I gotta admit i didnt read it. so i actually cant really post an educated opinion on any details.

But i followed the whole debate over the last months and i gotta tell you, it looks absurd from a european perspective. Here in germany public health insurance was passed in 1883, so we kinda take this for granted. The point of it is that all people (including children with lazy parents and people who lost their job and are simply broke) get medical treatment if they need it.

Shevar:

A lot of things can be taken for granted in the Reich. Like doing what you are told.

Shevar. Other than the card skrum played...

It might be what you've had for awhile, but thank goodness we haven't. We've had the best care offered in the world while our costs balloon and our "system" as a whole slowly sank. Part of the many problems is socialized medicine in most of the G8. Many pharma companies rely on US dollars from their longer patent lives to higher drug costs. These extra pharma dollars pad the wallets of pharma fat cats AND pay for cutting edge research making drugs that you enjoy without knowing the difference.

The problem is that no one knows how all the strings are truly connected. One thing we do know is that governments don't create wealth. That's why when you get a free handout ask who's paying for it, because it sure isn't Uncle Sam. That added to new layers of bureaucracy needed to manage this behemoth of a disaster and this leads to wasted bureaucratic dollars. Government bureaucrats suck up tax dollars and give society virtually nothing back...they don't add wealth, they don't make a product, and they don't trade. They eat up my tax dollars and use my tax dollars to eat up more of my tax dollars...

The USA is turning into the Planet of the Apes. It's easy to see. The lazy are getting their way and will soon be rewarded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro3pMPq0IAI&feature=related

skrum, if there is a point to your statement you want me to understand then you will have to spell it out for me, because i dont get it.


I agree that the USA has the best doctors and also the best equipment. That is caused by the system you have had. It's actually a pretty good example of how a free market generates highest quality and motivates research.
However a free market will never improve health care for poor people, because of one simple fact: it's not profitable. Most of the medical and pharmaceutical research is aimed at producing expensive drugs and devices, for they will yield the highest profit. As a result you have excellent therapies for the wealthy and cheap and outdated ones for the lower class. During my high school year in Alabama i had to go to a doctor once to have him determine if i was suitable for the track and field team. Apparently this was a doctor for poor people, cause i felt like being back in the 40s.

this is true.

The question is whether health care for poorer people will come at the expense of top notch care. The whole world benefits (well the developed world) from devices, technologies, and procedures developed in the US (and Israel) in a free market system. This bill changes a lot of that, and is a foothold for more change towards a more European system.

The question is whether this is sustainable. I believe it isn't.

Shevar,

Expensive drugs will not yield high profit if there is low volume. So the losers are not poor people but people who have rare conditions. Inexpensive drugs can be profitable if there is high volume, for conditions that are widespread (including a lot of poor people). Considering the quantities and kinds of goods and services our supposedly "poor" people buy, rest assured that if there is a drug that can treat a condition a lot of poor people have, the profit-maximizing drug companies will make it available to the market.

I should have said *expensive* drugs can be profitable if there is high volume. That is because unit fixed cost is driven very low.

So true skrum

yeah makes sense about the drugs. I'm curious if you can dismantle my argument about medical equipment as elegantly. Think of PET scans. An awesome tool for diagnosis, but very expensive and therefore only affordable for the wealthy.