What is the libertarian approach to health care?

What if nobody wants to help that paraplegic? He'll starve to death because he can't keep up. A socialist wouldn't let that happen. I'm no a socialist, but libertarianism is making me want to become one.

Libertarianism gives greedy sociopaths free reign to prey on others. No thanks.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I don't subscribe to that mantra or probably any other false notion you have about me.

I pay taxes and I help charities. It's not a religion; it's a civic obligation and it makes me feel good.

I don't "pretend" to care for anyone. I don't condone robbery. I'm not a socialist. Your reply is full of ad homenims. I didn't expect much else.

 

This.

We're not, any society on Earth is capable of this, rather it's you whose pretending that Healthcare is a market that somehow acts differently than others.

Any industry we've deregulated, prices went down, innovation grew, providers expanded. There's no reason to think Healthcare wouldn't experience the same because, again, we've already seen it with procedures like these and doctors like this.

 

The libertarian approach to health care is the same as the libertarian approach to everything else... "I got mine... (*)(*)(*)(*) everyone else."

 

Yes, just like how I got clothes, "F*ck everyone else because, even a bum can get them., They're dirt cheap."

All this posturing is from pretending markets don't act like markets when left alone.

 

Survival of the fittest! Either be a capitalist or die!

 

If their Daddies aren't rich, they shouldn't have been born anyway. So let them croak!

 

Dude, if you're not serious about something, use a /sarcasm tag, because you could literally sing the praises of "Obama, our fascist lord and savior", and I'd assume you were for real. This forum is full of loonies. I thought you were serious until I read your signature.

Well, I sure am glad that there are so many parallels between medical care (requires trained professionals and experts at every turn, effectively bottomless demand, extreme societal consequence for lacking care of individuals) and clothing (can be produced out-of-country by barely-trained individuals for pennies, demand limited by rate of consumers wearing through clothes, little to no actual consequence for anyone else if you don't have clothes) when it comes to the free market.

Of course, health insurance is also expensive. And then there are co-pays and deductibles on top of that which insurance won't cover. The fact of the matter is that the free market, while great in a lot of aspects, is extremely poorly equipped to deal with health care. It's just one of those things like education and roads where society is better as a whole if we allow government intervention.

 

Good argument against the $250 billion annual taxpayer subsidy that sustains employer-based "private" health insurance, but anecdotes can easily be cherry-picked to satisfy any agenda.

I'll stick with pragmatism: What approaches to health care coverage, in the realm of reality, are most successful in covering everyone effectively at the lowest price?

You need not revert to ideological fantasy. There are several nations whose superior approaches can be emulated. You need not pay off a superfluous middle man with a large percentage of every health care dollar.

In the meantime, nationalized RomneyCare will have to suffice in extending coverage to tens of thousands of Americans, and preventing bottom-line bureaucrats from excluding folks for pre-existing conditions, arbitrarily canceling coverage, and dictating treatment based upon profit.

Blind faith in profiteers is no substitute for actual experience when better paradigms are available.

 

There's nothing wrong with compelling people to do what you believe to be the right thing so long as the compulsion does not involve force or fraud. Most of us do it frequently. Employers compel employees to work harder with negative feedback. Wives compel husbands to do work around the house by offering more, or less, affection. Parents compel children to do their homework by threatening to remove privileges. Many in society compel men to be faithful to their wives by shaming adulterers (at least, that use to be more common.) A contract between two parties compels each party by imposing an obligation upon them in return for exchange of title or labor. A sales person might compel you to purchase his product by finding a need that you have and exploiting it. None of that involves force or fraud, yet you find it immoral. Interesting.

Government requiring people to buy healthcare, or taking over the healthcare industry and forcing everyone to pay for the benefits of strangers is done through the threat of and use of force. That is violent compulsion, and is immoral. I have never proposed such a thing and you will not find any post in which I have. You are far more in favor of compulsion by force than I am.

From the Oxford English Dictionary
selfish
adjective
(of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure:

One can "not want to share" and still do so and not be selfish. How the left progressives define it isn't how I define it nor how the dictionary defines it.

- - - Updated - - -

And yet you vote greedy sociopaths into office every term and give them the power to reign over your life and punish you for violating their decrees.

 

His death will prove that all socialists are the hypocrites everyone knows them to be. That will be societal good.

Libertarianism gives people who earn their own money the right to use their money as they see fit.

Since they earned their money, since it's THEIR money, they're not "greedy".

Of course you don't. You just said you didn't.

Socialism is a religion. Don't confuse that with voluntary donations of time and money to real charities. And, no, it's not a civic obligation, it's what some people do to buy the approval of others.

Taxes are supposed to be restricted to funding LAWFUL exercises of government. The supposed "charitable" functions of the modern nanny-state are not lawful since they are not Constitutional. These include the Socialist Security Ponzi Scheme, Medicare, Food Stamps, Public Broadcasting, National Endowments for "art" and other arrant nonsense.

If you condone the taxation of people for "social justice", you're condoning robbery. If you're not a socialist, you should stop supporting their causes and goals and work on becoming a better American, instead.

 

The goal of universal coverage is not a realistic goal for a free society, and it's an impossible goal for the ant colony you seek to implement.

 

Unless they let you hypnotize them, all compulsion involves FORCE.

GOVERNMENTS compel with threats of gross bodily harm, death, or imprisonment. Look up how Bill Clinton compelled the Branch Davidians to stay home.

 

Ridiculous.

There's another use of the word! Good for you. Isn't English amazing? We can have a word, like "compel" which can be used in different ways with similar meanings.

Let's try some examples:

"Government compels people to pay taxes by threatening them with lawsuits, fines, and imprisonment for failure to file." <<<< Involves threat of gross bodily harm, death, or imprisonment
"Government compels young men to apply for selective service." <<<< Involves threat of gross bodily harm, death, or imprisonment

"The business owner was compelled to sell his business due to his failing health" <<<< Does *not* involve threat of gross bodily harm, death, or imprisonment
"The parents compelled their child to do his homework by threatening to ground him if he failed to do so." <<<< Does *not* involve threat of gross bodily harm, death, or imprisonment
"He felt a compulsion to make things right between them." <<<< Does *not* involve threat of gross bodily harm, death, or imprisonment

What I can't figure out from this thread is where you think I demand that people be compelled to do anything. You've made the accusation more than once, I've asked you to show me where, and you refuse to do so. Since I am completely anti-state, I believe that I am in favor of less government compulsion than you are.

 

Actually if people bothered to buy more through the individual Market, they'd save, on average, $3,000... money their employer wastes on Administrative costs they never knew was for them.

This is not an anecdote, this a factual part of the market. LASIK, which isn't cornered by the same insurance requirements, paid mostly out of pocket, has dropped in price continually since it arose. The same to Plastic Surgery, the same to audiology. There's no reason to think the same can't happen to the rest of healthcare, the market isn't special.

Deregulated markets. You have not substantiated or even defined a counter-argument, all you've done is make an appeal to ridicule.

And I'm saying we can be better than them, just as we are already doing better in providing just about anything else. Once again, healthcare is the exception, you don't seem to be questioning why, nor insisting a socialist solution is needed in other markets to make them "better". You're inconsistent, and don't even know it.

My solution would actually work, Obamacare doesn't eliminate the uninsured, nor claims to. Its just cedes further control of medical dollars to the Government, when they already influenced 3 out of 4.

Thus, their entire argument is that what's causing the problem, is them not having influence over dollar #4 (Individual plans, and people who pay out of pocket). Sounds to me like convenient, petty rationalization.

We have actual experience, you're just afraid to cede power. You're no different then the Senators who stood against Airline Deregulation in the 1970s.

That was a first, and it should be noted, it worked.

 

Actually, no it doesn't. Big misconception the, the vast majority of health transactions can be handled by low-trained Nurses or Pharmacists.There's typically Doctor involve at some point, because, AMA scope clauses, not because they're necessary.

And if Diamandis is successful in making his Medical Tricorder, these clauses will come under even further scrutiny.

... Same for clothes, food, or energy.

... Because of how we regulate it. Costs are not discerned by the patient, to the point, you can actually get a cheaper rate than your co-pay, if you simple paid cash.

You're hinting at the Nature of goods... and FYI, roads are slowly being eroded from the public goods list, just as light houses and airlines already were.

Healthcare however belongs organically in the private sector because it is both rivalrous, and excludable. The idea that it isn't, is an accident of historical meddling during WWII, there is nothing special about it. And for future reference, we are actually discussing at least two separate industries, Health care, and Health Insurance.

 

Doctors are merely rote-learning Mamas' Boys who don't earn a living until they are 26. They spend the rest of their lives bitterly getting even for having to sacrifice their youth.

 

Wow. An amazingly detailed and logical refutation of the definition of a word.

 

Yeah, poor health never has anything to do with dying or bodily harm.

How many government actions use the "you'll be in poor health if you don't do this" compulsion?

Really? Grounding a child is not a form of imprisonment, in that his travels are restricted under threat of even greater punishment?

That means he had a hard on, which means biological urges at work. Failure to sanely address biological urges leads often to gross bodily harm, death, and possible imprisonment. Look what happened to the Rapist President and his urges.

You can't recognize real compulsion, how can you recognize your support for tyranny?

Who was it that said this:

There's EVERYTHING wrong with forcing people to act the way you want them to. Their lives are theirs, not yours, it's up to them to live and, always, to die by their choices.

 

They can make good diagnoses? Not only that, but "low-trained" is rather relative; you still need one per treatment, and they still go through fairly extensive training to get where they are.

That would go a long way in bridging the gap; although it remains to be seen if that's going to go the way of Galt's Gulch.

Fair enough, but the supply/demand equation for each of those things is not nearly as heavily skewed as for medical aid.

So the system in the US is horribly broken. Not news. But I don't see how removing regulation (beyond allowing insurance to be sold across state borders, that would definitely improve competition, just not to the degree necessary) would help.

Not really. I'm just pointing out that society as a whole is better off if we leave certain things in the hands of a centralized government. Roads, bandwidth, schools, health care, environmental protection; these are all things that the free market is simply ill-equipped to handle in ways we require for our day-to-day life. Sure, you could let the free market take over roads, and education, and environmental protection (although the latter would basically just be saying, "All right, no more regulations, it's all yours, guys!"), but the result would almost certainly be infinitely inferior to what we have now.

But again, I'm not about to say that "private goods" should inherently be removed from purview of the government. Because I don't believe the free market is always automatically the best solution. And I think any such belief flies directly in the face of reality, especially when examining health care across the world.

Yes, noted.

 

The AMA itself admitted it:

Demand for all three of these things is more immediate, if anything medical care should be easier to meet, not harder. The degree of people who are chronically sick, especially in a 1st world nation, are very few, yet this is somehow a crisis that effects all of us? It doesn't follow, nor does the insistence that it is the uninsured who are causing prices to rise. The cost of them is little more than noise, what we have instead is an entire medical system, that has been incentived for decades not to properly allocate costs. It's time we took those incentives away.

You just named one, another would be to remove certificate-of-need laws that block the construction of new clinics and hospitals. Another is a devolving of the AMA's licensing power, allow other associations to mint new Doctors and nurses. Another is to allow universal recognition of licensing in one state to the next. Their individual standards of malpractice may apply, but a doctor in one state should be a doctor in another. Another, don't block businesses like these that cater to minor health concerns. Yes, it means less business for the hospitals, but it also means the more serious cases are the ones they can get to.

Yet another, allow for freedom-of-contract in what does or doesn't constitute malpractice, let the Patient have some say in what they're willing to forgo. Maybe they're willing to take a chance on malpractice, if it means they can in return have a cheaper bill.

Finally, get rid of the tax write-off for employer provided health insurance. It's a WWII legacy policy that's in reality costing people money. If people are afraid their taxes will go up, just lower the rates enough to make up the difference.

Doing all of this would alleviate our problems, and finally allow Healthcare and Insurance to operate as the Markets they're supposed to be.

Oh yes really. With Governments grinding to a halt, letting infrastructure fall apart not just here but also in Europe, who steps in? The private sector, that's who. Without them, they just go to crap.

... That cost more than Private sector schools, for a worse result. I say, just devolve all of it to vouchers, let the market and Charter schools do it from now on.

In Sweden, they have farms that grow 100-year trees. They are not financed nor supported by anything Governmental. Our own logging sectors adopted sustainability practices, with no pressure from the Government. A former Green-Peace member just convinced them it was in their own self-interest.

Oh, and I just came across this today.

To be sure, the Government does have a role in monitoring the commons (or in terms of the chart, goods that are rivalrous, but non-excludable), but on its own in the environment, the Government itself isn't always... green. The way the Bureau of Land Management handles things, I'm left with the impression many national parks would be better left in trusts (Or, PPPs, as is happening with many Zoos).

With Environment you can make the argument, and roads when we speak to non-urban areas, but education? I'm sorry no, the private sector is just kicking all kinds of ass.

 

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say something contrary to the libertarian system, or untrue? Do you find something wrong with my pointing out that the system does not have any plans on a gubernatorial level for health care other than to scrap all forms of public health? Because, at the end of the day, that is what libertarians are fighting for, isn't it? The complete privatisation of society.

I don't remember saying anything about the market system or people buying cheaper health care plans. So, please don't rebut an argument I did not make whilst quoting me.

 

Who said I wasn't serious? I was merely pointing out the libertarian solution.

 

That's interesting. Didn't think that would be the case. You learn something new every day.

Not just chronically sick. One of the major issues with health care is the spread of infectious disease. If not all people can afford preventative care, then that weakens the overall herd immunity in a very negative way. Also, lack of preventative care can lead to self-diagnosis, and thus misdiagnosis - people getting cold symptoms, thinking "Eh, just another cold, I can still go to class", and infecting everyone around them with Tuberculosis or some similarly serious disease. Not common, but possible. And believe me - when a trip to the doctor costs you $75+, and you don't make decent money, you aren't going unless you know it's serious. And of course, people being sick drops overall productivity, which opens up its own can of worms.

Did I imply that? The problem with the uninsured isn't the cost. It's that we have people with no health care, and that in and of itself is a bad thing.

Care to elaborate? I don't doubt that this is the case, I'm more curious than anything else.

Holy (*)(*)(*)(*), I have never heard of those. Lemme google that...

...Why is that a thing? That is incredibly dumb.

I'm not sure how much of a solution this would be, primarily because we need to be sure our doctors are actually doctors - not quacks and cranks. And most people simply don't have the information to determine this - that's why we have the AMA to begin with. You could instate another licensing, but the only way that could help is if they had lower standards. And that's not a good idea.

I'd agree with this specifically, but we'd probably have a more wide-spread conflict there, because I find state-specific standards for things like that to be ridiculous in the first place. It's like state-specific traffic laws. It's pointless, confusing, and there would be pretty much no downside to having a national standard. I'm a bit more of a centrist in many regards.

With you there.

This is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea, for the same reason your idea about the AMA earlier was bad. People just aren't that informed. It's not even a matter of smart or not, it's that people don't know these kinds of things, and more often than not don't even know where to look for the information. I mention "PubMed" to a group of my father's friends, and their collective reaction is something like "Hodor!". And as long as we have issues like that (i.e. forever) the risk of such deregulation going horribly, horribly wrong is high. Like with the people who invested in Goldman Sachs, assuming that they had gotten a savings account at a typical "safe bet" investment bank.

All of these suggestions are nice, and probably should be implemented, but none of them address the more fundamental issues with leaving something which society pretty much needs everyone to get up to the free market, which will limit it to those who can afford it. Nobody is saying government does their job perfectly, but, well, it's a job that needs to be done by them. I'd say more, but I'm running really late and I have some things to take care of. I'll get back to this later.

 

Uh, to re-phrase that: "Careless Hospitals have been unclean and are passing around staff infections".

Thankfully, it has fallen.

Preventive care does not make the system cheaper.

Would be less if Doctors and clinics actually competed on their prices. And if we fixed all of this.

Not necessarily. Over 1/3 of the people without Healthcare, were said by the census to have an annual income in excess of $50,000. They could afford insurance, they just didn't want it. And that's their choice.

I believe I've already showed you this. Part of the reason prices are so high, is that insurance companies are asked to provide things they can't provide efficiently, and so have to pass the costs around onto other things in order to make up the difference, charging more for them than they're actually worth. Hence why these Doctors have worked so well in cutting costs..

It was Federal policy once upon a time, the thinking was if you could control the number of hospital beds, it would control costs. Even when the Federal Government got rid of them in the 1980's, many states kept them, as incumbent Hospitals liked being able to limit their competition while selling it as being "for the sake of the patient".

There are other Medical Associations out there, many who are created just for the fact that they're fed-up with the way the AMA does things.

Question: Why would competition, with rival minting associations that use different and possibly more effective ways of training doctors, lower standards?

If anything, it would help keep the AMA honest, who currently doesn't do the soundest job when checking their members for malpractice or incompetence. The rate I'm told is 30%.

Part of the service Insurance companies could provide is making sure the patient is getting the best deal here, the exact level of protection for the price they want.

Besides, we already sign waivers for other things in life where we might be harmed, and by extension there's already case precedent in place for if "something wasn't made aware" to the consumer, e.g., no, the law does not allow a provider to get off scot-free if they took advantage. America has the highest malpractice premiums in the world, it's overkill, and this is one of the ways we can fix it.

You can only believe that, if you believe the same about food, or gasoline, or cell phones. We have mini-clinics like these, we have doctors that offer surgeries out-of-pocket. What we've been doing is not protecting patients, but protecting a system that doesn't want to change, it wants the "good times" to keep rolling. It's just a grander example of the Certificate-of-need laws, claiming its for the patient, when it's really for the market incumbent.

 

You accuse me yet again of support for tyranny. I ask that you support your claims, or agree that it is only your subjective, baseless assertion. Which is especially ironic coming from someone who claims to speak for all libertarians when supporting government controlled monopolies and government mandated monopoly privileges.