| > 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. |
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.