How can I back up a free market, anti socialized healthcare argument with cold hard facts?
My friend argues that a basic needs governmental healthcare system, when implemented properly, could be beneficial to the economy as a result of supposedly reduced healthcare costs and a decrease in overall healthcare spending.
Does anyone have some insight into this discussion or any ideas where I can find some relevant reading material on the subject? Thanks so much!
So wait, how does stealing my property and spending it for me make the economy better? I fail to see your friends point.
Let me try to explain his point again. He thinks that giving very basic healthcare to everyone that that would somehow lower the cost compared to the premiums that people (specifically the uninsured) are paying under the current system.
You know, I really don’t understand how this makes sense to him either.
Also, how can I explain how the healthcare costs have become so enormous?
To me I don’t care if it improves the economy. It’s fundementally wrong to tax without giving individuals the right to opt out.
But to be clear, I don’t believe even a basic level of government provided health care would be economically helpful. There’s simply no way you can make a government program that will not eventually become corrupted by the individuals who run those programs. Like any business, government employed individuals want to make more money. More funding means more money, so the individuals who run government programs will do anything they can to grow the program with more taxes.
To put it simply, you cannot make a government program that will not grow to an unreasonable size.
We are not living in a free market so to blame heath care costs on free-markets would be without evidence. Higher costs come in large part due to unnecessary regulation, and not capitalism as your friend may think.
Can you cite some examples of governmental agencies or programs where this is the case?
Or would that be all of them…
There’s no more efficient system to produce stuff than free enterprise. That said, as I understand it, the USA already has all kinds of fiscal and regulatory structures that shape health care service in a certain way that may not be the more efficient one. If that’s the case, a socialized system that would replace that one could very well be better, and when you consider that health care costs in the USA make up 15% of the GDP it sounds like a different system can only be an improvement. 
What you have to keep in mind is there’s no free market in health care, so the free enterprise can’t work that well. I’m sure you can easily run into plenty of article here at mises or lewrockwell.com on this. Obama promised his system would be opt-out, so if he would get rid of all health services laws as well so that private providers could compete fairly, that would be a major improvement. Let capitalism and socialism have their fight. 
Something to notice however is that the American system is still the best of the world. Plenty of people here in Europe, including politiceans all the time, travel to the USA for medical reasons, for more delicate problems. You may want to compile him some horror stories from Canada, UK, etc… EDIT: the problem here is not just quality, but most important expediency. Whatever money you may have to pay there, we have to pay in long wait times here.
That doesn’t make much sense to me. The service will be subsidized at the point of consumption, so consumers will have little incentive to shop around, and the true costs of providing it will not come through. Moreover, it has no competition! It may be that the government allows competitors, but what it will frequently do is undercut them by subsidizing its product immensely. It can do this because it has a (theoretically) unlimited income to draw on. So with no competition, and no cost-accounting on the part of consumers, I fail to see how it’d be cheaper in any real sense.
-Jon
When mainstream sources talk about expensive health care, the key issue is never mentioned. State licensing requirements for doctors restrict the supply, driving up prices.
If the State licensing requirement for doctors were eliminated, this would fix most/all the problems.
Some people are concerned about “What about the risk of people getting shoddy care?” First, that already happens now. Second, insurance companies could be allowed to license and train their own doctors, rather than relying on State licensing.
It is hard to tell if Obama is genuine in this respect, or pandering to both sides. He is so charismatic that he can get away with supporting Socialist AND Free Market causes, all in one sentence.
Basic health care is not even something that’s insurable. So it could be theoretically cheaper just to allocate a certain amount of tax dollars to provide everybody with “basic health care.” Of course, this is the same argument advanced for just about every social program out there, and here’s what will happen: all the incentives are for the definition of “basic health care” to expand to cover grandma’s chemo, birth control pills, rehab programs, etc.; guaranteed health care subsidizes bad lifestyle choices, thus increasing the demand for “basic health care,” driving up costs even further, and on and on. Government action only creates distortions.
What about co-pays and the like? That is insurance money helping to pay for regular doctor visits. Correct me if I’m wrong?
Insurance for basic health care is like purchasing a warranty for your car’s oil change. It makes no financial sense.
I used to call that fascism. In Obamanese ‘fascism’ probably means " the philosophy of hope in working together "
More Obamanese: Change - Socialism
Hope - The NEW New Deal
Yes We Can - " Workers of the U.S. unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains(money, food, industry, and jobs for that matter)"
But is it false that the copay system is money that comes from insurance agencies for regular doctor visits???
Doctors and insurance companies collude, forcing everyone to buy insurance.
If you’re uninsured, then the doctor’s visit costs $200, fully paid by the patient.
If you have insurance, then there’s a “negotiated plan discount” of $100, the plan pays $80, and the copay is $20.
Essentially, this forces everyone to have insurance. There’s no free market in health insurance, so the problem can’t be corrected by the market.
It’s even worse for hosptialization. If you’re uninsured, the “full retail price” for a hospitalization is something like 5x-10x what an insurance company pays. The justification is that uninsured patients tend to be deadbeats, so the price for uninsureds must be high. This is the same reasoning that leads to 20% interest rates on credit cards.
Thanks. That makes a lot of sense.
There are already many incentives for insurances, and the likelihood of managing a global cartel seems unlikely.
What I’ve heard in I think 60 Minutes awhile ago is that Medicaid (?) forced hospitals to only charge them a percentage of their public prices, so they started inflating their “public” prices while making “discounts” for every insurance company.