Common Sense

Oakman

Christian Graus wrote:

some people ( not you ) want to tell me that the Australian health system is obviously inferior, being socialist

I don't imagine many North Americans understand the Australian healthcare delivery system. I know I didn't until Josh and you explained it. We are used to hearing about the Canadian system's problems - from, among other sources, their Supreme Court.

Christian Graus wrote:

a basic GP visit that would cost $30 in Australia

Wow. Been a long time since I paid that much! ;)

Christian Graus wrote:

The point is really an attempt to draw a real comparison between my (admittedly limited) experience, and my *obviously* flawed 'socialist' system at home, not to then assume that my experience means that all US medical care sucks

Perhaps having as your entire response, "you're actually having a vote on having actual health care in the US ?" didn't convey your intentions as well as it might have. . . ;P

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin

Christian Graus

Oakman wrote:

Wow. Been a long time since I paid that much!

*grin* let me clarify. If I go to a doctor for whom I am willing to pay extra, it will cost as much as $30. Most people go to a doctor who is free.

Oakman wrote:

Perhaps having as your entire response, "you're actually having a vote on having actual health care in the US ?" didn't convey your intentions as well as it might have. .

*grin* well, I do like to stir people up from time to time. I have been stuck in Melbourne for the past few days, much of that just sitting in a hotel room, so I was happy to stir up some discussion to keep myself amused.....

Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. "I am new to programming world. I have been learning c# for about past four weeks. I am quite acquainted with the fundamentals of c#. Now I have to work on a project which converts given flat files to XML using the XML serialization method" - SK64 ( but the forums have stuff like this posted every day )

Oakman

Christian Graus wrote:

I was happy to stir up some discussion to keep myself amused.....

Well, of course, I don't understand any motivation like that. But I do recognize that there are a few people who post here who do not have the same noble, high-minded, and altruistic motives in posting that I do. (Where's that haloed icon when you need it?)

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin

Stan Shannon

Oakman wrote:

However, if I understand it correctly, in Australia, there is a basic minimum health care available that is paid for by taxes. Since not everyone works, but everyone is covered, this is definitely a single-payer national health plan. However, you can also get more/better health care if you've got the bread by buying additional insurance. Just as you can over here.

I don't believe it. Like many such plans, it might appear to work initially. However, simple logic demands that there is some subset of the population which must be forced into the system who would otherwise not need government health care if the productive weatlh of the nation were not being sucked into a health care bureaucracy. That class of individual will inevitably grow. There is no such thing as a static economic model. Economies must either grow or shrink, and an economy controlled by the government cannot grow. There is no system of taxation that can force an economy to grow. There are systems of taxation which can allow an economy to grow naturally (by encouraging hard work and investment) but none that can actually cause it to happen.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

Oakman

Stan Shannon wrote:

There is no system of taxation that can force an economy to grow.

Stan Shannon wrote:

Like many such plans, it might appear to work initially

No plan works forever, Stan. Even the universe will die of heatdeath.

Stan Shannon wrote:

However, simple logic demands that there is some subset of the population which must be forced into the system who would otherwise not need government health care if the productive weatlh of the nation were not being sucked into a health care bureaucracy.

Well, I admit I only took a couple of courses in logic, so maybe you could explain to me exactly what a prioris you are using and what, if any, reasoning went into them. Then if you'd go on to spell out your logic, I'd be very grateful.

Stan Shannon wrote:

There is no such thing as a static economic model.

A truism, yes? But equally true of any political/economy system you or I might ever have heard of. As I said this morning about natural disasters: it's not a matter of whether, just of when.

Stan Shannon wrote:

There is no system of taxation that can force an economy to grow.

There is definitely a redistribution of wealth involved in their system, I agree. As I pointed out, individuals are taxed to pay for it, while businesses are freed of a burden they are expected to bear in this country. Ultimately that means the middle class pays the lion's share - but so they do in the here and now, as well. And the middle class often has less health care available in this country, whereas it sounds as if the poor have some but not as much as the middle class in Australia.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin

Stan Shannon

Oakman wrote:

No plan works forever, Stan. Even the universe will die of heatdeath.

I'd be willing to bet the universe outlives the Australian health care system.

Oakman wrote:

Well, I admit I only took a couple of courses in logic, so maybe you could explain to me exactly what a prioris you are using and what, if any, reasoning went into them. Then if you'd go on to spell out your logic, I'd be very grateful.

Because the alternative is that taxation has no affect at all on the behavior of those paying it. If you are taking money away from people, there must be some segment that falls in between those in need and those able to pay. The system either decreases those able to care for their own needs or it increases those able to do so. It cannot simultaneously do both or neither. If paying for the health care of the poor changes the economy so that the number of people able to care for their own health care increases, than at some point everyone would be able to care for their own health care. Or, the reverse is true. One state is true, the other state is not. It is black or white, on or off, true or false. It is perfectly binary. If the system in Australia appears to be static, it is only because revenue is being diverted from other purposes to make it appear to work.

Oakman wrote:

But equally true of any political/economy system you or I might ever have heard of. As I said this morning about natural disasters: it's not a matter of whether, just of when.

But some systems are more inclined to grow. Free market systems will grow up to the physical capacity of the environment to support growth. Than they will collapse. Collectivist systems will shrink and collapse over time because they have no mechnism which allows for economic growth.

Oakman wrote:

There is definitely a redistribution of wealth involved in their system, I agree. As I pointed out, individuals are taxed to pay for it, while businesses are freed of a burden they are expected to bear in this country. Ultimately that means the middle class pays the lion's share - but so they do in the here and now, as well. And the middle class often has less health care available in this country, whereas it sounds as if the poor have some but not as much as the middle class in Australia.

I don

Mike Gaskey

Christian Graus wrote:

Why would you assume this to be the case ? It's not in Australia. Doctors can charge what they want. I choose to go to a doctor that charges more, I simply choose to pay more than the amount that Medicare covers.

well ... the way Medicare works (the model oft quoted) is that a doctor must agree to accept what Medicare deems to be the appropriate charge. if he doesn't agree then the patient is stuck for the balance of the bill and must acknowledge that in writing (signing a form). Medicare supplement policies are a way of covering the difference but it isn't a gaurantee. that more or less works okay for the elderly (those covered by Medicare) but if you listen to the rhetoric while you're here you'll see that our healthcare "crisis" is a result of 45 million uninsured. now do you think those same 45 million uninsured will all of a sudden decide they need to purchase a supplemental policy ?? now that was a rhetorical question. what will happen is we'll anounce yet another crisis and the medical community will be forced to accept the government's view of what a fair ("fair" being my sarcastic slant) charge. that'll work for those medical professionals "trapped" in the system but will not last more than a generation. I've heard the Canadian system touted, and to be honest I was once enthralled by the possibility, but I just watched a news report with a Candaian doctor being intervied. there are currently 750,000 Canadians waiting for their turn for a procedure (some surgery) our of a population of 32 million. doesn't sound like a system I want here, especially given the other tidbit; 4 months to go from primary care physican to a specialist and there's a shortage of primary care physicans with a waiting list (waiting to be assigned an open slot). it simply will not work.

Oakman

Stan Shannon wrote:

I'd be willing to bet the universe outlives the Australian health care system.

Along with you, me, the United States, Terra, and Sol. So?

Stan Shannon wrote:

Because the alternative is that taxation has no affect at all on the behavior of those paying it.

that's your a priori? Or your conclusion? For someone using formal logic, you aren't being terribly clear.

Stan Shannon wrote:

Collectivist systems will shrink and collapse over time because they have no mechnism which allows for economic growth

Just out of curiosity, what is China?

Stan Shannon wrote:

I don't believe

That's the crux of our differences, I think. I cite what has been given me as fact. You find that these facts don't gibe with your beliefs and discard them. I feel like Galileo.

Stan Shannon wrote:

The only efficient way to maintain a health care system is to allow it to be managed by free market capitalism.

And yet, consistently, the most effective and efficient provider of health care in the US turns out to be Medicare with administrative costs far lower than that of insurance agencies, and before you trot out that old horsechestnut about the doctors are forced to provide the health care more cheaply and charge others to make up for it, any doctor has to agree to accept the rates the insurance company will pay or not be an insystem provider. Exactly the same thing is true for Medicare. Doctors can refuse to accept the rates and then the patient must make up the difference between the fee and the reimbursement - or simply find another Dr. By the way, I am not talking about Bush's pharmacy add-on nor medicaid which is a welfare program not an insurance program.

Stan Shannon

Oakman wrote:

And yet, consistently, the most effective and efficient provider of health care in the US turns out to be Medicare with administrative costs far lower than that of insurance agencies, and before you trot out that old horsechestnut about the doctors are forced to provide the health care more cheaply and charge others to make up for it, any doctor has to agree to accept the rates the insurance company will pay or not be an insystem provider.

Oakman wrote:

that's your a priori? Or your conclusion? For someone using formal logic, you aren't being terribly clear.

And I think its perfectly clear. Either increasing taxes changes the state of the system or it doesn't. If it does not, what would be the point?

Oakman wrote:

Just out of curiosity, what is China?

I consider modern china to be a capitalistic system for any practical economic purpose. I don't beleive it will be sustained over the long term, but currently they are.

Oakman wrote:

I cite what has been given me as fact. You find that these facts don't gibe with your beliefs and discard them. I feel like Galileo.

Guilty as charged. But I consider it more like the facts not gibeing with common sense, so I feel more like Galileo. I think if one could truly observe the economic reality of Australia, one could more accurately discern its actual structure. Revenue is being diverted from other purposes somewhere, somehow to obfuscate the truth.

Oakman wrote:

And yet, consistently, the most effective and efficient provider of health care in the US turns out to be Medicare with administrative costs far lower than that of insurance agencies, and before you trot out that old horsechestnut about the doctors are forced to provide the health care more cheaply and charge others to make up for it, any doctor has to agree to accept the rates the insurance company will pay or not be an insystem provider.

More effective than what? Insurance companies? It is not more effective than the system we had in the 1950's before government involvement in the system.

Oakman

Stan Shannon wrote:

I think if one could truly observe

Stan Shannon wrote:

It is not more effective than the system we had in the 1950's

Stan Shannon wrote:

Either increasing taxes changes the state of the system or it doesn't.

But you never consider - even to show why the option must be discarded - the possibility that taxes affect the system positively.

Stan Shannon wrote:

If it does not, what would be the point?

Strangely enough, T. Jefferson and friends believed that taxes on imports would provide the income the government needed to pay its workers.

Stan Shannon wrote:

I consider modern china to be a capitalistic system

I am amazed that you say that. They are as managed an economy as was Soviet Russia in the fifties, or Germany in the forties. Fascism always masquerades as capitalism without a free market, but that, pretty much, is a definition of a pregnant virgin.

Stan Shannon wrote:

But I consider it more like the facts not gibeing with common sense

When the facts don't gibe with any theory -- including a common sensical one, a rational man discards the theory, not the facts. Witchdoctors, Shamans, et al, of course, disagree and continue to claim that the best method for preventing post-operative deaths is to sprinkle the patient with holy water.

Stan Shannon wrote:

It is not more effective than the system we had in the 1950's before government involvement in the system.

Sorry, but that system was so inefficient that it was replaced by HMOs. The cost savings were significant. Look it up.

Stan Shannon

Oakman wrote:

But you never consider - even to show why the option must be discarded - the possibility that taxes affect the system positively.

Yes I did. Reread my post. All I've said is that it cannot be made static. If governmetn can create a positive economic feedback mechanism rather than a negative one I've seen no evidence of it. If Australia has, than at some point there should be no need for government health care.

Oakman wrote:

Strangely enough, T. Jefferson and friends believed that taxes on imports would provide the income the government needed to pay its workers.

And I'm sure they were correct. But it is because they were trying to control the state of the system in a differnt way.

Oakman wrote:

am amazed that you say that. They are as managed an economy as was Soviet Russia in the fifties, or Germany in the forties.

But it is currently being managed to emphasize capitalistic operations. People are earning profits.

Oakman wrote:

Fascism always masquerades as capitalism without a free market,

There is no relationship between capitalism and fascism. Fascims is simply a form of socialism that recruits capitalistic institutions to promote its agenda rather than trying to control them directly.

Oakman wrote:

When the facts don't gibe with any theory -- including a common sensical one, a rational man discards the theory, not the facts.

I don't believe your facts are actually facts but lies.

Oakman wrote:

Sorry, but that system was so inefficient that it was replaced by HMOs. The cost savings were significant. Look it up.

I don't have to look it up, I lived through it. Unlike you, I lived in a poor family in a remote rural community. We had no health insurance and there was no government health care at all. Over a ten year period my older sister suffered third and second degree burns over a third of her body, my father was badly injured in a work related incident, my mother had very experimental and expensive surgery to save her eyesight and my brother and I were born. We recieved full health care with all of that and at the end of it all, we owned no money at all. Amazing, huh?

Oakman

Stan Shannon wrote:

Reread my post. All I've said is that it cannot be made static

You said that in response to my question which seem to iomply that either your a priori or you conclusion was that taxes always affected the system negatively. It is you who aren't reading your own posts.

Stan Shannon wrote:

But it is currently being managed to emphasize capitalistic operations. People are earning profits.

People earned profits in Soviet Russia. Profits are merely what is left over after expenses are covered. Capitalism is about what is done with the profits.

Stan Shannon wrote:

I don't believe your facts are actually facts but lies.

The operative word is "believe." It is impossible to argue with someone who says the world is flat, God told him so. So I won't.

Stan Shannon wrote:

I don't have to look it up, I lived through it. Unlike you, I lived in a poor family in a remote rural community. . .

I'm very glad that you and your family received good care, but having spent time this afternoon taking Christian to task for claiming that his experience with the American system was a single instance and not indicative of the state of the entire health-care delivery system, I shan't repeat myself any more than I already have. If you believe that your experience outweighs the reams of data that says that says that the system was inefficient in the 50's and breaking down in the sixties, I suppose I am not surprised, but again the operative word is "believe."