Obamacare unconstitutional Follow

No, I got the point. You just picked a stupid thing to illustrate it with since there were much better examples.

I started to address your (exaggerated) claims regarding the services elsewhere but... meh. I've asked our foreign members before if any of them wish their nation had the US medical system. Oddly enough for all those supposed overcrowded hospitals with patients dying in the streets and waiting years and years to see a specialist, I haven't gotten any sort of positive response.

Funny lack of knowledge is funnier in text.

Are you trying to make an argument for universal healthcare?

Nope. I'm arguing against systems which disconnect the person receiving the care from the payment for that care. Whether it's an insurance company paying on my behalf, which in turn charges my employer, who in turn charges me in the form of less pay for the same work, or whether it's in the form of the government taxing everyone for health care and then paying out of a huge bucket of money, you're still going to see the provider crank up the amount he charges simply because the person in front of him doesn't think he's paying for it, even though he actually is. Just through an indirect means.

Government funded "single payer" is even worse, but insurance is pretty bad by itself. My point is that our solution to the problems of rising health care costs should not be to strengthen the very factors which cause that rise in cost in the first place.

While I don't have an issue with pointing out the lack of accountability in terms of how the Pentagon spends its money, that guy seems to really have a specific hate-on for the military/defense industry. His whole diatribe about how much we spend on things compared to how much we think we do is something you could probably find about any subject, not just defense spending. So in the interest of addressing his concern rather than the single target he selective choose to pick on (and I've been poking around the latest budget tables), some interesting factoids:


In 1971, the US spent 7.3% of GDP on Defense
Between 1999 and 2001 we hit a low point for defense spending at 3.0% of GDP
In 2010, the US spent 4.7% of GDP on Defense.

So, unless you cherry pick your starting period at the tail end of the Clinton presidency, you can't at all say we're somehow spending an historically high amount of money on defense. And to be fair, since 1971 was the last year of the Viet Nam war and is a bit of an outlier, I'll add that for the entire time period between 1972 and 1992 the spending rate never dropped below 4.7%. Just to show that I'm not cherry picking numbers myself.


In the meantime, in 1971, spending on Social Security was 3.3% of GDP and with some minor fluxuations along the way has steadily increased since that time to 4.8%.

More dramatically, in 1971, spending on Medicare was 0.7% of GDP. Today it is 3.6%
Medicaid was 0.3% in 1971. Today it's at 1.9%


So collectively, "health care" has increased from 1% of GDP to 8.4% over a 40 year time period, while defense spending has decreased significantly. Yet, for some bizarre reason there are some people who keep wanting to make the argument that we spend too much on Defense and not enough on Health care. Argue for more spending or less if you want, but don't pretend like the spending levels are different than the really are. Looking at a number in a vacuum doesn't tell you anything at all. Is 800B on defense enough, too much, or not enough? No clue. But we can look at historical patterns and judge how much we're spending relative to what we used to and get a sense that way, can't we? And we can assess whether we're getting the same or similar bang for the buck as well, right?


I think we can say that our military today is at least as effective a relative fighting force as it was back in 1971 (most people would argue it's a hell of a lot more effective in fact). Yet we're spending less of our total economy on it, so isn't that "good"? The better question, for one not so focused on the military is whether or not our health care system today gives us as much bang for the buck as it did in 1971. There certainly have been medical improvements since then. No doubt about that at all. But is it 8 times better? Do we provide 8 times the care today?


I don't think so. Do you? Does anyone?

Is there really that much competition in the healthcare system though? While not a complete monopoly, I'd have to drive a couple hours to get to another hospital. I'm sure this would lower competition between providers and put a wrench in a good supply/demand system.

No, you only need to remove the profit from insurance providers, doctors and hospitals. Pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers need a profit margin to continue to develop new products. The others don't.

You should be smacking your head. You're obviously ignorant to how anything works as you've shown in your previous posts. Maybe you can knock some sense into it.

Awww, varus and gbaji have a new friend.

********* He would not have gotten the money the company spends on insurance in pay. Stop kidding yourself. The company would just keep the money. Job benefits are above and beyond wages, you are pretty childish if you think otherwise.

To be fair though, they measure dollars spent, and don't create a valuation for project-able force per dollar spent.

But yes, inefficiencies do exist.

Doctors don't need a profit motive?

Hospitals would still tend to need one so they have a reason to care about supply costs.

Insurance wouldn't if it is instead a subsidiary gov't program, but the implementation on that is tricky. If done correctly, as in covering outlier, expensive procedures as a societal risk mitigation tool (But with a cap EoLC), I'd actually agree with Gbaji on structuring the funding dynamics.

My major beef with the system is insurance isn't being used as insurance, but rather a blanket program. And if that's the case it's much better to have a public system. But if it were being used correctly, I could accept a private model, with only a few caveats.