[burntsushi]

> Give me a proposal that stops poor people from dying of treatable diseases (or at least gives the appearance of legitimately attempting to, as is the current state of things) while preserving market forces, and I'll change my mind.

No such proposal exists. Any proposal that does requires a third party to intervene as either an angel to donate whatever resources are needed or as an agent enforcing policy that one group of people must provide services to another group of people regardless of means.

Both of the aforementioned scenarios do not exist within the realm of market forces because market forces cannot make guarantees.

People will always die because they don't have the resources to fix what ails them. We can only hope to lower the amount of resources to get treatment, and "market forces" are absolutely a legitimate solution to that.

But if you're stuck on "stop people from dying from preventable diseases" or "appearing to do so", then you've implicitly ruled out market forces completely.

[mikeash]

"But if you're stuck on "stop people from dying from preventable diseases" or "appearing to do so", then you've implicitly ruled out market forces completely."

We are in agreement. My point is that society is stuck on this (note that I have made no value judgment in these comments myself) and until and unless that changes, market forces are implicitly ruled out.

[beagle3]

Actually, the Israeli system does sort-of stop people from dying yet still lets market forces do some magic. It is single payer (gov) through taxes, every person chooses their HMO. The HMOs get paid per member (so they compete for the members) and they are also allowed to offer extra services to their members (which they also compete on). And finally - and I think this is also crucial - the government has a special fund for expensive life saving treatments that the HMOs tap into when needed - so they do not have an incentive to avoid those treatments.