment physicians. Why weren't they tried for fraud?

I live on the Canadian border, and waits under Ontario Care for critical treatments like dialysis are so long that people who can afford it still cross the border in droves to pay cash.

Universal health care is a lie. Nothing is universal. There has to be rationing and limitations, and in the case of the ACA (Obama care) there are other disastrous side effects even worse than a single payor system, a virtual train wreck we are seeing emerge.