Warren Buffett Says America Is "So Rich" It Can Afford Single Payer

[piezoe]

I did not read this entire thread, so I apologize if someone else has already made this point.

Obviously all the other industrialized nations, and many more, have already figured out how to deliver healthcare to all their citizens at a cost at least 50% less than the U.S. cost, and in most cases much less than that, with better outcomes. The U.S. remains the only industrialized nation that pretends it can't figure out how to do this. Rather embarrassing, if you are an American, I would say.

Isn't it self-evident that if the U.S can afford what it is doing now, it certainly can afford single payer, since the other nations of the world have already proved that the cost of single payer is much less for better results!

The fundamental problem is, as I have pointed out ad nauseum, most of medical care pricing is extremely inelastic because the conditions needed for elasticity are inherently absent. Virtually all other reasonably modern countries have recognized this! They have solved the run-away price problem by creating a single payer, the government, with dictatorial power over pricing; or else they have kept insurance companies as the third party payer but given government dictatorial power over insurance coverage and rates (e.g., Switzerland -- the highest cost, naturally, after the U.S.) Will the U.S. eventually join these more civilized countries? One would hope so.

 

[piezoe]

Should every body have healthcare or should only certain groups have it?

It depends, I suppose, on whether you want to live in a place like East Africa or in a civilized country. The U.S. can not be said to be truly civilized until it provides reasonable access to routine healthcare to all its citizens regardless of means.

 

[ET180]

Should every body have healthcare or should only certain groups have it?

Even in the socialized countries, not everyone has access to healthcare if you define healthcare as pursuing all means necessary to continue life even if those options are provided by charity at no cost. All these countries will run cost-benefit analysis at some point. Here's a recent popular case:

http://observer.com/2017/05/chris-gard-connie-yates-baby-charlie-mitochondrial-depletion-syndrome/

So that poor baby is actually being condemned to death because socialized medicine does not want to run the risk of being embarrassed in the event that public charity and the US healthcare was actually able to save the kid. When the government provides something "free", it usually comes at the cost of your freedom.

You raise a fundamental question though. My answer would be no: healthcare is not a right. Nowhere in the constitution does it guarantee a right to healthcare. You get life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The rest you have to pay for.

 

[ET180]

It depends, I suppose, on whether you want to live in a place like East Africa or in a civilized country. The U.S. can not be said to be truly civilized until it provides reasonable access to routine healthcare to all its citizens regardless of means.

Why did you stop at healthcare? Don't people also need food and shelter to survive? Why should those things also not be provided to all? Basically, just let us know when we can all become parasites and live off of others.

 

[piezoe]

Why did you stop at healthcare? Don't people also need food and shelter to survive? Why should those things also not be provided to all? Basically, just let us know when we can all become parasites and live off of others.

Ha ha ha, do you mean, perhaps, why didn't I act like a politician and answer a question that wasn't asked? Of course I don't know if you live in the U.S., but if you do you would know that the U.S. federal government does provide some assistance to some individuals with regard to food and shelter. I'm passing this information on to you in the event you don't live in the U.S. and did not know that. I do have an opinion with regard to these programs but it would not be as informed as my opinion on healthcare. In any case, this is a forum about healthcare.

 

[just21]

Why did you stop at healthcare? Don't people also need food and shelter to survive? Why should those things also not be provided to all? Basically, just let us know when we can all become parasites and live off of others.

Come to Europe, everything is free! Billions currently on the way courtesy of George Soros!

 

[Martinghoul]

Even in the socialized countries, not everyone has access to healthcare if you define healthcare as pursuing all means necessary to continue life even if those options are provided by charity at no cost. All these countries will run cost-benefit analysis at some point. Here's a recent popular case:

http://observer.com/2017/05/chris-gard-connie-yates-baby-charlie-mitochondrial-depletion-syndrome/

So that poor baby is actually being condemned to death because socialized medicine does not want to run the risk of being embarrassed in the event that public charity and the US healthcare was actually able to save the kid. When the government provides something "free", it usually comes at the cost of your freedom.

You raise a fundamental question though. My answer would be no: healthcare is not a right. Nowhere in the constitution does it guarantee a right to healthcare. You get life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The rest you have to pay for.

The Charlie Gard case has nothing whatsoever to do with what you have described. It's actually extremely similar to the Terri Schiavo case,

 

[piezoe]

The line is very simple, as I wrote in other words in the previous post: that which the free markets can regulate through forces of supply and demand, should be left for the the free market to regulate.
The very few areas which cannot be regulated through forces of supply and demand, which are basically national defense(armed forces, against foreign enemies), police(defense of the citizens from other citizens) and reinforcement of the rule of law and contracts signed voluntarily between individuals and/or private companies(meaning the justice system) should be handled by government.

Your argument is stemming from a false premise. When markets operate as they do in textbooks you argument will be slightly better.

 

[NeoTrader]

Your argument is stemming from a false premise. When markets operate as they do in textbooks you argument will be slightly better.

The only one holding arguments that are false is you. And the falsity in your arguments is not based in premise or arguments, but facts. The USSR, North Korea, Venezuela, China, Brazil(where I worked as a physician) and every other country that adopted socialist policies are proof that what you are stating is false, never worked and never will. But for people that just don't want to see the truth and accept the reality of facts, there is no logic. Just what they want to see. That is why the US constitution secures the right to keep and bear arms, for the possible event that the tyranny that always results from idiotic socialist ideas such as the one that you defend reach a breaking point and the people that truly believe in freedom and personal responsability fight back. I hope that that day never comes, because it would be a tragedy. But if it comes to that, it is preferable than to be in the present situation of the venezualans. I'm not american, but brazilian and that is precisely why I understand the reality of facts, because I lived them. As for when markets operate freely, the result is the U.S., the most developed country in history and the responsible for the creation and development of the biggest advances mankind has ever seen. Something that, sadly, to a great extend, socialists have done a great job at ruining it.

 

[OddTrader]

Looks like the boundary of providing essential goods and services by a government cannot be easily defined.

Perhaps there has been no any universal agreement on defining the boundary on this issue. By well-known economists, politicians or individuals, historically.

As the boundary can be very dynamic, otherwise we don't need any political or legal systems, as if things are static and clear-cut.

I don't know which country would provide only the very theoretically basic and absolutely minimum provisions of government supplied services and goods.

If yes, I am just wondering who would be very happy living there without thinking for a moment to move to other countries/states for a better living for good, where the governments would provide many more better goods and services beyond minimum provisions.

Even the poorest country on earth would provide more than minimum set of goods and services by the government. I would try to guess.

Just 2 cents!

Cf: Page 127 about Taxation and the Provision of Essential Goods and Services

The Moral Ecology of Markets
Assessing Claims about Markets and Justice
Daniel Finn
Saint John's University, Minnesota

http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521677998

Q

Disagreements about the morality of markets, and about self-interested behavior within markets, run deep. They arise from perspectives within economics and political philosophy that appear to have nothing in common. In this book, Daniel Finn provides a framework for understanding these conflicting points of view. Recounting the arguments for and against markets and self-interest, he argues that every economy must address four fundamental problems: allocation, distribution, scale, and the quality of relations. In addition, every perspective on the morality of markets addresses explicitly or implicitly the economic, political, and cultural contexts of markets, or what Finn terms 'the moral ecology of markets'. His book enables a dialogue among the various participants in the debate over justice in markets. In this process, Finn engages with major figures in political philosophy, including John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Michael Walzer, as well as in economics, notably Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and James Buchannan.

• Engages the debates about capitalism and markets across the disciplines of economics, political science, and political philosophy • Provides a novel framework for placing conflicting points of view in dialogue with each other • Well-written and non-technical, this book is useful to scholars and accessible to students
Contents

1. Thinking ethically about economic life; Part I. Self-interest, Morality, and the Problems of Economic Life: 2. De-moralized economic discourse about markets; 3. The moral defense of self-interest and markets; 4. The moral critique of self-interest and markets; 5. The four problems of economic life; Part II. The Moral Ecology of Markets: 6. The market as an arena of freedom; 7. The moral ecology of markets; 8. Implications.

UQ

https://www.gordon.edu/ace/pdf/F&ESpr07SYMP.pdf