Would We Accept "Single Payer" Groceries?

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To go against Orwell, I am not sure how inelastic food is. I mean, yes, the sum of all food is not elastic, but on the margin, we might buy more chips if they were cheaper. Healthcare is still generally inelastic though.

@Orwell:

I acknowledge your point, and it is valid; but I think it goes beyond what the article intends. It is simply an allegorical comparison meant to highlight the bare principals that all forms of collectivism attempt to ignore.

Also, @ruveyn is not a hypocrite for reaping the benefits of a program that he pays into, whether he agrees with it or not. He created the value, it is only his right to receive some value in compensation for the taxes he pays to support said program.

Well right, my point was that food is only inelastic taken as a whole; individual food items are probably very elastic because there are abundant substitutes, whereas in healthcare there is typically only one or at most a couple reasonable choices open to you.

@JWC: It still fails. I mean, there are places where we have observed "collectivism" working very well. A knee-jerk opposition to collective efforts is not enough; real analyses must be made to determine the viability of any proposed solution to our problems. This is not to say that single-payer is necessarily the optimal way of dealing with healthcare, but the article doesn't actually give any rational grounds for dismissing it. The oversimplified rhetorical BS and shoddy reasoning, moreso than the end conclusion, is what bothers me here.

This is true, but not to the extent that health care is a natural monopoly.

How do you know it's a knee jerk reaction as opposed to say a conclusion you come to after thorough observation and analysis?

@Orwell:

In all forms of collectivism there is always someone who gets screwed. For collectivism to work someone must pay more than their fair share to make up for those who cannot pay their part. The problem is systematic, if you look a collectivist system and think it is a good thing you are either ignoring the truth or not looking close enough.

Simplicity is not synonymous with incorrect . Your criticism of the article as "over-simplified" is nothing more than an attempt to side step the issue.

@Orwell wrote:

If not for government interference more choices would become available in healthcare.

Actually the same is true for laissez-faire capitalism. The issue is with your definition of "fair". It is based on different subjective value premises.

Right now we have crony capitalism where government is picking the winners and losers.

@Marshall:

By 'fair' I mean paying into a collectivist system more than is received. For example, if i were to move to Canada my taxes would increase by X amount. The only added benefit (for the purposes of this discussion) from that increase in taxes is universal healthcare. Currently, my healthcare costs are Y. If X > Y, then I am giving more value than I receive. In my case X is about 3 times as much as Y.

What kind of choices do you want, that would become available if not for government interference? You can already go to a chiropracter, acupuncturist, herbalist or naturopath for non-emergency medicine. Although they are mildly regulated for safety, they operate according to capitalistic principles.

Do you want emergency rooms to operate according to pure capitalistic principles and be unregulated? You might think you do, but that's only because your driver's side door didn't just crush your leg 30 seconds ago.

@Janissy:

For example, if the govt wasn't involved in the healthcare industry I could visit a nurse or other qualified individual for things like simple broken bones, common colds, etc. But the govt requires the oversight of a doctor, driving up the costs of my medical bills and increasing wait times for those who legitimately need a doctor.

I don't know if there is an official definition, but it's any food that has been so processed that the nutrients have been stripped out of whatever was the food's original form. It is also high in fat and/or sugar while not being high in the nutrients that accompany fat and sugar in their natural form.

With all respect to nurses, I agree with the need for a doctor's oversight. The doctor shouldn't need to oversee every visit (and in the US, doesn't) but a doctor should be available on-site for the things that seem simple at first glance but turn out to be exceptions to simplicity and require med school knowledge- which really does go beyond nursing school knowldege.

@Janissy:

But shouldn't that be left for the patient to decide, they are the ones whose health and wealth are at stake?

The problem is, I don't think the patient really can make a truly informed decision without any doctor input for a lot of things. Google only takes you so far. I know a lot of people on WP feel medically empowered by knowing more about Asperger's Syndrome than their doctor through sheer research (part of that research being talking to other people on WP). But Aspergers Syndrome may be one of the very few situations where that is possible. It might even be literally unique.

But for other things, such as the fracture that seems like it should be so easy to set until a doctor looks at the X-ray (using your example), google and other research won't be helpful in making an informed opinion. You really do need a doctor to properly interpret some information and it needs to be a doctor who has passed a government approved exam after attending a government approved medical school (this includes medical schools recognized internationally, as so many are).

It's your body and your money, but does that make you qualified to figure out what that mysterious rash is after googling photos? Maybe the nurse can figure it out (yay!). But maybe she can't and needs to call the doctor in for a look. It isn't really cost effective to make people have a whole separate appointment for things that unexpectedly step outside the realm of a nurse's expertise. And it isn't really safe for the patient/customer to try to evaluate medical knowledge with nothing to go on but their own personal history and google.

This is one of the reasons why the supermarket analogy breaks down. (Other posters have given other reasons.) The average person can evaluate a raw food to some extent and government regulation(! !! !!) srteps in to regulate the things that can't be evaluated by eye. (And hasn't been regulating enough, judging by recent food poisoning outbreaks, but that's another thread). For packaged foods, government regulation (! !! !! !!) requires food labels which aren't that hard to decipher once you get the hang of it. There really isn't that much information to juggle. With a layman's knowledge of food, you can do just fine in the grocery store and are thus qualified to shop around.

But that doesn't really work in medicine. A layman's knowledge (what you get from google) isn't enough for you to be able to evaluate your own medical condition without expert help. It's your body, but you know far less about it than you do about what's on your plate. And if you are in pain, you are truly in no position to shop around.

@Janissy:

So your claim is we need regulation because consumers aren't smart enough to make their own decisions.