If this were required reading in America’s classrooms, perhaps they wouldn’t be socialized either:   http://hardstarboardblog.com/2009/08/oh_to_have_him_back.html…...

BKennedy on August 17, 2009 at 11:23 PM

Just got a copy of the billing for my younmgest daughter’s last doctor visit.

$10 co-pay. Given as a credit.

$75 doctor exam. Insurance negotiated that to $50.

$65 for an x-ray. Insurance negotiated that to $35.

$30 blood test. Insurance negotiated that to $20.

The amount I owed. Zip. Nada. 0.

But the doctor continues to see the kids (well, young adults) because even “suffering” those negotiated reductions, he knows that he will get a check in the mail within five business days of providing care. Some other insurers will take a month, some longer, and a lot will require all sorts of additional paperwork. So, he discounts his services (negotiated price) as he knows he will get paid, few if any questions asked.

I find the argument that insurance companies push for higher prices to be, well, pretty stupid.

You can lower the price of a good or service to any level you please. You could sell everything in your store for a dollar if you wanted.

But you know this would not work, for this reason:

Price is not synonymous with cost.

No matter how low or high your price, your cost to produce those services is relatively stable. When government tells you they want to control costs, they erroneously mean prices. If they wanted to lower costs, they have multiple means including deregulation and reducing the burden on employers to pay.

Please explain to me the logic in paying a doctor $15-25 for an hour of their time? Such a copay is idiotic and does not represent the actual cost to procure the service. The insurance company picks up the rest of what they allow. Doctors could afford to have lower prices provided they got more money up front instead of wrangling with the insurance company and waiting 3 weeks for a partial return on services rendered. There is effectively a revenue ceiling on a procedure.

What point do you claim to have made?

You seem to be claiming that the insurance companies are who make health care costs high (i.e., hosptial stays, surgeries, etc.).

I asked you a series of questions above, which you dishonestly avoid and post inane little one-liners, which seem to indicate you don’t have above a 3rd grade education.

answer a question – do you believe that the insurance companies are what make and keep medical costs high?

If yes, how and why?

If no, then how do you believe a gov’t run insurance program will lower medical care costs? And if your answer is something as inane as “it will keep them honest” or “it will provide competition” then follow up by explaining how the gov’t run program will provide competition that other insurance companies do not provide?

And, how the gov’t run program will be able to compete without using any tax payer money?

Thus far, all you have said is “I don’t understand”. You don’t need to say that – your “arguments” have demonstrated that amply. Your refusal to answer questions and engage in an actual conversation demonstrates that you have no real understanding of the subject matter other than the simple platitudes you hear at DailyKOS or elsewhere.

Try thinking through the issue and answering some of the questions posed to you in an effort to engage in an actual dialoue. If you can demonstrate even a basic graps of the issues involved, you may gain some credibility and not be a waste of time on this board. Unless your only objective is to annoy rather than debate or persuade, which seems to be the case.

Competition to make cool stuff like TVs is great but people appear to lose overall when it comes to basic utilities.

The Calibur

Which makes sense, considering many basic utilities(water, electricity) are government run.

Republicans don’t quite understand economics. The reason private-sector competition works is that, when it doesn’t work, the businesses in question lose capital, and thus lose their ability to influence the economy in the future. Operations hemorrhaging money soon cease to operate, allowing scarce capital to be reallocated to more productive ends.

I’d say you’re the who doesn’t understand. You basically said the same thing Ed did, only it took you about 3 times as many words to do it.

Republicans think the private sector can do no wrong, but this belief is incorrect.

YOUR belief is incorrect. Please name one Republican who believes the private sector can do no wrong.

- The Cat

This technically isn’t true. Supply and demand mechanics determine how high someone will go to pay but not how low.

What does that even mean? How low someone is willing to go? Someone willing to go to zero. We’d all prefer to get someone for nothing. The seller would prefer to sell it for as much possible. The price point represents the compromise between those two desires.

This is evident during Christmas. When a toy sells off the shelf, they do not change the price of the other duplicate toys every time. This only happens with necessities, because the people that own them can charge what they like, regardless of whether it costs more to extract certain resources.

No. You can only charge as much as people are willing/able to pay. And you have to be careful to not charge more than the next guy.

Similar to oil prices: One could just buy a bunch of oil, which makes producers choose to raise the price because they can, not because it’s necessarily more expensive to extract.

Right that process of buying a “bunch” of oil is called increasing the demand.

Afterward, the person that bought and held much oil can then just sell the oil at a higher price to make money.

Only if in so doing they were able to reduce the available supply, which is not as easy as you seem to think. For example if the price of oil goes too high, then other economic forces come into play. People buy more fuel-efficient cars because the price of gas has shot up. It becomes more economical to invest in alternative sources of energy such as oil shale and gasification of coal.

The Calibur on August 17, 2009 at 3:01 PM

(with respect) I figure you had a point to make in your post, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out what it is.

The supremely useful feature of capitalism is not that it allows a creative, innovative, well-run firm to prosper, but that a firm which cannot prosper goes out of business before it wastes more scarce resources.

hicsuget on August 17, 2009 at 5:03 PM

Good Points. And thanks for that link! I’ll be putting that in my queue.

And yet, my point is not really addressed.

You can’t have it both ways.

AnninCA on August 17, 2009 at 4:40 PM

Several people already provided ample points that addressed your “question/assertion.”

Medical insurers DO NOT keep health care costs overly inflated, why would they when it is the health insurers that LOSE when having to pay out higher medical care costs! It is your illogical that is flawed AnninCA.

Also, I seem to remember several weeks ago questioning some of your assertions regarding the healthcare debate to which you had no response. In particular I asked how anyone with a functioning synapse, an honest bone in their body, or someone not blinded by their ideology and allegiance to “THE ONE” could possibly think for a nano second that ANY government agency could provide a health care system as efficient, cost effective, and innovative as the private sector can!

I challenged you to cite and provide actual facts where the government has ever successfully run ANY type of service better than the private sector and you never did, so until you do you have no business telling people they have “not addressed” your points when in reality several have yet you never do!

I’ll give you some assistance to narrow your search; the following ARE NOT GOOD EXAMPLES OF GOVERNMENT RUN INSTITUTIONS:

MEDICAID
SOCIAL SECURITY
AMTRAK
USPS
IRS
BANKS
GM
FANNY/FREDDY MAC

And yet, my point is not really addressed.

You can’t have it both ways.

AnninCA on August 17, 2009 at 4:40 PM

I’ll address your point: it is not the case that in a private healthcare system the prices are unnaturally inflated; it is the case that with a public competitor the prices would be unnaturally deflated. The “natural” price level is precisely the one which is arrived at in the absence of government interference, so you would be correct in surmising that the argument based on the “natural” price level presented above is question-begging.

Unlike a shill for either party, an economist looks at what the function of the market’s setting of the “natural” price level is, and, having looked, decides that allowing the market to set the price is beneficial.

Capitalism and Freedom – Milton Friedman.

Read it. You are not allowed to post here until you have satisfied this requirement. Hell I’d be willing to buy a copy for you if I knew you would read it.

daesleeper on August 17, 2009 at 4:25 PM

I’ve read it, and I have to say it wasn’t very good. Liberalism by von Mises is much better.

The Calibur on August 17, 2009 at 2:20 PM

The supremely useful feature of capitalism is not that it allows a creative, innovative, well-run firm to prosper, but that a firm which cannot prosper goes out of business before it wastes more scarce resources.

Exactly, they are not counting waiting in line as a cost. If they would have to include that in their cost estimates. The public option gets real expensive real quick.

The Socialists would take away most or all of these choices. A man would do what he was told by the state and his union, work where work was “found” for him, at the rate fixed and degree of effort permitted. He would send his children to school where the education authority decided what the children are taught and the way they are taught, irrespective of his views, he would live in the housing provided, take what he could get, give what he was obliged to give.

This doesn’t produce a responsible or a moral society.

This does not produce a classless society; on the contrary it produces the most stratified of all societies, divided into two classes: the powerful and the powerless; the party-bureaucratic elite and the manipulated masses.

And are these rulers better fitted to make choices on our behalf or to dispose of resources? Are they wiser, less selfish, more moral? What reason have we for supposing that they are? As the French economist and critic of socialism, Claude Frédéric Bastiat, asked a century and a half ago, how can the socialists, who have such a low opinion of the people’s ability to choose have such a high regard for their own?[fo 21]

I quote his own words:

“Since the natural inclinations of mankind are so evil that its liberty must be taken away, how is it that the inclinations of the socialists are good? Are not the legislators and their agents part of the human race? Do they believe themselves moulded from another clay than the rest of mankind? They say that society, left to itself, heads inevitably for destruction because its instincts are perverse. They demand the power to stop mankind from sliding down this fatal declivity and to impose a better direction on it. If, then, they have received from heaven intelligence and virtues that place them beyond and above mankind, let them show their credentials. They want to be shepherds, and they want us to be their sheep.”

Why then, you may ask, did socialist thought make so much headway? It is not only a fair question but a vitally important one for us. There are many possible answers.[fo 29]

But one obvious reason stands out. Socialists criticised imperfect human reality in the name of a theory. So long as socialism was only a theory, it made criticism of other ways easy for them. They could claim that their way was best. But now we are beyond the days of theory. For decades Socialists have extended their power until they control almost half the world’s population. How has the theory worked out in practice? Disastrously. Wherever they have imposed their heavy hand, people are worse off and less free.

Some choice quotes from Lady Thatcher’s speech to Greater London Young Conservatives 1977 Jul 4.

It doesn’t directly address ‘health care’, but indeed addresses central control.

But, the case for monopoly is built upon cost curves whereby a monopoly provides the best service at the least cost.

As an aircraft guy, airlines are an example. There has never been an airline that found the bottom of the variable cost curve. In fact, there has never been an airline profitable over the long run.

Economic analysis indicates that the cost of aircraft maintenance is best served by a one airline world monopoly — though I’m not sure if I would want to fly on one of their errorcraft unless they were US maintained.

You can’t have it both ways.

My father has worked for GTE (now Verizon) for longer than 26 years and let me tell ya: Competition isn’t always awesome in every industry, especially a utility that people need (IMO). Wages have decreased, work load has increased, teams have been under cut, benefits have been cut, managers are over loaded, and you can’t really compete in an infrastructure market because you can’t pull up all the phone lines from the old company and replace them. Competition to make cool stuff like TVs is great but people appear to lose overall when it comes to basic utilities.

The Calibur on August 17, 2009 at 2:20 PM

Sorry, Calibur, but GTE was never part of the Bell system. GTE was always an Independant Local Exchange Carrier (ILEC) and was not part of the AT&T Divestiture agreement of 1/1/84.

I started with New England Telephone in December of 1979. NET was part of the AT&T network and we were divested from AT&T on January 1, 1984 as a result of Judge Greene’s decision. We became an RBOC, or Regional Bell Operating Company and were called NYNEX. New York and New England.

GTE spent the next 20 years or so buying up many other ILEC’s, such as Contel, so by the time NYNEX merged with Bell Atlantic, and then Bell Atlantic aquired GTE and became Verizon, GTE was pretty huge. But it was still an ILEC before the merger with BA.

I took a RIF last November, so trust me I know how bad it is for management at Verizon. But I had my 75 points so I walked away with what was left of my pension. So I was luckier than most.

If I’d known Verizon would sell off most of the West and get rid of most of the GTE network I may have stayed. I have never seen such a horrible, backwards, ridiculous, excuse for a telecom network in my life. I pity the poor souls at Frontier who are gonna have to deal with it.

As for as the postal service. Yes, the private sector could manage it much better. You may not get to mail a letter for .44 but it would run more effeciently. That I guarantee.

HoustonRight on August 17, 2009 at 2:13 PM

The fact is, as LittleAnnieFanny and Dhimmicrats in general fail to grasp, that the stamp is costing us more than 44¢ because our tax money is propping the USPS up.

It’s time to kick out the props and let the market compete on a level playing field.

AnninCA on August 17, 2009 at 4:01 PM

Capitalism and Freedom – Milton Friedman.

Read it. You are not allowed to post here until you have satisfied this requirement. Hell I’d be willing to buy a copy for you if I knew you would read it.

AnninCA on August 17, 2009 at 4:01 PM

Ann, economics, medical treatments and knowledge of the insurance trade is not one of your strong points, is it?

Insurance companies keep medical treatment prices high just for the hell of it?

I never knew that.

Next time you need a CAT scan, just ask the attending physician to simply pass a magnet over your body and see if anything shows up. It’ll be a lot cheaper than a state-of-the-art CAT scan, that I can assure you.

Think highways: If they would put them in the right spot and go ahead and pave them. The demoncrats have been very good over the years at “paving.” But, they put roads in the wrong places and keep paving the same spot.

A proper “public good” provided by the govt., say a highway in the right spot, will have a multiplier effect on the economy of more than a dollar gained for a dollar spent.

Outside that the govt. virtually always shrinks the economy in every instance of every venture in which it dabbles.

The federal reserve giving away free money is.

The argument is illogical.

We are instead talking about how to a) insure everyone and b) lower the cost of the insurance.

The way to achieve “a” and “b” would be to lower the actual cost of health care. Nothing in the bills before congress does this. Instead, they try to keep the cost of insuring people down by “bending the curve” (i.e., rationing treatment).

Nowhere in the debate is there really any discussion of ways to make actual health care cheaper and more efficient. There are plenty of ways that such could be done – the first being medical malpractice reform.

Another way would be to require all medical records be kept electronically and come up w/ some kind of standard format so that those records are easily shared between providers.

A third way would be requiring individuals to pay more for routine care (i.e., removing the 3rd party payer problem to a limited extent).

Another way would be to ease up on requirements that E.R.s treat everyone. E.R.’s should only be required to treat life-threatening injuries if the person can’t pay or isn’t insured.

Doing something about illegal immigrants could help as those costs are passed to the rest of us.

We should be debating ways to address the high costs of medical care, which is the root of the issue.

then, we could also add on ways to help reduce the cost of insurance – i.e. letting insurers compete across state lines.