Want Public Plan Health Care? Obama Played yo Ass.

guerilla said:
You make some of the most ridiculous posts on this entire forum.

Greed is just another word for rational self-interest or rational egoism. Note, RATIONAL.

What you continually propose, is IRRATIONALITY.

Christ.
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I call you ridiculous, you call me ridiculous, gee that wasn't predictable. What i propose is grey solution. Not a black and white one. The world you live in is black and white man. Not every problem can be solved by the free market and greed dipshit.

It's a simple point, that I don't expect someone like you to understand, because it's not black/white.
 


shady said:
You aren't supposed to have faith in the benevolence of a for profit entity. You're supposed to have faith that their greed will drive them to improve to get more customers and money.
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Except what drives insurance companies to get more customers and money is very different from what drives a company who's selling say, tvs, or baby food, or some other sort of "hard" product.

Really, an insurance business has a pretty unique business model from most and so most of the usual nuggets of wisdom that people offer which cite economic rules of efficiency or optimization or whatever often don't apply.

Insurance companies are basically selling options based on risk probabilities. And when I say options, I mean like a stock option. When an option writer writes an option contract and sells it he is counting on the price going above a certain point, below a certian point, or staying in a certain range, within a certain period of time. This seems pretty similar to what an insurance company is doing when they sell you a policy. They first make an assessment of your current "value"(the state of your health) and then assign a probability that your "value" will increase or decrease. If you're deemed a good investment they give you a policy at a price that's likely to yield profit for them. If your "value" jumps out of the range that they assessed for you, meaning you get injured or sick, then you collect on the option you purchased.

The insurance company is making an investment as much or more than they are actually providing a service or product.

Because insurance companies are making investments and not simply providing a service or product, I don't believe more competition alone will solve one of the major problems a lot of people have with the current system, which is a lack of access to insurance.

The reason I don't think competition will solve the problem is because competition will not fundamentally change the nature of the insurance business, which is really more of a(or at least as much of a) risk management business than a product/service providing business.
 
Oh, and I think TYT called this a couple of months ago. Was he correct?

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaGnHGtJNIw"]YouTube - How the "Bipartisan" Health Care Plan Will Screw You[/ame]
 
hellblazer said:
We've seen what happens when you put your life in Big Daddy's hands - Daddy's broke and he'll give you the cheapest medicine and send you on your way.
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vs. showing up at the emergency room and never paying, causing raised prices for those that do pay.

How about not having a bed for a pregnant woman to give birth in?
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I missed the part where the health care plan was going to cause more women to get pregnant.

In theory, the UK could double the amount it spends per person on health care and get double the amount of beds, etc. This would still leave them paying less than the USA.

Deliberate, explicit rationing of hospital beds – in the U.S.! - PNHP's Official Blog
 
WickedJoe said:
Greed is a great motivator and can spark lots of innovation, etc etc. But many Americans put too much blind faith in it, just like they put blind faith in market-idealism.
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Precisely. I will paypal anyone here $100 if they can enlighten we readers by citing a peer-reviewed scientific study that supports the following - and I want legit, quantitative data (numbers numbers) coupled with peer-verified qualitative (opinions) scientific research:

ASSUMPTIONS
1) Information asymmetries are a scientific fallacy and perfect information always exists any place outside of a textbook (1)

2) Rational choice theory is always at work (riigggght.....and brain research supports this?) (1)

3) Individuals (via their utility functions) and firms (via their profit functions) always are motivated by the desire to maximize monetary profit(1)

These are the 3 basic assumptions of Economics 101. Theory and practice are not one and the same. That's why you are making money with sites you've ranked with nofollow links even though the "theory" says you can't....

That said, don't hold your breath trying to explain this to L.U.D. sufferers (loyalty to unverified data....). Then again it's actually quite funny when you think about it...:2twocents:

Economics is a SOCIAL SCIENCE based on INDIVIDUAL PREFERENCES (it's called indifference curves (individuals) and profit/costs curves (firms) in theory) and not a NATURAL SCIENCE based on NATURAL LAW...one of these days people will figure this out and realize that one man's tea is another man's poison and there is no "right" or "wrong" from a scientific standpoint.....

(1) Sources:
Main
Theoretical Economics
Yale Economic Review: A Yale University Student Publication
Oxford Journals | Social Sciences | Oxford Economic Papers
Electronic Journals
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=931686
The Dana Foundation - New Neuroscience, Old Problems: : Legal Implications of Brain Science
 
LogicFlux said:
Except what drives insurance companies to get more customers and money is very different from what drives a company who's selling say, tvs, or baby food, or some other sort of "hard" product.

Really, an insurance business has a pretty unique business model from most and so most of the usual nuggets of wisdom that people offer which cite economic rules of efficiency or optimization or whatever often don't apply.

Insurance companies are basically selling options based on risk probabilities. And when I say options, I mean like a stock option. When an option writer writes an option contract and sells it he is counting on the price going above a certain point, below a certian point, or staying in a certain range, within a certain period of time. This seems pretty similar to what an insurance company is doing when they sell you a policy. They first make an assessment of your current "value"(the state of your health) and then assign a probability that your "value" will increase or decrease. If you're deemed a good investment they give you a policy at a price that's likely to yield profit for them. If your "value" jumps out of the range that they assessed for you, meaning you get injured or sick, then you collect on the option you purchased.

The insurance company is making an investment as much or more than they are actually providing a service or product.

Because insurance companies are making investments and not simply providing a service or product, I don't believe more competition alone will solve one of the major problems a lot of people have with the current system, which is a lack of access to insurance.

The reason I don't think competition will solve the problem is because competition will not fundamentally change the nature of the insurance business, which is really more of a(or at least as much of a) risk management business than a product/service providing business.
Click to expand...
Hmm.
You mean people wouldn't pay for prescription only care?
Or emergency-room only care?
Or only for doctors visits/chemo?
Or would people pay more for a company that contractually can't use rescissions?
What about one with especially good relations with a certain pharma manufacturer? Maybe it has especially cheap access to medication for a particular disease?

There's more to it than just numbers.
 
LogicFlux said:
Except what drives insurance companies to get more customers and money is very different from what drives a company who's selling say, tvs, or baby food, or some other sort of "hard" product.
Click to expand...
Right, but this is based on the presumption that insurance and pre-pay are the same things.

Expected expenses can't be insured against. You wouldn't insure a pyromaniac with fire insurance. You don't insure the gas you put in your car, or insure your tires against wear.

Insurance is where there is risk involved. You only need it for the unforeseen. It doesn't make sense to insure someone with cancer for cancer treatment. That's not insurance (risk pooling) but strictly pre-pay. And in an industry with escalating costs, it is nearly impossible to price long term contracts (hence why inflation is so damaging to entrepreneurial activity).

Your post was super lucid, but is based on this premise that insurance is a fixed variable in health care.

If there is competition in home insurance, and auto insurance, I don't understand why there can't be competition in medical insurance. That's for truly exceptional risks, not for expected claims for routine health care, or the predictable effects of age. Again, we wouldn't insure our car against the engine wearing down over time. But we would insure it against theft or collision.

The more likely the insured event is to happen, the higher the premiums must be.
 
guerilla said:
Name one that cannot.
Click to expand...
Healthcare.

Haha, and I know you'll say "whewl das because we don't have a trew free market, dah gov alwayz haz dere hands in dere messin it up".

And as I've told your ideological ass before you can't even tell me how to get us to a free market WITHOUT HAVING THE GOVERNMENT INTERFERE WITH IT EVEN MORE! Your solution to lots of things is to break up bigger companies to promote competition. Well, that's the government interfering with the free market again isn't it?

It's a trap people with your ideology are constantly falling into.

Now few more things whose BEST solution is not a free market:
- Schooling. Personally, I don't like being surrounded by idiots. Our public education is bad because we've treated it like shit and done it half-assed like we've done to everything socialized in this country.
- Innovation/Research. As i stated multiple times.. true discoveries are in grant funded laboratories. This might be hard for you to understand, but research on something that does not appear to be immediately profitable can often end up being incredibly profitable and can often lead to something a lot of us care about - knowing truths about the world.
Slow, persistent, relaxed research is a wonderful thing.
The only thing the market is better at in this department is making toys for us out of all the useful knowledge grant-funded universities have given us.
- THE INTERNET - The government made it and controls it. If this was controlled by a single company or two I think we'd all be fucked pretty quick. The FCC is even trying to officially make "Net Neutrality" a policy now.

There's lots more stuff.

Now, since you and many here are worshipers of the Free Market I'd love to know what limitations - if any - you'd like to give a Business/Corps in your imaginary Free Market world.

- Should employees have the right to form unions w/out getting fired?
- Should employees have the right to picket outside a company w/out getting beaten by thug squads hired by the company?
- Should companies be allowed to keep "Black Lists" of anyone they want and share them with each other thereby creating a list of people who will not be hired? This is a form of people-control they've used before to stop people from organizing or complaining about a company before.
- Should there be any kind of punishment (besides lower stocks) for companies who poison or kill people inside or outside of the country for a short-term or long-term profit?
- Should there be any kind of punishment (besides lower stocks) for companies who destroy huge amounts of land or sea with pollution?
- Should the FDA exist?
- Should monopolies be broken up by the government? That's a huge form of gov control right there.
- Should corporate espionage be legal?
- Should insider trading be allowed?
- Should market manipulation be allowed?
...


Gee ya, I guess I'm crazy for not buying into your grandiose vision of the Free Market and it as being a solution to everything.
 
WickedJoe said:
Healthcare.
Click to expand...
Why do you say it cannot be provided by the market?

WickedJoe said:
And as I've told your ideological ass before you can't even tell me how to get us to a free market WITHOUT HAVING THE GOVERNMENT INTERFERE WITH IT EVEN MORE!
Click to expand...
I don't think we've ever had this discussion before. But I have clearly laid out a simple exposition of how to decrease costs and increase coverage without intervention before. It is not rocket science.

Also, I am not interested in ideology. I am interested in reality. How we solve problems in a world of scarce resources. If communism worked, I would be a commie. If socialism worked, I would be a socialist. Unfortunately, they don't work, and there is a reason for that. They cannot perform rational economic calculation. Central planners are incapable of estimating and coordinating aggregate demand and supply. Economics is the study of incentives upon human action. The incentives for central planners, are divorced from profit and loss, and so, they cannot rationally allocate resources.

WickedJoe said:
Your solution to lots of things is to break up bigger companies to promote competition. Well, that's the government interfering with the free market again isn't it?
Click to expand...
This is a strawman (a logical fallacy). Again, I don't think we've debated before. I'd remember talking to someone as clueless about economics as you. I last owned you in the thread about gold, where you demonstrated no understanding of what money actually is, and what purpose it serves.

I will skip the rest of your post, as it is mostly just a bunch of rambling bullshit, and get back to the topic at hand.

Tell us why the market can't provide health care. What makes health care different than auto insurance. Or food. Or clothing. Or entertainment.
 
riddarhusetgal said:
Precisely. I will paypal anyone here $100 if they can enlighten we readers by citing a peer-reviewed scientific study that supports the following - and I want legit, quantitative data (numbers numbers) coupled with peer-verified qualitative (opinions) scientific research:

ASSUMPTIONS
1) Information asymmetries are a scientific fallacy and perfect information always exists any place outside of a textbook (1)

2) Rational choice theory is always at work (riigggght.....and brain research supports this?) (1)

3) Individuals (via their utility functions) and firms (via their profit functions) always are motivated by the desire to maximize monetary profit(1)

These are the 3 basic assumptions of Economics 101. Theory and practice are not one and the same. That's why you are making money with sites you've ranked with nofollow links even though the "theory" says you can't....

That said, don't hold your breath trying to explain this to L.U.D. sufferers (loyalty to unverified data....). Then again it's actually quite funny when you think about it...:2twocents:

Economics is a SOCIAL SCIENCE based on INDIVIDUAL PREFERENCES (it's called indifference curves (individuals) and profit/costs curves (firms) in theory) and not a NATURAL SCIENCE based on NATURAL LAW...one of these days people will figure this out and realize that one man's tea is another man's poison and there is no "right" or "wrong" from a scientific standpoint.....

(1) Sources:
Main
Theoretical Economics
Yale Economic Review: A Yale University Student Publication
Oxford Journals | Social Sciences | Oxford Economic Papers
Electronic Journals
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=931686
The Dana Foundation - New Neuroscience, Old Problems: : Legal Implications of Brain Science
Click to expand...


You sound a lot more like an insecure Business Professor who needs to hide behind complex terminology than a successful Business Owner.

We both know you don't have that $100 to send anyway. You're not kidding anyone.

Fail.
 
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WickedJoe said:
Healthcare.

Haha, and I know you'll say "whewl das because we don't have a trew free market, dah gov alwayz haz dere hands in dere messin it up".

And as I've told your ideological ass before you can't even tell me how to get us to a free market WITHOUT HAVING THE GOVERNMENT INTERFERE WITH IT EVEN MORE! Your solution to lots of things is to break up bigger companies to promote competition. Well, that's the government interfering with the free market again isn't it?

It's a trap people with your ideology are constantly falling into.

Now few more things whose BEST solution is not a free market:
- Schooling. Personally, I don't like being surrounded by idiots. Our public education is bad because we've treated it like shit and done it half-assed like we've done to everything socialized in this country.
- Innovation/Research. As i stated multiple times.. true discoveries are in grant funded laboratories. This might be hard for you to understand, but research on something that does not appear to be immediately profitable can often end up being incredibly profitable and can often lead to something a lot of us care about - knowing truths about the world.
Slow, persistent, relaxed research is a wonderful thing.
The only thing the market is better at in this department is making toys for us out of all the useful knowledge grant-funded universities have given us.
- THE INTERNET - The government made it and controls it. If this was controlled by a single company or two I think we'd all be fucked pretty quick. The FCC is even trying to officially make "Net Neutrality" a policy now.

There's lots more stuff.

Now, since you and many here are worshipers of the Free Market I'd love to know what limitations - if any - you'd like to give a Business/Corps in your imaginary Free Market world.

- Should employees have the right to form unions w/out getting fired?
- Should employees have the right to picket outside a company w/out getting beaten by thug squads hired by the company?
- Should companies be allowed to keep "Black Lists" of anyone they want and share them with each other thereby creating a list of people who will not be hired? This is a form of people-control they've used before to stop people from organizing or complaining about a company before.
- Should there be any kind of punishment (besides lower stocks) for companies who poison or kill people inside or outside of the country for a short-term or long-term profit?
- Should there be any kind of punishment (besides lower stocks) for companies who destroy huge amounts of land or sea with pollution?
- Should the FDA exist?
- Should monopolies be broken up by the government? That's a huge form of gov control right there.
- Should corporate espionage be legal?
- Should insider trading be allowed?
- Should market manipulation be allowed?
...


Gee ya, I guess I'm crazy for not buying into your grandiose vision of the Free Market and it as being a solution to everything.
Click to expand...


WickedJoe,

Two questions:

1) Are you overweight?
2) Do you smoke?

Just curious.
 
Ron Paul supporters vs Denis Kucinich supporters, round 1.

DING, DING

Alright let's have a good clean fight guys.
 
WickedJoe said:
Sure you are. And I guess I'm just glad the rest of the world is a bit more sane than you, including most Americans. But here you rule buddy, with that amazing post count.
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You've made some good points WickedJoe. Don't descend to name calling as much as I am being a hypocrite here, lol

There are a few folks who participate in these discussions who are actually open to learning and knowledge exchange if it's backed by reasonable logic, facts and not unbridled zealotry....

Lastly, anyone can teach - it doesn't take a high priced degree though it certainly helps (and hinders) in some cases....
 
Mastermind said:
WickedJoe,

Two questions:

1) Are you overweight?
2) Do you smoke?

Just curious.
Click to expand...

I'm average weight, never smoke, never even drink. I don't have unprotected sex. I've never been to the emergency room, etc.
I pay full taxes (even though i wish we'd use the funds better). I have truely not been sick in 10 yrs - no fucking joke. I could exercise more though.

It makes sense to me. For-profit companies will always do things to increase profitability that I wont agree with when heathcare insurance is concerned. Pretty simple.

Other countries are making it work. We could too. Oh well though.
 
WickedJoe said:
I'm average weight, never smoke, never even drink. I don't have unprotected sex. I've never been to the emergency room, etc.
I pay full taxes (even though i wish we'd use the funds better). I have truely not been sick in 10 yrs - no fucking joke. I could exercise more though.

It makes sense to me. For-profit companies will always do things to increase profitability that I wont agree with when heathcare insurance is concerned. Pretty simple.

Other countries are making it work. We could too. Oh well though.
Click to expand...

ok cool. i don't agree with your views at all but I can at least respect that. I think anyone has a right to do whatever they want but i find it OUTRAGEOUS that so many people who share your views are incredibly overweight and in line at the drive thru with a marlboro light in hand.
 
Mastermind said:
You sound a lot more like an insecure Business Professor who needs to hide behind complex terminology than a successful Business Owner.
Click to expand...

Since you've never been to business school you wouldn't know now would you? Why do people like you always walk around with a big ass chip on their shoulders?

If "big" words intimidate you, for God sake's pick up a book. Einstein failed high school physics. Andrew Carnegie was a grade school drop out. You're going to have a tough time in like spending so much time trying to "prove" you're just as good as those "other people".

And for the record it's "I", not "i" dear....
 
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