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Sanya12364 Posts
On November 14 2009 01:13 Caller wrote:There is a reason that I have not really posted in this thread. I am very passionate about this field and love to argue, and have posted in similar threads in the past. Yet I have given up simply because people tend to ignore reason and instead go simply after the flame, leading me to conclude that you couldn't really give a flying fuck about whatever, you just want to use straw man and ad hominem attacks to justify whatever point you're trying to make. I have already addressed the roots of the healthcare crisis here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=102184¤tpage=2#35And here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=102184¤tpage=3#59And my arguments have remained unrefuted and even unaddressed. This leads me to conclude that my above position, that you're just a bunch of trolls, is valid. It's really surprising how people tend to ignore basic principles of supply and demand and instead blame everything on abstract elements of human morality rather than what the math tells us.
Yes!!! NO Insurance!! What a brilliant idea. OMG.
A student of microeconomics in the field of health insurance would recognize that there are multiple factors that make the insurance a horrible model for delivery.
- moral hazard
- asymmetrical information
- non-uniform risk vs. uniform pricing
What health insurance reform has always been is about how to patch up the insurance system so that it doesn't come crashing down. But what if the insurance system fell apart?? The health care industry would adapt to function without. We would just be moving away from an insurance and risk model of delivering health care. Health care would thrive without a parasitic insurance agencies trying to manage this risk and that risk.
The government has been trying to patch up the health insurance industry for decades. We got some "fix" in the 70's and 80's. Individual states patched up holes in the 80's and 90's. They tried to get another fix in the 90's under Clinton, but yet insurance is still too expensive.
I mean just stop!!
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On November 14 2009 02:57 MMAspec wrote:
Somewhere in this thread, theres Aegraen.
who/what?
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Sanya12364 Posts
On November 14 2009 00:55 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +Fame, trust, brand-value, and connections are all forms of human capital (as opposed to technological capital). Education and training likewise are forms of human capital. Human easily explains the income disparity in all economies. In short, income is not a function of labour, but of productivity. I hesitate to say productivity to society, since much, if not most, of the production demanded by the free consumer is wasteful, and the consequence of mindless fads induced by advertising and social manipulation. I hasten to say that modern government suffers from the same shortcomings.
I call it human capital because like you said productivity might be a misnomer.
A lot of the "inefficiencies" are actually non-tangible values like wanting the latest fashion. It isn't that the object of desire is truly useful but rather that it has status and recognition value (intangible). Usually this status and recognition value is imbued on these objects through advertising. The entire advertising industry is a business of creating intangible goods - imbuing brands and goods with badge and status values. A lot of people associate productivity with the production of tangible goods. Clearly applying that idea to industries like advertising would be result in an oxymoron.
Advertising isn't really inefficient. If humans weren't occupied with intangible goods, we wouldn't be as happy with what we have, and the whole world would be far more efficient in despoiling all the natural resources on the planet.
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On November 14 2009 01:54 Caller wrote:
TLDR version:
Patent system is bad because it prevents competition in healthcare from reducing costs.
Welcome to my line of work, actually.
The patent system is a requirement for companies to have any financial incentive to continue research and development, especially with regard to modern medicine. The most lucrative business right now for medical drugs is protein therapeutics, the most famous being erythropoietin (EPO. Yes, that EPO that is often used by cyclists.) It is now a hundred-million-dollar product (albeit a declining one because of health issues), and Amgen got really lucky with this one.
However, RND for protein biotherapeutics is extremely costly. It takes millions of dollars to theorize, craft, and then test a candidate, along with time and labour (top-end science labour costs a LOT, as does the legal/bureaucratic people you need for FDA testing etc.), with no guarantees your drug is even attractive enough to get people willing to run themselves into your clinical trial buzzsaw.
All for, depending on which market report you read, like a 1/1000 chance of the drug actually, you know, hitting the market. And most of these drugs don't actually rake in THAT much money.
< Edit >
This is incidentally actually why larger drug companies buy smaller ones. The cost of buying a small company with a promising candidate is smaller than the cost of researching a candidate from scratch, in the hopes of reaching a similar level of promise. Most of these promising drugs don't pan out, but it's still cheaper. And you'll notice most of these "assimilations" go for millions upon millions of dollars. The timing at which you buy a small, promising idea is up for grabs, obviously, as the further along with development process the drug is, the more expensive it becomes, so large companies try to buy companies earlier on in the process (when there's a higher chance of failure) to keep it less expensive... but obviously you're going to need to hit on at least one, and then if you do hit on one, you're going to need that hit to recuperate the costs of however many times you whiffed, as well as provide the incentive to go through the whiffing process again for the next drug.
For a smaller company, that's the business model you're most likely shooting for, because the drug you're researching isn't very likely to make it. So you want to get it as far as you can and then sell the idea, so you get 1) better facilities for research 2) better financial backing for research 3) and if it doesn't pan out, you already got paid.
< / Edit >
The sheer amount of costs invested into bringing these products to the market is why there's further product protection on top of patents, called market exclusivity. EPO was developed around 1986, so you'd think the patent would have expired 3 years ago, and it did, but Amgen received the 14 year market exclusivity in around 1999, so they've still got a stranglehold on the market until 2013. Which is a shame because it means the Europeans have access to safer, more effective, and cheaper EPO than the USA, but that's part of the reason why Congress has been arguing over dealing with biogenerics, which would imply cutting down the market exclusivity duration (Europe already passed a biogenerics act a few years ago, so the costs of their drugs actually went down even more. GG). We'll see what happens; whether the big-money lobbyists win or whether common good wins.
What I'm getting at, though, is that for healthcare, the patent system has actually been deemed insufficient for recuperating company costs and providing them enough market possession to give incentive for developing new drugs. The problem is more that market exclusivity seems to be inordinately long on top of the patents. By the way biogenerics isn't as simple as the duration; a major part of government concern is that you can never manufacture the same drug. Changing factories, changing one ingredient results in a wildly different drug with unpredictable side-effects, and that's another one of the big hang-ups for introducing generics and lowering overall drug costs.
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The funny thing about this 'free market anti-insurance' position is that it neglects all of the government regulations and subsidies required to break our dependence on insurance and still maintain the allusion of competition. After all, insurance was a child of the free market in the first place - a way to ease the harsh nature of the market on individuals, especially. The consumer does not buy into health insurance to cover the costs of their regular checkups. They buy into it in order to protect themselves if ever something truly grave does happen, which would normally cause them to go under if they had to pay for their medical costs themselves at that point in time. The medical professionals like this as well, for a plethora of reasons. How are you going to fight that kind of support without heavy government regulation and investment?
I mean, I can see why proponents of the free market would fight against insurance. Health insurance is a largely social idea in the first place, only often controlled by a private corporation rather than the government. The idea is that the healthy part of the population at any given time will end up paying for the unlucky portion who gets sick. Of course, due to the profit motive involved, private corporations do their best to subvert that social contract. This leaves us with the situation the US is currently in - one where tons of money is being thrown around, but nothing is getting accomplished.
Let's be reasonable here - all of human relations cannot be relegated into business agreements. Health care is one of those such relations. I mean, do you really consider a good doctor one who is largely motivated by providing a service for profit? America is so in love with this idea of a House-like doctor that can deal with his profession without looking 'weak' in the process. A self-absorbed misanthrope who is out for a diagnosis and nothing else. The difference is that real-life doctors are never that 'good' at getting things right. While it does make for an entertaining TV show, it's a disturbing trend back in reality, where many doctors are more worried about their own correct diagnosis than they are about their patients' health (I speak from personal experience here).
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On November 13 2009 06:39 Piretes wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2009 02:02 TanGeng wrote:
Such pretensions of entitlement to other's fruits of labour is even more unbecoming than a spoiled brat that consumes his own wealth.
It is the attitude of spoiled brats that consumes other people's wealth. Yep, so the buisness elite with their so-called 'jobs' keeps earning exorbiant amounts, while the average working-class wage stagnates. Average blue-collar income has fallen far behind white-collar earnings, CEOs makes thousands of times more money than hard-working employees. Income balance is totally skewered in the U.S. People with normal jobs, working their asses of every day, can only just get by. But should one accident happen, they are fucked. Losing your job + some illness that requires drugs (fucking jacked up prices to pay executives) can bankrupt a family. Don't tell me the working class is going to suffer from a better, fairer health-care system. The rich and ultra-rich will. Spoiled brats as they are, thinking they are better because they earn more. Consuming the wealth created by the common worker, loading the consumer with debt, and ruining the american economy in the process. Scum of the earth.
There seems to be a lot of misconception by non-US citizens about what goes on in the US as far as healthcare. I believe part of that is due to the propaganda campaign put on by our leftists. Just to clear things up, poor people are covered via medicaid. Old people are covered through medicare. Everyone with health insurance through work has 30% of their plan paid for by the government.
Universal coverage through the government is silly in my opinion, there is no reason taxpayers should have to pay for my doctors visits as I'm able to pay for them myself. There is no reason I should pay for Donald Trump's heart medication or for Paris Hilton's crabs through my tax dollars. Right now a doctors visit costs me $20. Why? You'd pay more than that for someone to cut your lawn. Government subsidies and really bad policies are driving our costs up, but the same old propaganda is at work...government makes a problem, blames it on capitalism, and prescribes more government as the solution. And the rubes fall for it every time, and then wonder why things don't "Get better".
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Sanya12364 Posts
On November 14 2009 04:08 QibingZero wrote:
The funny thing about this 'free market anti-insurance' position is that it neglects all of the government regulations and subsidies required to break our dependence on insurance and still maintain the allusion of competition. After all, insurance was a child of the free market in the first place - a way to ease the harsh nature of the market on individuals, especially. The consumer does not buy into health insurance to cover the costs of their regular checkups. They buy into it in order to protect themselves if ever something truly grave does happen, which would normally cause them to go under if they had to pay for their medical costs themselves at that point in time. The medical professionals like this as well, for a plethora of reasons. How are you going to fight that kind of support without heavy government regulation and investment?
Insurance as creature of the free market? WTF? Health insurance came about during WWII as a way to get around government imposed wage controls. Before WWII, US barely ever had any health insurance at all. Then after that as a give away to the insurance companies, congress gave them a tax-exempt status for employer provided plans.
The government prop up of health insurance has been going on for 60 years.
On November 14 2009 04:08 QibingZero wrote:
I mean, I can see why proponents of the free market would fight against insurance. Health insurance is a largely social idea in the first place, only often controlled by a private corporation rather than the government. The idea is that the healthy part of the population at any given time will end up paying for the unlucky portion who gets sick. Of course, due to the profit motive involved, private corporations do their best to subvert that social contract. This leaves us with the situation the US is currently in - one where tons of money is being thrown around, but nothing is getting accomplished.
The legal mandates for uniform group insurance rates is a form of socialism. Risk distribution through insurance is not. Look at life insurance - no problems there.
On November 14 2009 04:08 QibingZero wrote:
Let's be reasonable here - all of human relations cannot be relegated into business agreements. Health care is one of those such relations. I mean, do you really consider a good doctor one who is largely motivated by providing a service for profit? America is so in love with this idea of a House-like doctor that can deal with his profession without looking 'weak' in the process. A self-absorbed misanthrope who is out for a diagnosis and nothing else. The difference is that real-life doctors are never that 'good' at getting things right. While it does make for an entertaining TV show, it's a disturbing trend back in reality, where many doctors are more worried about their own correct diagnosis than they are about their patients' health (I speak from personal experience here).
NO, you are making empty groundless assertions at your own convenience.
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On November 14 2009 04:08 QibingZero wrote:
The funny thing about this 'free market anti-insurance' position is that it neglects all of the government regulations and subsidies required to break our dependence on insurance and still maintain the allusion of competition. After all, insurance was a child of the free market in the first place - a way to ease the harsh nature of the market on individuals, especially. The consumer does not buy into health insurance to cover the costs of their regular checkups. They buy into it in order to protect themselves if ever something truly grave does happen, which would normally cause them to go under if they had to pay for their medical costs themselves at that point in time. The medical professionals like this as well, for a plethora of reasons. How are you going to fight that kind of support without heavy government regulation and investment?
I mean, I can see why proponents of the free market would fight against insurance. Health insurance is a largely social idea in the first place, only often controlled by a private corporation rather than the government. The idea is that the healthy part of the population at any given time will end up paying for the unlucky portion who gets sick. Of course, due to the profit motive involved, private corporations do their best to subvert that social contract. This leaves us with the situation the US is currently in - one where tons of money is being thrown around, but nothing is getting accomplished.
Let's be reasonable here - all of human relations cannot be relegated into business agreements. Health care is one of those such relations. I mean, do you really consider a good doctor one who is largely motivated by providing a service for profit? America is so in love with this idea of a House-like doctor that can deal with his profession without looking 'weak' in the process. A self-absorbed misanthrope who is out for a diagnosis and nothing else. The difference is that real-life doctors are never that 'good' at getting things right. While it does make for an entertaining TV show, it's a disturbing trend back in reality, where many doctors are more worried about their own correct diagnosis than they are about their patients' health (I speak from personal experience here).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
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On November 14 2009 03:11 Undisputed- wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2009 02:57 MMAspec wrote:
Somewhere in this thread, theres Aegraen. who/what?
Lol, untill you said 20 or so pages ago that you opposed the very idea of an army I could've sworn you were Aegraen coming back to troll us all.
Aegraen was, like you, a right-wing nut-jub, who had a very hard time backing his ridicoulus claims with fact. With the mindset of 'GOVT BAD, FRE MARKET GOOD' he put on his logic armor of awesome I trolled us all to the stone age.
You're not as bad though. At least you respond to most people who oppose your arguments. IIRC you went up against Syntax Lost, props for that, Aegraen didn't have the balls to even quote the post.
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On November 14 2009 05:42 TanGeng wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2009 04:08 QibingZero wrote:
The funny thing about this 'free market anti-insurance' position is that it neglects all of the government regulations and subsidies required to break our dependence on insurance and still maintain the allusion of competition. After all, insurance was a child of the free market in the first place - a way to ease the harsh nature of the market on individuals, especially. The consumer does not buy into health insurance to cover the costs of their regular checkups. They buy into it in order to protect themselves if ever something truly grave does happen, which would normally cause them to go under if they had to pay for their medical costs themselves at that point in time. The medical professionals like this as well, for a plethora of reasons. How are you going to fight that kind of support without heavy government regulation and investment?
Insurance as creature of the free market? WTF? Health insurance came about during WWII as a way to get around government imposed wage controls. Before WWII, US barely ever had any health insurance at all. Then after that as a give away to the insurance companies, congress gave them a tax-exempt status for employer provided plans. The government prop up of health insurance has been going on for 60 years. Show nested quote +On November 14 2009 04:08 QibingZero wrote:
I mean, I can see why proponents of the free market would fight against insurance. Health insurance is a largely social idea in the first place, only often controlled by a private corporation rather than the government. The idea is that the healthy part of the population at any given time will end up paying for the unlucky portion who gets sick. Of course, due to the profit motive involved, private corporations do their best to subvert that social contract. This leaves us with the situation the US is currently in - one where tons of money is being thrown around, but nothing is getting accomplished.
The legal mandates for uniform group insurance rates is a form of socialism. Risk distribution through insurance is not. Look at life insurance - no problems there. Show nested quote +On November 14 2009 04:08 QibingZero wrote:
Let's be reasonable here - all of human relations cannot be relegated into business agreements. Health care is one of those such relations. I mean, do you really consider a good doctor one who is largely motivated by providing a service for profit? America is so in love with this idea of a House-like doctor that can deal with his profession without looking 'weak' in the process. A self-absorbed misanthrope who is out for a diagnosis and nothing else. The difference is that real-life doctors are never that 'good' at getting things right. While it does make for an entertaining TV show, it's a disturbing trend back in reality, where many doctors are more worried about their own correct diagnosis than they are about their patients' health (I speak from personal experience here). NO, you are making empty groundless assertions at your own convenience.
I was under the impression that Nixon was the one who started ok'd the health insurance for profit industry.
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On November 14 2009 05:11 Undisputed- wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2009 06:39 Piretes wrote:On November 13 2009 02:02 TanGeng wrote:
Such pretensions of entitlement to other's fruits of labour is even more unbecoming than a spoiled brat that consumes his own wealth.
It is the attitude of spoiled brats that consumes other people's wealth. Yep, so the buisness elite with their so-called 'jobs' keeps earning exorbiant amounts, while the average working-class wage stagnates. Average blue-collar income has fallen far behind white-collar earnings, CEOs makes thousands of times more money than hard-working employees. Income balance is totally skewered in the U.S. People with normal jobs, working their asses of every day, can only just get by. But should one accident happen, they are fucked. Losing your job + some illness that requires drugs (fucking jacked up prices to pay executives) can bankrupt a family. Don't tell me the working class is going to suffer from a better, fairer health-care system. The rich and ultra-rich will. Spoiled brats as they are, thinking they are better because they earn more. Consuming the wealth created by the common worker, loading the consumer with debt, and ruining the american economy in the process. Scum of the earth. There seems to be a lot of misconception by non-US citizens about what goes on in the US as far as healthcare. I believe part of that is due to the propaganda campaign put on by our leftists. Just to clear things up, poor people are covered via medicaid. Old people are covered through medicare. Everyone with health insurance through work has 30% of their plan paid for by the government. Universal coverage through the government is silly in my opinion, there is no reason taxpayers should have to pay for my doctors visits as I'm able to pay for them myself. There is no reason I should pay for Donald Trump's heart medication or for Paris Hilton's crabs through my tax dollars. Right now a doctors visit costs me $20. Why? You'd pay more than that for someone to cut your lawn. Government subsidies and really bad policies are driving our costs up, but the same old propaganda is at work...government makes a problem, blames it on capitalism, and prescribes more government as the solution. And the rubes fall for it every time, and then wonder why things don't "Get better".
Just FYI medicare and medicaid dont cover everything. I have a grandmother who has been in and out of the hospital for about 2 years and medicare does not cover things that an insurance company would cover (like say extended visits in 24 hr care facilities) Medicare covered something like the first 20 days or something. After that you were SOL and had to pay for it yourself. Something like 800$ a day roughly. The costs were insane.
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On November 14 2009 09:59 Hans-Titan wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2009 03:11 Undisputed- wrote:On November 14 2009 02:57 MMAspec wrote:
Somewhere in this thread, theres Aegraen. who/what? Lol, untill you said 20 or so pages ago that you opposed the very idea of an army I could've sworn you were Aegraen coming back to troll us all. Aegraen was, like you, a right-wing nut-jub, who had a very hard time backing his ridicoulus claims with fact. With the mindset of 'GOVT BAD, FRE MARKET GOOD' he put on his logic armor of awesome I trolled us all to the stone age. You're not as bad though. At least you respond to most people who oppose your arguments. IIRC you went up against Syntax Lost, props for that, Aegraen didn't have the balls to even quote the post.
agorist is who opposed the idea of an army.
Seeing as this is a computer game forum most of the people posting here are probably on the younger end of the spectrum so most likely on the left. Just trying to get it right! 
"If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."
I'm a heartless bastard 
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Mystlord
United States10264 Posts
On November 14 2009 05:11 Undisputed- wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2009 06:39 Piretes wrote:On November 13 2009 02:02 TanGeng wrote:
Such pretensions of entitlement to other's fruits of labour is even more unbecoming than a spoiled brat that consumes his own wealth.
It is the attitude of spoiled brats that consumes other people's wealth. Yep, so the buisness elite with their so-called 'jobs' keeps earning exorbiant amounts, while the average working-class wage stagnates. Average blue-collar income has fallen far behind white-collar earnings, CEOs makes thousands of times more money than hard-working employees. Income balance is totally skewered in the U.S. People with normal jobs, working their asses of every day, can only just get by. But should one accident happen, they are fucked. Losing your job + some illness that requires drugs (fucking jacked up prices to pay executives) can bankrupt a family. Don't tell me the working class is going to suffer from a better, fairer health-care system. The rich and ultra-rich will. Spoiled brats as they are, thinking they are better because they earn more. Consuming the wealth created by the common worker, loading the consumer with debt, and ruining the american economy in the process. Scum of the earth. There seems to be a lot of misconception by non-US citizens about what goes on in the US as far as healthcare. I believe part of that is due to the propaganda campaign put on by our leftists. Just to clear things up, poor people are covered via medicaid. Old people are covered through medicare. Everyone with health insurance through work has 30% of their plan paid for by the government. Universal coverage through the government is silly in my opinion, there is no reason taxpayers should have to pay for my doctors visits as I'm able to pay for them myself. There is no reason I should pay for Donald Trump's heart medication or for Paris Hilton's crabs through my tax dollars. Right now a doctors visit costs me $20. Why? You'd pay more than that for someone to cut your lawn. Government subsidies and really bad policies are driving our costs up, but the same old propaganda is at work...government makes a problem, blames it on capitalism, and prescribes more government as the solution. And the rubes fall for it every time, and then wonder why things don't "Get better".
They're not fully covered, just covered enough. Yet you know, the life expectancy of people above 65 is pretty damn good. I wonder why...
I partially agree. Universal coverage through the government as the health care system stands RIGHT NOW is silly. There's no way we can cover everyone if health care ends up at 30% of our GDP. At that point the government would literally go bankrupt. Let's fix costs before getting universal health care.
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Sanya12364 Posts
On November 14 2009 10:05 Sadist wrote:
I was under the impression that Nixon was the one who started ok'd the health insurance for profit industry.
That's HMOs. Here's a brief bit about its early history: So at first, health insurance was like most ordinary insurance.
Ordinary Insurance:
Suffer a loss, pay for service, get reimbursed. Customers could go to any physician, report the bill to insurance agency and get reimbursed. Insurance agencies don't come into contact with doctors.
Early years
Insurance has been around since Great Depression thanks to FDR's wage controls, health insurance was a way around it. Imagine that? Businesses trying to pay their workers more than legally allowed!! (FDR started some really crazy shit in this country!!!!)
Given tax exempt status sometime around 1941. Really took off after the war. Dominated by Blue Shield (non-profit)
After 1950, popularity is huge. For-profit companies segment the market into risk tranches. Non-profits get stuck with the high risk ones. They raise prices and start discriminating base on risk, too. Costs spiral up and it becomes unaffordable for the poor, old, or really sick.
Between 1950 and 1970 the government takes over these really expensive segments of the insurance market through national government programs. Government mandates hospitals have to accept the uninsured and poor, and most charity hospitals close shortly thereafter.
1964 Medicare, Medicaid
1970 Healthcare Crisis (lol)
1973 - Nixon introduces managed care which start as non-profit but transition to for-profit.
Managed Care
Get serviced by a network of doctors. HMOs deal with the doctors directly. The patient sees very little of the transaction cost. HMOs also get to give doctors guidelines and can haggle with doctors or what is proper and what isn't proper.
1995
Managed Care becomes dominant in the health care industry. HMOs' ability to cost control for lower premiums by directly interacting with the doctor is the driving competitive advantage.
Doctors really start to hate the system.
2005+
Almost all managed care. Maybe(!?) there's still some still operating on the ordinary insurance model. The cash for service model is becoming very popular especially among the uninsured. Cash-for-service model is not very popular with the insurance companies and the AMA. They are lobbying to make it illegal all states.
------ today -------
Personally, I think that a contributor to the problem is that certain kinds of health care are extravagances. In the past, people faced the moral dilemma of bankrupting their family and mortgaging their children's future for these extravagances. Sometimes, people chose to go without because that offered the rest of their family the best prospects for the future. Today, people just don't want to face up to these serious moral dilemmas.
The other problem is that people with pre-existing conditions are being rejected. Sometimes this is because the individual was forced to change jobs. This is a problem of health insurance being tied to job compensation. Sometimes this is because the individual chose to take on the risk of getting severely sick, lost out on that bet, but wants to get bailed out by an insurance company. This is a problem of dishonest people.
But it's not that health insurance doesn't ever make sense. For example, workers at remote work sites, where health care demand might not be very predictable, might have a prepaid policy with a doctor so that they can attract a doctor with the prospects of a more predictable income. Likewise medical insurance for accidents and subsequent emergency service would make sense to smooth over risks for the individual.
about Syntax_Lost. He's that guy that thread bombs with giant walls of text, right?? Yeah, I would argue with him, but his posts are too long and he quotes tons of aggregate statistics. I just don't see how to argue about health care systems at the national level.
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Sanya12364 Posts
yes I know there's dishonest insurance companies, too!
Please don't take my head off.
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On November 14 2009 12:18 TanGeng wrote:
about Syntax_Lost. He's that guy that thread bombs with giant walls of text, right?? Yeah, I would argue with him, but his posts are too long and he quotes tons of aggregate statistics. I just don't see how to argue about health care systems at the national level.
Because they're devastating to your position? Because when you make the comparisons, the differences are huge and not easy to hand-wave away?
The sad fact is that people like yourself, Undisputed, Caller and probably a couple others in this thread, is that you never--not even once--provide any credible evidence to support your positions. I cite peer-reviewed studies and the best you can do perform research at the acadamy of pulling stuff out of your arse. Hell, earlier in this thread you claimed:
Once upon a time TanGeng wrote:
What are these indicators and metrics that you speak of???
Is it controlled for external factors like racial distribution, pre-mature birth rates, dietary quality or indulgences, and lifestyle factors, etc. I've never seen any metrics that have shown US health care to be worse when adjusted for external factors. In most cases, it's shown to be better.
I think this quote really illustrates your dishonesty, especially after I show that if you account for pre-term births, the differences between infant mortality between the US and Canada is even worse. Later on, you claim:
Later on TanGeng wrote:
There are plenty of reasons why US health care system sucks a lot.
In another post:
if I only had a choice between a pure socialistic health care system and the health care system of the US as it is going right now, I would choose a socialist one. It would be a tough decision, but the future of the US health care system looks really really bleak.
Which is completely at odds with your claim above. First the healthcare in the US is better, now it sucks a lot with a bleak future? Which is it? Oh right, since the statistics started showing just how ridiculous your earlier claims actually are, you've had to change you argument.
What? You think I wouldn't notice?
There are plenty of reasons why US health care system sucks a lot. Not being socialist or regulated isn't one of them. As far as a "real" debate with tons of cited articles and the such, it takes too much time and I'm lazy.
Which is another way of saying that you have no evidence and we should give as much credence to your statements as the claim that there's an floating, invisible, incorporeal, heatless fire-breathing dragon in my garage. I find this funny because earlier in this thread you claimed that you took a microeconomics course on healthcare, and in spite of this, you still can't cite a reference to save your life.
In essense, your arguments can be simplified to the incessant bleating that government is bad and aggregate statistics are bad. The former claim has absolutely no evidence to support that its a universal truth. The latter is just utterly laughable considering the magnitude of the differences involved and that you don't have a single shred of evidence to actually support your position. It also belies your weaselly attitude that you would rather ignore statistics which paint your argument as particularly wrong.
And that you suck at mathematics.
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Syntax, have you even taken a look at the bill? This thread is supposed to be about the bill, not reform in the larger picture.
Edit: Yes, I know everybody else is sidetracking the thread, but I was just curious.
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On November 14 2009 16:58 Syntax Lost wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2009 12:18 TanGeng wrote:
about Syntax_Lost. He's that guy that thread bombs with giant walls of text, right?? Yeah, I would argue with him, but his posts are too long and he quotes tons of aggregate statistics. I just don't see how to argue about health care systems at the national level. Because they're devastating to your position? Because when you make the comparisons, the differences are huge and not easy to hand-wave away? The sad fact is that people like yourself, Undisputed, Caller and probably a couple others in this thread, is that you never--not even once--provide any credible evidence to support your positions. I cite peer-reviewed studies and the best you can do perform research at the acadamy of pulling stuff out of your arse. Hell, earlier in this thread you claimed: Show nested quote +Once upon a time TanGeng wrote:
What are these indicators and metrics that you speak of???
Is it controlled for external factors like racial distribution, pre-mature birth rates, dietary quality or indulgences, and lifestyle factors, etc. I've never seen any metrics that have shown US health care to be worse when adjusted for external factors. In most cases, it's shown to be better.
I think this quote really illustrates your dishonesty, especially after I show that if you account for pre-term births, the differences between infant mortality between the US and Canada is even worse. Later on, you claim: Show nested quote +Later on TanGeng wrote:
There are plenty of reasons why US health care system sucks a lot.
In another post:
if I only had a choice between a pure socialistic health care system and the health care system of the US as it is going right now, I would choose a socialist one. It would be a tough decision, but the future of the US health care system looks really really bleak.
Which is completely at odds with your claim above. First the healthcare in the US is better, now it sucks a lot with a bleak future? Which is it? Oh right, since the statistics started showing just how ridiculous your earlier claims actually are, you've had to change you argument. What? You think I wouldn't notice? Show nested quote +There are plenty of reasons why US health care system sucks a lot. Not being socialist or regulated isn't one of them. As far as a "real" debate with tons of cited articles and the such, it takes too much time and I'm lazy. Which is another way of saying that you have no evidence and we should give as much credence to your statements as the claim that there's an floating, invisible, incorporeal, heatless fire-breathing dragon in my garage. I find this funny because earlier in this thread you claimed that you took a microeconomics course on healthcare, and in spite of this, you still can't cite a reference to save your life. In essense, your arguments can be simplified to the incessant bleating that government is bad and aggregate statistics are bad. The former claim has absolutely no evidence to support that its a universal truth. The latter is just utterly laughable considering the magnitude of the differences involved and that you don't have a single shred of evidence to actually support your position. It also belies your weaselly attitude that you would rather ignore statistics which paint your argument as particularly wrong. And that you suck at mathematics.
the reason i didn't need sources to back up my argument of market failure is because you can find that reasoning in high school/college level economics textbooks. More importantly, there wasn't any need for me to consult sources to refute points that were derived from even more basic generalizations than I have in my posts. Fight fire with fire, as I say. But if you really want sources, for instance, where I say how the number of medical students has stayed constant against increasing demand for healthcare, then
"Educational Programs in US Medical Schools, 2004-2005 (Barbara Barzansky; Sylvia I. Etzel) (JAMA. 2005;294:1068-1074.") (cannot provide link due to copyright) (actually see if it works: http://jama.ama-assn.org.proxy.uchicago.edu/cgi/reprint/294/9/1068)
which states that:
The number of full-time faculty members increased from 90 016 in 1994-
1995 to 119 025 in 2004-2005 (a 32% increase) while the number of medical students
remained constant at about 67 000
which suggests (although does not prove) that there is some artificial control of labor supply in the US medical field.
I really didn't intend to embroil myself in the debate-all I really wanted to do was stop some of the trolling that was going on. However, I find that your complete dismissal of all my arguments and lumping them together with the pile of die-hard Republicans is a bit of a straw man argument, which is pretty upsetting considering you were the one that initially used that fallacy on me in the first place  . If you actually took the time to read my posts, you would see that my conclusions are far more different than theirs.
My argument is that insurance is a whole is flawed because of asymmetrical information. This has been shown through this rather famous paper: http://www.econ.ox.ac.uk/members/christopher.bowdler/akerlof.pdf which states that insurance as a market is flawed because of this information unbalance.
My ideal solution, which is to have no insurance as a viable alternative, would remove this informational asymmetry, because let's think:
If you hide a condition from an insurance company, you may get denied or sued, but you may benefit by having insurance to pay for your condition.
If you hide a condition from your doctor, you don't really benefit at all-in fact, it may and will hurt you in the long run.
It's not like I'm saying government is bad. I'm saying that the government's solution isn't the best one and it will have problems, old and new.
edit: oh and in regards to the other issue I brought up, of the mass acquisition of smaller companies: this consulting firm published a report here: www.nerac.com/download.php?id=175
which (although the source is certainly questionable) states pretty succinctly the acquisition trend.
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Sanya12364 Posts
On November 14 2009 16:58 Syntax Lost wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2009 12:18 TanGeng wrote:
about Syntax_Lost. He's that guy that thread bombs with giant walls of text, right?? Yeah, I would argue with him, but his posts are too long and he quotes tons of aggregate statistics. I just don't see how to argue about health care systems at the national level. Because they're devastating to your position? Because when you make the comparisons, the differences are huge and not easy to hand-wave away? The sad fact is that people like yourself, Undisputed, Caller and probably a couple others in this thread, is that you never--not even once--provide any credible evidence to support your positions. I cite peer-reviewed studies and the best you can do perform research at the acadamy of pulling stuff out of your arse. Hell, earlier in this thread you claimed:
... seriously let's look on a smaller scale, how about Massachusetts or Washington - maybe even Boston or Seattle. See, if we can control for income disparity.
Then we can see exactly what is happening. which is by the way that the rich are really healthy and the poor are really not. The ones under public coverage like Medicaid are in truly putrid shape.
The way you lump the wide social, economic, and geographical variations in the US hides a lot of the features that you want to ignore - like the worst performing areas are those already administered by the national government. It prevents you from reaching a conclusion of any detail.
It's far more important to figure out what is actually telling data to look at than to provide some analysis of statistics. These peer reviewed articles are nice, but if they aren't addressing the issue at the right granularity, then their conclusions aren't that helpful. It'd be entirely a waste of time. If you want to argue about what is actually the correct granularity for examining the health care system, I think we are having that argument in sort of an indirect way.
BTW, if we aren't going to agree on the granularity, then let's not have an argument. You can declare your empty victory like you already have and I will declare mine.
On November 14 2009 16:58 Syntax Lost wrote:Show nested quote +Once upon a time TanGeng wrote:
What are these indicators and metrics that you speak of???
Is it controlled for external factors like racial distribution, pre-mature birth rates, dietary quality or indulgences, and lifestyle factors, etc. I've never seen any metrics that have shown US health care to be worse when adjusted for external factors. In most cases, it's shown to be better.
I think this quote really illustrates your dishonesty, especially after I show that if you account for pre-term births, the differences between infant mortality between the US and Canada is even worse. Later on, you claim:
This is your turf. You should have plenty of data. My experience with looking at this was 5 years ago reading retrospective case studies of comparable populations in Massachusetts, in UK, and in France. It's all very dated data. I'll have to dig all that back up, but I don't particularly care to right now. But most importantly, this is a retrospective view of the health care system.
As for the metrics I would prefer to emphasize, that would be customer satisfaction, available choices, accessibility, waiting times, etc on city/county level. Again, I don't deal with national statistics because I think that they are BS. This a retrospective view of the health care system.
As for aggregate quantified results, the state of Washington is probably on par or better with all of Canada with a lot less time wasted and a lot more happy customers. Canada's been having an upswing in infant mortality recently, but I'm not going to make any judgements that Canada's health system is somehow declining.
BTW Canada does not use as much high fructose as in the US in their foods... How do you get away with claiming that stuff!? It's not ubiquitous like it is in the US.
On November 14 2009 16:58 Syntax Lost wrote:Show nested quote +Later on TanGeng wrote:
There are plenty of reasons why US health care system sucks a lot.
In another post:
if I only had a choice between a pure socialistic health care system and the health care system of the US as it is going right now, I would choose a socialist one. It would be a tough decision, but the future of the US health care system looks really really bleak.
Right notice, this is a predictive view of the healthcare system.
First of all, it sucks a lot compared to what could be. It's also unsustainable and deteriorating - especially the pharmaceutical business, so the pharmaceutical lobby is going to get ever more desperate about how to get the public to pay for their products. We will probably pass some kind of health insurance "reform" in the next few years again to prop up a failing insurance mode - just like they have done for the last 60 years.
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It's not ubiquitous like it is in the US. Yes it is.
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EPT
