I’ve already shown that if everyone pays the same amount and doctors all get paid the same amount, then you won’t have an incentive for the best service possible. I’ve also shown how this impedes advancement because all doctors have no reason to emulate the best service possible. I’ve shown that if you want to create a pay scale for doctors without consumers being able to do it by paying higher prices for the best doctors, that you need some kind of review committee to do the job. I’ve shown how that’s a waste of resources. I’ve basically shown that everyone paying the same amount for health care will necessarily diminish the total amount of health care available and that it also sacrifices future advancements. I’ve shown how the profit motive is responsible for getting new machines and testing devices into hospitals. I’ve shown that without the profit motive, a private company has no reason to improve those machines.
Her response? “I still have doubts.” What else is left?
You could tell her that since prices will not fluctuate like they would on a free market that demand for medical services will greatly surpass supply. The government will then have to ration care which will lead to people dying on wait lists or refuse patient care outright.
There’s always the sort of rhetorical question of: where in the constitution does the government explicitly have the right and the power to create health insurance exchanges that are publicly funded?
But then you get the commerce clause argument. And probably the “general welfare” argument.
I think what jdcoffey said about the supply and demand problem is probably the most powerful.
I would do that, but I already know the response from that, which is that poor people already have rationed care because they can’t afford it and so they’ll die while being refused for care outright.
And yes, there’s nothing I love more than a good constitution fight, but I think we’re just looking at the issue from a ethical/economic persepctive.
You know, it reminds me of the article I read sometime yesterday about Berkeley and how such a small minority wanted more economic disparity as long all incomes rose. Everyone else wanted to sacrifice that in order to have incomes that were more tightly distributed. How do you respond to someone who believes that?
Those poor people will have their lot scarcely improved by a system in which the quality and quantity of healthcare is reduced. They may have more access to cheap preventative treatment, but they’ll still be waitlisted or refused for expensive treatments when their lives are truly hanging in the balance. It’s a system in which the people who could afford healthcare are greatly hurt and the poor people still receive crappy and infrequent care.
From an ethical standpoint you could ask her what is right about stealing from one man to pay for another’s services or to virtually enslave doctors and nurses by controlling their wages?
Yes. Don’t forget that we can perm their arguments. Democrats can have their silly healthcare plan that won’t work for various economic reasons, as long as it doesn’t infringe on the rest of our rights.
Really good stuff guys, thanks for the help. If you have any more ideas I’d be glad to hear them. I’m going to try to talk about this with her again this afternoon, so the more arguments the merrier.
Note that she’s not really holding down a certain position, I’m just trying to introduce her into economics, but she’s kind of adamant about this one. I think I’ve at least put a few holes into her ideas though.
“Those poor people will have their lot scarcely improved by a system in which the quality and quantity of healthcare is reduced. They may have more access to cheap preventative treatment, but they’ll still be waitlisted or refused for expensive treatments when their lives are truly hanging in the balance. It’s a system in which the people who could afford healthcare are greatly hurt and the poor people still receive crappy and infrequent care.”
From this argument, she’ll probably say that it depends on the amount of money that you put into the system. How do you respond to that?
The simple fact is that a socialized system lacks the incentives for quality or efficient care. It also removes the incentives for innovation and improvement. The more money we put into it, the more resources we waste. If we allowed people to make their own choices and spend their wealth as they saw fit, we would be much wealthier overall and healthcare would be far cheaper. The free market has the solution to the politicians’ problem.
It seems that a big hangup for your friend is her concern for the poor. I would acknowledge that as an admirable value that many people hold and go on to say that the poor will be fewer in number and better taken care of by a wealther, capitalistic society than a poor, socialistic society that has been sapped of its drive and spirit. In a society that hasn’t been thoroughly robbed and controlled by the state, employment opportunity would be greater, private charities would be more numerous and properous and everything would be far more affordable (especially healthcare sans regulations and licensing!).
Was ‘discussing’ the health care issue with my parents. Both are liberal democrats. My dad, who is an attorney who does work for the local hospital, I would have figured would have some idea of issues/causes of the problem of health care.
Yet he seems to think that without the goverment ‘doing something’, the poor would not get health care (uh, what about charity/church hospitals? no response).
Trying to explain that ‘health insurance’ needs to be used like other insurance (auto, home) and NOT used to pay for routine matters (one doesn’t use auto insurance to pay for oil changes) seems to go right over his head and he got pissy about that (that’s my dad, he gets pissy when you challenge him. How does he handle this sort of thing in a court?). Would have figured he would understand this. Guess not.
Then he brings up the matter that the CEO of some health insurance company got paid a huge amount of money (it was so large, I figured he was misquoting). My feeling was that was irrelavent to the matter.
Frankly, I’ve been watching some of the videos on health care issues at reason.tv and the ones at the Campaign of Liberty’s sister site on health freedom, and they really set down the issues and the real solutions to health care reform.