Right to Healtcare and RKBA

[Termite]

Guys,

Quick: name the type of the health care or medical service that is safer, cheaper, and more available today that it was 25 yrs ago.

Hint: this not a trick question, and this type of medical service is usually not covered by health insurance.

[Joe ex PNG]

That would be cosmetic surgery- one of the few aspects of medicine that is truely under the free market.

I would also say dentistry as most people don't have dental insurance or dental plans.

[Aglifter]

You're quite right that the health care market is far too regulated, but you do have to have honesty in the market, and in any market. Elsewhere, it was mentioned how rapidly telecommunications accelerated once the monopoly of AT&T was broken.

There is ONLY one regulation I'm supporting, which is that every patient is billed the same, for the same services, rather than the current back door policy of allowing inscos to pay 10~20% of the rate that the uninsured pay.

Had the government not gotten so heavily into regulation/trying to push universal healthcare, the market wouldn't have developed this aberration in the first place.

Most states currently have laws requiring uninsured to be billed the same as insured, TO PROTECT THE INSURANCE companies, so that doctors, etc can't bill the uninsured the amount the insco will actually pay. Hence, the uninsured CANNOT negotiate their rate, by law.

Now, if you want to do a corruption investigation into how heavily active the insurance industry is, and you actually think it will go somewhere, that would also solve the problem.

[cu74]

The government can't even run a whorehouse and make money....

My wife and I both use that Mustang Ranch fiasco as an example of the superior management skills available within the government.

[308Mike]

Guys,

Quick: name the type of the health care or medical service that is safer, cheaper, and more available today that it was 25 yrs ago.

Hint: this not a trick question, and this type of medical service is usually not covered by health insurance.

Probably either chiropractic or acupuncture.

[Scott Free]

You're quite right that the health care market is far too regulated, but you do have to have honesty in the market, and in any market. Elsewhere, it was mentioned how rapidly telecommunications accelerated once the monopoly of AT&T was broken.

I'm unclear as to what you mean by "honesty" in the market. Perhaps you could elaborate.

As far as telecommunications "accelerating rapidly" after the AT&T breakup, I'm sure that most folks loved the idea. Booooo, big evil monolithic monopolies, right? Consider, however the truth: the principle that the government used to force the break up of a company that had created a monopoly achieved through the free market was the same principle as was used in eminent domain cases: the public "good". It is this principle upon which rests the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Would anyone care to explain to me how forcing a company (its employees and its shareholders) to divest itself of, well, itself -- a company that had built itself up through capital reinvestment and efficiency over the course of decades -- results in good? How was AT&T's virtual monopoly on the phone service in this country (achieved through economic ability) a detriment to anyone? Weren't we taught -- years ago -- to save and reinvest in our own business instead of borrowing? That's what AT&T did and look how it thrived through offering a wonderful service at an affordable (to most folks at the time) price -- and look what the modern culture of political pull and "the public good" did to it.

Don't (didn't) like the phone service? Hey, you aren't (weren't) forced -- through political means -- to buy an AT&T product or service and, hey, that also means that you don't (didn't) have a right to phone service. (My family didn't own a phone for many years.) Don't like the way that the phone company runs things? Build one yourself. Seriously. The government even put out a publication on how to do it in the 30s (and still is available today) -- and, damn, if there are still dozens of smaller telephone systems all over the U.S. that are built to those specs, some major phone companies, some small or family-owned companies. (I know; I've been in these offices all over the western U.S.)

Um, what? Y..you can't compete? Why? Because you can't possibly come up with the capital to match AT&T's outlay of just what it costs to put their copper lines in the ground and maintain them throughout the entire country? Yeah, that'd be pretty sizable and that's why it took decades for the company to do it. But that's AT&T's fault somehow that a competitor can't come up with the capital outlay to compete? Why? Do you mean that you don't have the product quality and innovation of the (former) Bell Labs? Yeah, they've made a ton of important telecommunications breakthroughs. Is this AT&T's fault, too, that no one else made those breakthrough? And why was it "fair", once the breakup occurred, that AT&T had to provide these "competitors" with the use of the lines and phone offices that AT&T had paid for and installed, not to mention being saddled with the maintenance of those lines and the legal requirement (required by who?) of keeping landlines operational "just in case" something happens to the cell phone system? Have you ever had a look at phone offices of some of the Baby Bell's competitors? Better hope that there isn't much of a natural disaster that occurs near them -- you see, they don't have to abide by the same rules for building construction that the Bells do. (Although, I'm sure, that such regulations are necessary to foster "fair" and "honest" competition...)

AT&T (i.e., the Baby Bells) were forced to operate (by who?) with razor thin margins while having to essentially subsidize the competition, who were more than giddy to reap the "acceleration" in telecommunications' profits without having to do the heavy lifting. Who do you think paid for all that "acceleration" in telecommunications anyway? AT&T was forced to by the government -- for the "public good", of course.

Whether you "liked" the phone company or not (and I didn't; they were one hellacious pile of rude and lazy a-holes) is immaterial. All that the people in this country had a right to do was disconnect their phone if they didn't like the service. That was within their freedom of action. There was no legal monopoly -- i.e., government protection through the laws -- that protected AT&T from competition; their monopoly was through economic efficiency. As long as there was no political impediments put in the way of competitors -- the kinds of impediments that one would imagine phone company lobbyists wanting to put up to protect their business from competition -- no one, individually or collectively, had a right to force AT&T to break up.

How, pray tell, is this "dishonesty" in the market by AT&T?

There is ONLY one regulation I'm supporting, which is that every patient is billed the same, for the same services, rather than the current back door policy of allowing inscos to pay 10~20% of the rate that the uninsured pay.

Had the government not gotten so heavily into regulation/trying to push universal healthcare, the market wouldn't have developed this aberration in the first place.

Most states currently have laws requiring uninsured to be billed the same as insured, TO PROTECT THE INSURANCE companies, so that doctors, etc can't bill the uninsured the amount the insco will actually pay. Hence, the uninsured CANNOT negotiate their rate, by law.

So if the government had not gotten into regulating healthcare and, if so, the market wouldn't have developed this "aberration" then why isn't the answer getting the government out of healthcare instead of regulating it even more -- even in your example? The only way that you can only fix the problem is by fixing its cause, not its effect.