(no subject)

[madscience.livejournal.com]

So, whattya say, America? Think we can hit 40 straight years of neocons in the White House?

Comments

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Are UHC plans neoconservative as well?

[madscience.livejournal.com]

Are they insurance?

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Yes, government-administered insurance with mandatory participation.

[farchivist.livejournal.com]

His answer will be "Of course that's neo-con!"

[madscience.livejournal.com]

And I'll be right.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

So everyone's a neo-con country and the U.S. is just catching up. Or you're a very silly person.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

The US isn't "catching up" to other countries with regard to health care. It's charging full speed in the opposite direction.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I feel that I'm failing to understand where you're coming from. What's your beef?

[madscience.livejournal.com]

The private health insurance industry is the reason health care was so expensive in the first place. Instead of destroying it or undermining it with a public non-profit competitor, we enshrined it in law and made participation mandatory... the worst thing we could have possibly done, even worse than doing nothing.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

America wasn't ready to join the rest of the world because UHC is a terrible tyranny we couldn't bear. Or something. Even the Democrats couldn't back it. I'll agree with you that it's not at a good end point but something had to be done to plug the huge coverage holes.

I'll agree the free market is no place to administer a service that should be treated as a utility rather than a commodity.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

The Democrats didn't back UHC it because their billionaire puppeteers didn't want them to. The billionaires couldn't get an insurance mandate passed when the Reps were sponsoring it. So they changed the script a little, and stupid Dem voters with the memory of a goldfish swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

So, all insurance programs are neocon, including those that include no direct premiums? Or should we limit the neocon label to those plans (universal or not) that use private companies issuing coverage?

If the latter, I'll agree with that.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

I'd grudgingly agree to the latter as well. Public insurance would only eliminate half the problem (the corporate greed.) The other half is that insurance coverage is essentially price fixing, and price fixing creates all kinds of perverse economic incentives. Instead of charging a price determined by the market, health care providers raise prices to the maximum that insurance will pay. A far better solution would be a market-based health care system in which insurance is completely illegal, with direct subsidies to the poor for a basic standard of care.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Instead of charging a price determined by the market, health care providers raise prices to the maximum that insurance will pay.

While true, that's the beauty of UHC. A single payer can dictate what that maximum might be, as witnessed by the stunning number of countries with such systems. A multitude of payers proves too balkanized to have any say in provider excess to be effective.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

That still comes with all the problems usually associated with price ceilings.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Clearly if it's a thing he doesn't like, it must be neocon.