justinb138

Standard Oil? Damn them for selling petroleum products cheaper than everyone else! Must have been horrible having to pay lower prices for oil. Government has given us companies like Halliburton and Monsanto (whose lobbying budget for 2008 was 8 million dollars). Companies no longer need worry about monopolies - if they want to get ahead they just buy a few congressman. GM (30+ billion in tax payer dollars), AIG (80+ billion), should I go on?

If you find unbridled capitalism somewhere please let me know. It's certainly not here.

I'm sure none of them actually examined the proposals themselves and determined using their own conclusions that the Obama plan was a bad idea. I mean, all conservatives are incapable of critical thought right?

My point was that government meddling in our economy has done it no good. While the way I worded my response was poor, it was no less baseless than the statement I responded too.

What purely capitalistic countries exist?

Nor, if you squint and actually ponder, is it mine. Actually, after squinting and pondering, it certainly seems like that is your point. Can you clarify what your point is?

Well, our "mixed" economy hasn't been outperforming either.

No plan will reduce the cost unless it addresses the fact that we are a nation full of people spending what we perceive to be other people's money on our health care. Well said. Think so? Because by that metric, we are also spending "other people's money" on defense, police, firefighting, public schools, air traffic control, building roads and filling-in potholes. Damn Commies that we are. The problem with "other people's money" is that there's little to no incentive to not waste it. The fact that government does it doesn't make the entire nation doing it with health care any better. Surely someone as educated as yourself can see that.

Possible, if your bios supports booting from an external drive. Using anything but an eSata interface is going to make it very, very slow though.

No plan will reduce the cost unless it addresses the fact that we are a nation full of people spending what we perceive to be other people's money on our health care.

You EVER been to a hospital?

The argument isn't that the public option will be bad, the argument is that it will make the already overstressed system worse than it is. Regarding the long waits, the system in MA pretty much confirms this. http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-06-03-waittimes_N.htm And what if it's not competitive? What's going to stop the government from lowering their prices far lower than that of the competition, effectively putting them out of business. What's going to stop them from throwing a few hundred billion borrowed dollars into it? How do you define doing better? Lower perceived cost? Lower actual cost? In reality I think the plan would work for some people, but I don't think it's going do to a thing to limit the skyrocketing cost increases. Why? 1. It does nothing to address the issues of why care is expensive to begin with - it just changes where the money is directly coming from. 2. There's no tort reform at all, it does nothing to address the prevalence of "defensive medicine". 3. It provides no incentive for people to control their own costs. To be fair, insurance doesn't do this either, but there are ways to address that too. What do I think we'd end up with? Basically an expanded version of medicare, along with all of the problems associated with it.

The reason no one likes discussing anything with you is that you're more interested in arguing with your distorted perception of their argument rather than actually listening to what it is they have to say. Then, you follow that with a myriad of standard responses. 1. Taxes are good, tax cuts are bad! More taxes! 2. I'd rather spend money on anything than that war you wanted! 3. You have no compassion! The USA has no compassion! 4. It's Bush's fault, Bush is evil! Here's where the problem lies: 1. The issue at hand tends not to have to do anything with Bush, the war, cutting taxes, etc. 2. When the tax cut issue was brought up in another thread, you chose to ignore the points that were made about the failure to decrease spending and it's relation to the fiscal situation of the government. 3. You keep accusing people of things they've never said. I'm not in favor of the wars, and I think we should end them. I'm assuming you do this because you cannot come up with a reasonable response to the topic at hand and pointing fingers is your way of dealing with that. 4. You have a fucked up definition of compassion. I think voluntarily helping people is a good thing, both people benefit. You seem to think that helping one person at the expense of another is a noble thing. There is no such thing as forced charity,

well, $5000 for a 10 minute procedure was a bit overpriced. Few other cosmetic surgeries are so easy/fast to perform. The upfront hardware/licensing costs are considerable, but market pressure pushed. That said, the cheapest LASIK providers were often those who were still using the first generation equipment, and one would do better to shop elsewhere. Thank you for confirming what I wrote. Now, why don't market forces affect other standard medical procedures?

I prefer representatives that actually have values, rather than the ones that align their values with whatever it is they think will keep them in office, or those which they find politically convenient, no matter how 'radical' you consider them to be. It's sad that the principals of limited government, fiscal responsibility, and non-interventionism are now considered "radical".

How can the government be a "competitor" in a system that it regulates? A key part of a being a competitor is the possibility of failure. Will they scrap the public option if it runs out of money or just continue borrowing to fund it? When has the government ended a program of this nature instead of just continuing to pump additional taxes and borrowed money into it? Never? Insurance companies must price their products based on their costs - they must be self-sufficient. Is the "public option" self-sufficient, or is it going to be supported by funds from other sources (taxes, etc..)? Suppose they've added wording to the bills that make the above conditions true. Three years down the road, if the rise of healthcare costs doesn't slow down and the program can no longer be self-sufficient, what's stopping the government from changing the rules? How can any insurance company truly compete with an entity that: 1. Controls/Regulates it and a very large share of it's market. 2. Has essentially an unlimited supply of money.

If capitalism is so bad for health care, why does laser eye surgery cost continue to drop, despite the fact that costs for things covered by medicare and insurance continue to rise?

remove guns and of course there would be much less of a problem... So you don't want to prevent murder, just make the tools used in it's commission a little less convenient?

You mean like I-90 east of Springfield in MA (aka the Mass Pike)? An interstate highway isn't a public place?

more a simple matter of... 'if they didn't have a gun they would be much less of a problem.' Possibly. Remove them and there wouldn't be a problem.

Hmm... there's a key word.

Agreed. Political motives can be effective, but their success is measured by the appearance of their actions rather than the results. i.e. maintaining the appearance of doing something rather than actually doing it, whereas the success of the profit motive is determined by the result (making a profit) rather than the appearance of making a profit (excepting cases of extreme fraud, Enron, etc..). And while profit can be overrated in maintaining efficiency, healthy competition tends to make efficiency a necessity.

I'm trying to understand how he could remain taped to the flag pole for six hours without police involvement if he hadn't volunteered to do it.

I'm basing my theory on the difference in incentives between the two entities. Insurance companies have a vested interest in looking out for their profits (without them they'd cease to exist), I'm still struggling to find the incentive for the government to look out for taxpayer dollars (other than political reasons). I'll dig around later and see if I can find any numbers.

How do losses due to waste, fraud, and abuse compare between medicare and private insurance? I may be way off, but I'm betting that losses due to these things either come close, or exceed the savings in administration costs. It'd be interesting to see a comparison, but I haven't been able to find any recent statistics online.