[unishark]

> - Healthcare for 40% of Americans? Socialized. (Medicare, Medicaid, VA). Medicare is socialized medicine.

> Americans pay less for food than anyone else and more for medicine than anyone else.

Is your point then that food is cheap because it is socialized at a 100% rate as you want healthcare to be? Or that your references to socialism are all red herrings?

Poor people can get free healthcare the same ways they get free food, Govt programs and charities. Food banks are private charities, by the way.

You are not defining coercion properly. It means force or threats of force.

Freeways are not a necessity of life, though we are certainly coerced into paying for them. At least they aren't as expensive as that Army you mentioned. Apparently you define all government spending as socialism, making the only other possible form of "govt" anarchy itself?

[arcticbull]

> Is your point then that food is cheap because it is socialized at a 100% rate as you want healthcare to be? Or that your references to socialism are all red herrings?

My point is food is cheap because the government intervenes, it's not a free market as you make it out to be, and yes food is provided to those in need. However, there aren't many in need in no small part because food is already the cheapest in the world in the US. That's not an exaggeration [3].

If medicine were the cheapest in the world in the US then nobody would be calling for its socialization. The current system is an abject failure. The food market, while I disagree with it, would likely be defined as a success.

I'm saying that in other countries with socialized medicine costs are controlled far better. Medicare controls costs far better than the private sector. Canada's system costs half as much, covers everyone and is ranked better along basically ever major axis. Life expectancy is declining in the US. Healthcare in the US is among the worst in the OECD and far more expensive. [4]

I'm saying that it's not as big a leap as you make it out to be, and that there's lots of precedent, domestically and abroad.

> You are not defining coercion properly. It means force or threats of force.

Coercion (/koʊˈɜːrʒən, -ʃən/) is the practice of forcing another party to act in an involuntary manner by use of threats or force. Threats or force. Pay up or get out and die is a threat, IMO, levvied by the system.

But even if you choose not to take that definition - it remains true (the only thing I've been arguing) that health care is not a voluntary contractual agreement but one taken out of necessity on an uneven playing field. This makes healthcare not a free market under most circumstances.

> Apparently you define all government spending as socialism, making the only other possible form of "govt" anarchy itself?

"In the theoretical works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and subsequent Marxist writers, socialization (or the socialization of production) is the process of transforming the act of producing and distributing goods and services from a solitary to a social relationship and collective endeavor." [1]

Socialization in a primarily capitalist economy is defined as taking a for-profit institution and transforming it into an institution collectively funded and carried out for the public benefit. If the government owns and operates a service for the public benefit it is a socialized service. It is socialism - well, democratic socialism/social democracy. It is not incompatible with freedom, or democracy, or private property rights.

Yes, these are all socialized services. Explicitly yes for Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE. [2]

The alternative to socialized services are privately owned and operated businesses. Not anarchy, necessarily, but libertarianism.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialization_(Marxism)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialized_medicine

[3] https://www.ibtimes.com/us-spends-less-food-any-other-countr...

[4] http://www.oecd.org/health/health-systems/health-at-a-glance...

[unishark]

So food is cheap because the govt intervenes, ignoring the giant private market, and healthcare is expensive because of the private market, ignoring the massive govt intervention. How convenient.

"Threatening to not perform a service for someone" is not coercion, and does not invalidate a free market. A market is a place where scarce products can be exchanged between buyers and sellers who meet at an agreed upon price. The ability to refuse service is a prerequisite for having a market and the idea of private property itself, not some kind of unexpected flaw. The fact that something is scarce may well be problematic for some who cannot afford to outbid others who can afford it, but no system eliminates scarcity. Ask Venezuelans, who I am sure you were dying to talk about, what happens when you try to overcome scarcity with price fixing and free money. You simply achieve shortages.

In the 1980s the US did not have a 40 percent socialized system. The fraction of people on medicare was far less. Yet it was not the most expensive system in the world then. The US system is definitely failing, but it isn't the 300-year old market system that is causing it.

[arcticbull]

> So food is cheap because the govt intervenes, ignoring the giant private market, and healthcare is expensive because of the private market, ignoring the massive govt intervention. How convenient.

The only thing convenient is you not addressing my point :) The government intervention is a desparate attempt at not letting people die of disease and pestilence literally outside a point of care. You're asking for a dystopian hellscape. And that's what much of the last 300 years was with respect to medical care.

> In the 1980s the US did not have a 40 percent socialized system. The fraction of people on medicare was far less. Yet it was not the most expensive system in the world then. The US system is definitely failing, but it isn't the 300-year old market system that is causing it.

Yes it is.

Canada had a similar system until the 1970s, and it was bad. Then it switched over and things got better. America remained on the private system and it just got worse and worse.

Venezuela is totally and utterly irrelevant to this conversation. There are so many functioning systems with socialized medicine (all of Europe, especially the Scandinavians, Canada, Taiwan, etc, etc), Venezuela is an outlier and not even worth discussing. It's a failed state.

Whether you call it coercion or a power differential (you will die, the insurer or provider won't) this precludes a voluntary meeting of the minds necessary in a free market. Period.

[unishark]

> Yes it is.

No it isn't. Speaking of dodging the point. The US didn't remain in the private system, it half-socialized it. And you must know Canada's system has been increasing in cost like everyone else's.

And speaking of magic single-payer economics for the good of all, what's up with that "socialized" army you mentioned? Most expensive in the world also. I expect the very same wanton mishandling of other people's money when it comes to the eventual govt takeover of healthcare. Hell they are already doing it as that 40 percent govt part is outpacing world spending all its own.

Venezuela is just a difference of degree. The same effect is seen in everyone's lack of R&D spending outside the US.

The way a market works is people find ways to serve people at a price they can afford. When you always force others to pay for the cadillac service for them, no one bothers to find cheap ways to provide healthcare.

[arcticbull]

> The way a market works is people find ways to serve people at a price they can afford. When you always force others to pay for the cadillac service for them, no one bothers to find cheap ways to provide healthcare.

How can you be so twisted up about this? Americas system is the expensive one, everyone else's is cheap, and controlling costs better. Medicare may not be doing a perfect job but again it's controlling costs better than the private sector. What you are saying is strictly and objectively false.

Healthcare is optimized and improved in single-payer states, because there's still budgets.

You're defending the worst system out there from a cost perspective, and not top 20 in outcomes. And you're doing so by saying the system other countries are successfully using to control costs would fail to control costs, and using this to defend American's failure to control costs? You're telling me Canada is doing a bad job of controlling costs when it literally costs half as much per capita? Because their rate of cost growth is in line with their peers while America's is way, way beyond?

Your mental gymnastics are giving me a headache.

> Venezuela is just a difference of degree. The same effect is seen in everyone's lack of R&D spending outside the US.

And that? Also false. Venezuela is a difference of degree? What on earth are you talking about.

R&D spending? Guess which healthcare companies spend the most on R&D? It's not the American ones. It's all the European ones. #1 is Switzerland's Roche. #4 is Switzerland's Novartis. #6 is France's Sanofi. #9 is the UK's AstraZeneca. #10 is the UK's GlaxoSmithKlein. [1] This is yet another failed talking point.

Guess which country developed the first COVID vaccine? Germany. BioNTech's vaccine was paid for by Germany's government. Pfizer took $0 of US money and is productionizing a Turkish immigrant in Germany's German government funded research work.

You're just not right about this one, time to move on lol.

[1] https://www.fiercebiotech.com/special-report/top-10-pharma-r...

[unishark]

> R&D spending? Guess which healthcare companies spend the most on R&D? It's not the American ones. It's all the European ones. #1 is Switzerland's Roche. #4 is Switzerland's Novartis. #6 is France's Sanofi. #9 is the UK's AstraZeneca. #10 is the UK's GlaxoSmithKlein. [1] This is yet another failed talking point.

Roche has over 8000 employees in the US. https://www.roche.com/careers/our-locations/americas/usa.htm

A handful of giant international companies who obviously make a big fraction of their money in the US market (selling at higher prices due to the lack of price fixing) do not provide a useful metric. Try overall stats, such as here: https://efpia.eu/publications/data-center/the-pharma-industr...

And that'd just pharmaceuticals. The US has far greater dominance over other areas of biotech.

But you're right, I do need to move on. This immature flaming behavior is why I avoid toxic places like reddit.

[unishark]

> The alternative to socialized services are privately owned and operated businesses. Not anarchy, necessarily, but libertarianism.

Privatizing these would mean anarchism as there's no longer a monopoly on force.

>- The freeways? Socialized.

>- The schools? Socialized.

>- The police? Socialized.

>- The fire stations? Socialized.

>- The army? Socialized.

>- The post office? Socialized.

[arcticbull]

Ah yes who can forget the Armed Postal Forces and the Teachers Brigade. The Fire Fighters Battalion really whipped the enemy in Iraq. It's strictly not true that privatizing these would risk losing a monopoly on force.

It's not anarchy to pay the fire department to put out your fire. It's libertarianism. Just like paying your doctor to splint your leg.

Even if I agreed with you, whether it risks losing the monopoly on force or not doesn't make it any less a socialized service.

This might be a fun read for you: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...