Protest Against the ABC-TV Obamacare Infomercial

The bureaucracy of limiting scarce resources in a system that is not designed to provide the service it is supposed to provide IS bad. All organizations have bureaucracy. I'm arguing that an organization that is set up to provide health care instead of health insurance is preferable. I agree that government can work. I agree with the teabaggers that the communist form of government Soviet style did not (I actually worked for a time in a job attempting to dismantle post-Soviet bureaucracy to help markets flow).

Markets DO fail. When one part or entity in a transaction has more power or knowledge to get the upperhand, the market has failed. The field is called economics. I made no implication that I think that all markets are a failure -- quite to the contrary.

The way it works is that the government pays for health care and negotiates for reduced prices. It happens every day in countries around the world. Even the US pharmaceutical companies already have people and units set up to deal with the negotiations with foreign governments. This idea has been new for decades? The result is that companies' owners, like those pharmaceutical execs with estates north of Boston, have to downsize to say, oh, maybe only 50 acres and 20,000 square feet. Cry them a river.

Has anyone ever thought that publicly-paid-for health care might actually lead to MORE advances in medicine because more people will be able to access services that they have denied themselves? What happens if many of them can regain their ability to produce economically in an open market? We, as a country, cannot continue to compete with countries with universal health care if we continue to force businesses to provide this expensive service and the costs continue to double every seven years.

The other issue is that we have to kick the AMA until they stop trying to limit the supply of doctors graduating from med school. There's another market failure for you.

Markets DO fail. I tell you this as someone who is very pro-market (because they are usually pretty good). Please educate yourself on the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure

Markets don't fail?

Guess that depends on how you define "failure", doesn't it?

Unlikely. While I'd love nothing better than to see the private health insurance industry put out of business (here's their model: pay us a lot of money for a service, and we'll avoid giving you this service and make you pay more if you actually manage to get us to give you service. How is this not criminal, again?), the idea is that the government just basically offers the absolute bottom of the barrel so everybody has at least SOME coverage. I don't think it CAN compete with private health care, let alone WANTS to.

I'm baffled by the idea that Obama is somehow going to put private insurers out of business. The man himself said it best; if the health insurance industry is as robust and competitive as it itself claims, a government run plan will not be a problem.

Jim, you seem like an intelligent person, so I'll explain this to you politely: when you compare government spending to human rights issues, as libertarians seem to love to do, you just automatically lost the argument, because you're no longer arguing policy, you're arguing gut feelings.

Just to rebuke your argument on a strict policy level, though, yes, if a majority of the people tell you something, it's generally your job to implement it. That's the way it works for elected officials, which is why SCOTUS isn't elected. And you're right, that can lead to unfortunate decisions because people as a group are generally stupid.

On the other hand, I haven't seen any compelling arguments on here aside from what I'll politely call the usual canned arguments. Give the rest of us something more than jerked knees and your personal biases to work with here.

Wow, so one network isn't hostile to Bush and THAT'S A BIG DEAL!

But iT'S NO BIG DEAL that ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, et al are humping Barry's leg more than Bo the dog?

Thanks for clearing that up.