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To: elbucko

I agree with your overall assessment of powers but not rights for the government. But more specifically, those powers are enumerated. And health care ain't one of them.

With regard to health care specifically, I disagree. And because you offered an intelligent perspective, I hope to return the favor. First, I don't think the government should be involved in health care at all...it is not part of a philosophically proper function of government. Second, I disagree with the assessment that the free market is inefficient. The free market created all of these medicines, equipment, procedures and expertise. If medicine were socialized in the beginning, we would have a shortage of poor quality witch doctors. Your answer is that you want 'non-profit' not socialized government. But it is not the absence of the government that created all of these advances...it was the motivation, the justice of the capitalistic system that inspired this. You correctly identify the problem with gov't involvement, but misdiagnose the cause. A 'non-profit' health care system carries the same burden as a socialized system...it destroys incentive.

Finally, I want to point out that problems and inefficiencies in our system stem from the same problem...gov't invovlement and lack of incentive...not the free market. During the ridiculous 'wage freeze' companies sought ways to increase pay by offering company health insurance. This was done on a tax free basis (you don't pay income tax on your health insurance paid by your employer). This dissociates the payer from the decision maker. (almost all health insurance is through employers because if its not, you have to pay income tax on the money spent on it)

Anytime people get to spend other people's money, they will spend more than if it was their own. We also see this problem with medicare and medicaid...both dwarf even the most dire predictions made at their start. I predict we will see the same thing with prescription drugs. I bet within the decade actual spending is at least double the predicted amounts. The people who decide how much to spend are not the ones footing the bill. Thus we see healthcare continuing to climb as a proportion of our GDP. And we have huge layers of bureacracy trying to control costs, and even organizations like HMOs specifically designed to limit costs by deciding what procedures are really necessary. All of this bureacracy is waste, and it is a huge portion of our healthcare spending. All of that can be efficiently accomplished by letting people spend their own money...the free market. That doesn't mean that it is all small town doctors and no insurance. But it would allow people to shop around for plans that fit their needs. Expensive plans that offer everything possible, cheaper plans that limit expensive procedures and generic drugs. It would allow people to buy only catestrophic insurance, and pay their 'normal' expected medical costs without syphoning it through a bloated bureaucracy.


12 posted on 05/25/2004 11:55:10 AM PDT by blanknoone (I voted for before I voted against it, didn't show up for the vote except once, but left too early)
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To: blanknoone
I agree with your overall assessment of powers but not rights for the government.

I did NOT post that government has rights!

13 posted on 05/25/2004 2:05:12 PM PDT by elbucko
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