The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central This is the country I want

Sinij, I want to propose a test. You are a firm beliver in unviesral healthcare, to help those that dont make enough to help them. For a family of 6, our house hold clears roughly 36k a year after taxs. That averages out about 6k per family member. Since you dont have childeren, and dont need to worry about cost assoicated with childeren. I need you to send me 6k a year, this will cover all shots, dental, copays, out of pocket expenses for medicine, broken bones, check ups, bith control, otc drugs like asprin and tyleno.

Since you are such a firm beliver, dont wait on the taxes, show everyone you are willing to put your money where your heart is.

If you are starving, you only need to ask. PM me your address and I will help you out. I am sure I am not only one here who would be willing to help fellow KGBer in distress.

Now, if you are trying to draw some misguided parallel - it doesn't work this way. Me giving you money will not address healthcare crisis in this country, just like me filling a pothole on the street outside won't fix our crumbling infrastructure. Certain things could be done only via government because of massive scale of undertaking.

I can feed my family, and yes it is parallel. What you are wanting done on the natinal level is what I am asking you todo on the personal level. You wince from it and only want to be engaged with it if some one else runs it, but the moment you are put on the spot to reach into your own pocket and distrubt the funds as you see fit, you draw back.

There in is the difference from me and you. I dont wait for others to fix the problem, but put myself out there to help others. I can see where you are coming from, but to me for your argument to hold water is enact it at the lowest level and work your way up. A true grassroots change to the system.

Interesting analogy... sure you can learn some things, or at least make educated conjectures about the universe from astronomy. But we didnt learn enough to make much valuable use from astronomy alone. Do you have any idea how many rocket tests failed, when we were developing rocket technology for example? A LOT.

I mean, data gleaned from astronomy let us conjecture about things like force required to exit earths gravity well, and how objects in space move and could affect each other via gravity.

And hey, a small rocket flies straight up right? So why are all these large rockets crashing? Oh, a gyroscope? Why would we need one of those.....

In the case of rockets, a lot of accidents and trail and error were required to get things right. A lot of disciplines other than astronomy were required to make systematic use of new technologies based on, and/or involving astronomy.

Economically speaking, its kind of similar to what we are currently going through with the Fed and central fiscal planning.

Repeating these follies with our health system out of pure faith and ideological fervor is not something I care to see.

So your astronomy example was a good one.



Most socialist systems in the world fail miserably and provide nothing close to the value our horribly broken one does, in many and some cases most types of incidences. The amount of social or mostly social health systems that are even in the same ballpark is small. If you come down with a serious illness, and need advanced treatment and/or complicated surgery.... most people wouldnt volunteer to have it done in Greece or Venezuela. If they had any other option.

Sweden might be able to perform it, but you also might be waiting a few months longer than you would want.

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Anyhow, the gist of what you seem to be saying is that even though we dont understand how the health economic system works globally, or even locally in socialist systems... we should make large scale changes based on faith.

Since we cant model it, and therefore have no management criteria in the absence of an open market valuation system (and this gets even more complex, because our broken mixed pub/private system already distorts pricing very badly)... how on earth do you begin to implement even the day to day management of such a system in a rational way?

I dont like tinkering with important things out of faith and ideology.

Also, see Helemotos earlier link for references and explanation regarding the market distortions inflicted by govt on our current system. Its a good read, and does a good job explaining may of them.

Again, you are pushing "US is too different to compare to anything else" point. It isn't. Sure, US is big, but not to the point that we can't compare when we have so many examples. You know why US is about the only First World country that doesn't have socialized medicine? Because rest of the countries seen the writing on the wall and decided they can't afford to throw money away on inefficient systems.




This is demonstrably false. I provided WHO statistics showing exactly opposite, but since you tend to dismiss them, please prove that "most socialist [health care] systems fail". Pick any 2 fist world socialized medicine countries and find any 3 meaningful population metrics where they do worse than US.



This is interesting point, because if you are in position to chose a country to have a treatment, you are in a "well off" segment that US healthcare services well.

There is no denying that if you had a cancer and 1 mil to burn on treating it, your best bet is US. For most people who don't have a mil to burn they are better off in Greece or Venezuela. Why? Because "don't have a million" treatment in US sucks, and Venezuela and Greece does not.

This tells us nothing about overall level of healthcare, only that the very best and the most expensive hospitals happen to be located in the US. Unfortunately they are such a minority of all healthcare providers that their contribution gets drowned in the sea of not-so-great.

Erm, there were plenty of metrics they did worse by. We already had that discussion.

As for spending a million bucks, well you know well that you are playing around with this.

It works for lots of people, not just the wealthy... as reflected in some of the metrics I brought up in our last discussion regarding life expectancy in the face of serious illness.

The relative size of the US is only one aspect, but yes it is an important one as it is the target market (due to profitability). But there are so many other factors, including relative place in global economy and such forth. Its also important to understand where the other systems will be in 10 and 20 years, which is another aspect that bears looking at.

Most not all of the new medical tech comes from the US. So yes we pay more for it. As with all tech the first people to use it pay more till enough people are using it to make the cost come down, that's how a company makes money back on the cost of R&D. Its easy for other countries to copy the tech and make it cheaper. So to the rest of the world that benefits, your welcome.

This is wrong.