What A Sustainable Health Care System In The U.S. Might Look Like

The response temptations here are numerous, but I think that in the interest of clarity, I'll only ask you a few questions, please: Do you disapprove of the concept of 'private property', or of the practice of using one's own education, abilities, and skills in order to achieve success in the United States? The simpler your answer, the greater the clarity.... In homeless camps one sees signs stating, "Property is theft!" (Pierre Joseph Proudhon's wearisome meme). Does that sentiment reflect your own belief?

Next, do you believe that people who contribute little or nothing deserve to have every bit as many healthcare choices and privileges as those who have paid, paid, and paid for healthcare services all their working lives?

Your answers can help clear the air, which at the moment is full of a LOT of 'fog'. I'm lost in yours, so, blow the fog away. And please, don't use Latin phrases in a sophomoric attempt to cut off presentation of debate offerings which differ from your own... The impressive "Q.E.D." is so often little more than an obvious artifice used by those who are too lazy to present proof to back up their statements. Surely you aren't one of them....

 

You have never met anyone clearer than I.

Thank you for being respectful.

No. The right to private property in the fruits of one's labor is a cornerstone of human civilization. But natural resources are not the fruit of anyone's labor, and therefore can never rightly become anyone's property.

Success at what? Too often, it is success at using the system to legally steal from others, especially the productive:
"I know the system is rigged because I use it."
-- Donald Trump

No. Like all socialists and capitalists, Proudhon was denying that there is a fundamental difference between property in the fruits of one's labor and property in others' rights to liberty. Property in land is certainly theft, and some say that is what Proudhon meant. But I have read the context, and I do not believe it.

No -- but (I love it when they give me a chance to quote Clint) deservin's got nothin' to do with it. It's simply good public policy to make basic health care available to all. More importantly, it is very, very bad public policy to issue and enforce monopoly privileges that make health care cost an order of magnitude more than it would in a free market.

If there is any fog, it is created by your unwillingness to know facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.

I have been very clear. I know that because in my profession I have been well paid for making things clear.

I have made no such attempt. I don't have to: you cannot refute a single sentence I have written.

You're damn right I'm not. My proof was clear, simple, and irrefutable.

 

So far, your one attempt at something like 'proof' consisted of recalling an anecdote from 1885 in which the son of a former slave owner wrote about the plight of former slaves. The question that rose immediately in my mind was: "If these share-croppers (or whatever they were) felt so badly mistreated then why the hell didn't they pack up their carpet bags and go somewhere else, and do something else?!" Negro slaves had been set free in 1865, and became full-fledged citizens of the United States in 1868... thus, they didn't HAVE to do anything they weren't WILLING TO DO.

Those, sir, are incontestable facts, and the bedrock of truth they rest on is the fact that, as American citizens in 2023, we are FREE to do whatever we want to do, and engage in any lawful activity! In imposing caveats on that vitally basic principle of the rights of U. S. citizens, you say, in essence, "It's OK if you pursue a career that fits my subjective criteria of what gainful activity should consist of, and for reasons that I think are important -- but what YOU want is unimportant!" You're not alone -- Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, and other notable advocates for Socialism/Communism felt the same way.

Next, again in your own subjective way, you decree, "It's simply good public policy to make basic health care available to all. More importantly, it is very, very bad public policy to issue and enforce monopoly privileges that make health care cost an order of magnitude more than it would in a free market." The line you recalled from Clint Eastwood in "Unforgiven" is spot-on accurate: ""Deserve's got nothing to do with it."... even though, amazingly, you contort it to say the opposite in the same paragraph!

I'll give you an equally good line, and it's especially applicable to a discussion about single-payer healthcare. Remember all those ads we saw in airliner magazines showing Chester Karrass and his immortal phrase (my emphasis), "In business, AS IN LIFE, you don't get what you DESERVE, you get what you NEGOTIATE" ? With single-payer, we can NEGOTIATE with the very companies you dislike for the best terms and conditions and pricing! They will have to NEGOTIATE with the largest customer-base in the world, or die!

Like all devout socialists, you reflect a viewpoint that everybody just somehow DESERVES to climb onboard a national healthcare system, whether they contribute anything to the staggering expenses of it or not. No use telling you that won't work... I've already tried that. You believe that "property (in land) is theft", and you would deny a person's ability to pursue opportunities in any kind of lawful work that he or she likes! How can you be reasoned with?

One last thought: Socialism and Communism, along with Fascism and Monarchism, have been tried by numerous societies and gotten rid of. Work-and-reward are enduring principles found in all successful economies, in every country. Parasitism, sloth, and acceptance of failure are hallmarks of every unsuccessful economy. Which kind of economy do you want?

 

No, that is false. The proof I gave was that free market capitalism is logically impossible because capitalism forces everyone to subsidize natural resource owners.

Because just like the contemporaneous landless European peasants whose plight was similar, no matter where they went, their rights to liberty had been forcibly stripped from them and made over to landowners as their private property.

The original reason America had slavery in the 17th-19th century when Europe did not was that in America in the 17th century, there was so much good land available that if landless workers were treated like slaves, they would just leave, and take up some good land of their own. In Europe, all the useful land was already privately owned, so landless workers could be treated like slaves without all the bother of actually owning them.

They were not set free, as I already proved to you. They were merely no longer property, like the contemporaneous landless European peasants who could also be treated like slaves without all the bother of actually owning them.

Sure they did. The only difference was that they were no longer property, could no longer be fettered and whipped to make them work. But just like contemporaneous landless European peasants (who were no better off, remember) they could be legally starved to death if they did not pay a landowner full market value just for permission to live. Starvation is actually more painful than being whipped. So they were therefore most certainly forced, I repeat, forced to work for the unearned profit of landowners, just as they had previously been forced to work for the unearned profit of slave owners.

No they aren't. I just proved your claims are false. You will find that happening a lot, as long as you presume to dispute with me.

"Lawful." Just as slaves were "free" to engage in any "lawful" activity in the antebellum South, and contemporaneous landless European peasants were "free" to starve to death -- as millions of them did -- if they did not pay a landowner for permission to live.

No. Whether a "gainful" activity relieves scarcity or merely transfers scarcity from oneself to others is not a subjective criterion. It is an objective fact. Stealing does not become productive effort through being made legal, as legalized slavery proved, and legalized landowning continues to prove every day.

Relief of scarcity is objectively important. The desire of the greedy to obtain wealth without earning it, through legalized stealing, is not.

No they didn't. You simply made that up.

There is nothing subjective about what I said. Stop makin' $#!+ up.

No, you just made another false claim. You will find that happening a lot, as long as you presume to dispute with me.

Please review the economics of monopolies:

https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Economics/Economics_(Boundless)/11:_Monopoly/11.3:_Monopoly_Production_and_Pricing_Decisions_and_Profit_Outcome

A monopolist will always reduce production to less than the free market level because it is more profitable. Production relieves scarcity, monopoly privilege aggravates it.

I am not a socialist, devout or any other kind, and have said many times that socialism is even worse than capitalism. You have merely decided not to know that fact because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

I already informed you that deserving has nothing to do with it. Try to pay attention.

Right: it's no use telling me it won't work because it works just fine in many advanced countries that actually do it.

Correct: I would deny people the ability to pursue opportunities in work that is lawful but counterproductive, and abrogates others' rights without just compensation -- like landowning, patent trolling, or slave owning in the antebellum South -- by changing the law.

You could try fact and logic (for a change).

Consider two economies that are similar in many respects: Hong Kong and the Philippines. Both are East Asian, crowded, tropical, maritime, market economies with well educated people but few natural resources. The Philippines is often considered the country where private landowning is most entrenched and egregious, and it is poor, stagnant, and oppressive. HK has had no private landowning for over 170 years, and is not only wealthy and dynamic, but before it reverted to Chinese rule in 1997, often topped lists of the freest and most prosperous economies in the world. Not surprisingly, many people go from the Philippines to HK to work, while few ever go the other way.

Which kind of economy do you want?

 

After I re-read your last post for the third time, I realized that there is no way that you and I can have a rational, fact-based discussion about this topic, or anything else related to forms of government, work-reward relationships, and the nature (and function) of free-market capitalism.

So, instead of getting into a thankless, endless series of acrimonious exchanges that solve absolutely nothing in each other's eyes, I'm ending my comments here, except to say that I do firmly believe that a single-payer health care system could bring about a dramatic and far more efficient, cost-effective system than anything that has been suggested by anyone else to this point.

People must pay in order to enroll in the single-payer system, which would become the largest, most powerful customer-base in the world. Those who elect not to contribute a 'fair-share' toward the expenses involved could fall back on the taxpayers' charity we've known for decades as Medicaid. Now... have a lovely day!

 

Right, because you blankly refuse to know facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil. I proved to you that free market capitalism is a logical contradiction. You have offered -- and will offer -- no counter-argument. You merely choose to maintain your belief despite having seen it proved false.

You are correct that a single payer system such as other advanced countries use would be more efficient, improve health outcomes, remove a nightmare financial threat from the middle class, and make the US economy far more competitive -- but it would be nothing compared to removing the monopoly privileges.

And you!

 

For your own sake, I recommend you discontinue hysterical, insulting diatribes that accuse others of being "false and evil". It makes you seem unbalanced, myopic, and silly. You may also want to review what others generally accept as "proof", for I do believe you misunderstand what "proof" actually consists of.

The impasse you and I reached in this thread is more profound than our viewpoints merely being 'as different as night and day' -- they are actually as different-as-night-and-day on DIFFERENT PLANETS! But, again, please have a happy day at whatever planet you're on... I certainly intend to on mine!

 

That is an absurd and disingenuous mischaracterization of my posts, as any honest reader can confirm.

I said your beliefs are false and evil.

See what I mean?

If I am not allowed to identify the fact that false and evil beliefs are false and evil, what am I allowed to say about them?

No, my posts demonstrate that I am informed, rational, intelligent, and honest. I will therefore continue to dispassionately identify the indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their inescapable logical implications, despite attempts to intimidate me into silence with false and disingenuous mischaracterizations of what I write.

<yawn> I hold a degree in philosophy, with honors, from an internationally respected university. The notion that you -- or some random Internet "others" -- know better than I what constitutes proof is laughable.

Right, because I respect fact and logic, while you do not.

Go nuts.

 

I wondered how long it would take for you to justify yourself by regaling us with your degree. So, a B.A. in Philo...? Actually, I would have guessed some other major, like Sociology, Anthropology, Education, or some other well-known, predictably liberal venue. Nevertheless... congratulations!

Well, I guess that I'm supposed to counter by parading my academic 'stuff'...? Let's just say that I did really well in school (Bach. of Science) even though I worked in full-time jobs every single day that I went to school, graduated with honors in a field that has made me a VERY good living, and, that I hope that your version of 'reality' is even half so good as mine is. So, enjoy your weekend now; you're "burning daylight"....

Afterthought: has anyone ever told you that you remind them of the Greek philosopher named Protagoras?

 

<yawn> I did no such thing. I simply informed you why your claim that I do not understand proof was false.

Actually, I was quite a Randroid in my teens and twenties, and took philosophy and physics (more math than physics, and mostly geophysics).

No, you are supposed to either dismiss the study of philosophy as worthless or even harmful, or wave your own irrelevant credentials, accomplishments, success, hardships overcome, etc. in the air as if they meant something. Like this:

Thanks for not disappointing.

No. I don't have much time for pre-Socratics, as what survives of their work is typically fragmentary and tends to be very obscure and metaphorical.

 

How easily you dismiss Protagoras, the man often credited with being the first and most important of the Sophists. How very tiresome... but because I didn't major in Philo, and you did, in this instance I'll yield to your accredited knowledge about it, even though I'm not sure Plato would agree....

Anyway... HEALTHCARE! First, try to understand that the utopian models that socialists gush over are primarily in Europe, in countries that have only a fraction of our population. Consider Norway (population 5.5 million), Denmark (population 5.9 million), the entire UK (population 67.5 million), France (population 68 million), or Germany (population 84 million), and contrast that with our current American population of ~335 million! To say the least, the sheer pressures of population and its predictable impact on healthcare in this country are beyond enormous -- but you expect that we can just sign everybody up whether or not they contribute anything toward the stupendous expenses involved in this wet-dream "healthcare-free-for-all"?!

It would bankrupt the country, and it wouldn't take long. And all the problems associated with those pie-in-the-sky European healthcare systems, including shortages of doctors, insanely long delays for treatment, and black-markets (among others) would appear -- but much worse in their impact here because, again, of the sheer population pressure, which is made worse by the fact that so many Americans on this give-away system would pay nothing!

But you should have an opportunity to defend your opinion that we should just sign everybody up, and give everything away for free. Now... how would you pay for it?

 

It's just too hard to get a handle on Protagoras because so little of his work survives. It's mostly just fragmentary quotes in the works of later authors.

How could that be relevant, any more than population is relevant to how well the restaurant industry feeds people?

My god, you are right! No wonder the American restaurant industry can't compare to the French, British or German ones: there are too many people to feed! And if you go to China or India, the population is so large that the restaurant industry is completely unable to cope!

What on earth do you incorrectly imagine the pressure and impact of greater population could be? Are you perhaps unaware that the greater population of the USA also includes a commensurately greater number of doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc.?

Yes, for the same reason I think the American restaurant industry is capable of feeding its larger number of customers just as well as the French, Dutch, Norwegian, etc. restaurant industries are of feeding theirs.

Only because monopoly rentier privileges make health care 5-10x as expensive as it would be in a free market.

That simply does not describe the experience of countries with universal single-payer systems.

No more than in other countries, proportionally.

By abolishing monopoly privilege and recovering the additional land value that the availability of free medical care would create, same as for all other desirable public services and infrastructure.

 

Rather than bicker with you about the ramification of population pressure on the ability of the medical sector to provide responsive healthcare to the U. S., I'll try to focus on your suggestion that in order to pay for a free universal medical system, it can be done "By abolishing monopoly privilege and recovering the additional land value that the availability of free medical care would create, same as for all other desirable public services and infrastructure."

Earlier in this thread, you affirmed that you do not believe the ownership of private property (real estate) should even be legal. Therefore, please elaborate on how the "recovering" of land value is tied to free medical care.

Please understand that in my vision of a single-payer system, I do not (NOT) support the idea of any "monopoly"... on the contrary... by forcing all healthcare providers to BID on a nationwide contract for medical services to the largest customer-base in the world, all bidders would have to 'sharpen their pencils'. Oh, and by the way, the penalties for COLLUSIVE BIDDING (if that's what you're worried about) are very real and substantial!

Afterthought: If you know anybody in Germany, ask them how easy it is find fully-staffed restaurants which are open during all the customary business hours there. Ask restaurant owners and hotel proprietors how easy it is to find people to work in ANY capacity at their businesses. Examine this worker shortage situation in even well-attended tourist areas along the Baltic and North Sea coasts, and down in Bavaria. Be prepared to be surprised! Next, ask anybody you know in Germany how much fun it is to try to get scheduled in anything like the foreseeable future for something like an MRI, or for subsequent surgery, and you'll be even more surprised.

 

What a gracious concession that you have been proved wrong.

No, that is false. I stated that private ownership of land -- i.e., the natural resource -- should not be legal. Real estate is land and the fixed improvements thereto. I never said improvements should not be privately owned. FTR, they should. You are just refusing to know the fact that there is an essential difference between owning the land provided by nature and owning the improvements created by labor.

The unimproved rental value of land is created by the desirable public services and infrastructure government provides (especially secure, exclusive tenure, but also including things like public education and health care), the opportunities and amenities the community provides, and the physical qualities nature provides at that location. You will note the absence from that list of anything the landowner provides. Yet the owner is legally privileged to take it. Justice requires that the publicly created unimproved rental value of land be recovered for the purposes and benefit of the public that creates it rather than being given away to private landowners in return for nothing, as it is now.

Patents on drugs and medical devices are monopolies, as are professional licensing requirements unrelated to competence.

The owner of a monopoly does not have to bid. He just tells buyers the price he demands. Google "epipen price" and start reading.

Collusion is a different issue. Medical monopolies are legal privileges.

I don't understand how you imagine that is related to population and provision of health care.

I doubt it.

 

In the interest of trying to actually get at some aspect of a logical discussion about healthcare, I'll put up with your childish denigration... one more time.

Now, I asked you specifically about how you would FUND a free national healthcare system, which does not require that anyone pay anything to be enrolled in it, for all-free benefits and services.

Your response seems to be (my emphasis added), "Justice (?) requires that the publicly created unimproved rental value of land be recovered for the purposes and benefit of the public that creates it rather than being given away to private landowners in return for nothing, as it is now."

Now... does this mumbo-jumbo statement indicate taxation of the property, confiscation by the government, or what? Do you understand that nothing is "being given away to private landowners"? People who purchase real estate BUY the property from the landowners... there is no "publicly created rental value", whether "unimproved" or otherwise. The "public" has no say in the transaction at all, so long as everything is done according to law and in observance of zoning ordinances, etc. And, if improvements enhance the value of a piece of real estate, then you can bet the owner of the property paid for that, too! Consider: if what you mean is that the infrastructure provided by a government to a piece of property (streets, water system, utilities, etc.), then remember that the property owner is also a property tax PAYER, and therefore entitled to the improvements the government offers, unless the government assesses additional, supplemental charges, taxes or 'fees'.

So... I didn't see any direct, forthright explanation from you describing in any detail how you would FUND your give-away healthcare system -- only continued condemnation of a nonexistent "monopoly" which, as I've already pointed out, couldn't exist in a situation where all competing corporations and/or healthcare consortiums would have to BID for Federal Government Healthcare System contracts! You have no answers; you propose no feasible ideas; you churn out nothing but insulting, caustic remarks and illogical, imaginary social constructions, and I'm weary of it.

Thus, unless you have something pertinent to add, my dialogue with you in this thread is suspended (or, since you like to engage in Latin, "sine die")....

 

It's perfectly clear. You just have to contrive some way of preventing yourself from knowing the facts it identifies because you have already realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.

Repayment of the subsidy to landowning by its recipients to the community that provides it.

No. I know the indisputable fact that the publicly created unimproved rental value of land is being given away to private landowners. That is what unimproved land value consists of. That is precisely and only why land costs so much.

That merely changes who is privileged to pocket the subsidy, same as buying a slave from his owner.

No, that is just baldly false, as already proved. As I already explained to you, the unimproved rental value of land is created by the services and infrastructure government provides, the opportunities and amenities the community provides, and the physical qualities nature provides at that location -- NONE of which is provided by the owner. Your blank refusal to know that fact is not an argument, sorry.

Oh, really?? Who do you think decides what is according to law, what the zoning ordinances say, etc.? Where do you think the original title comes from? Who is it that secures the owner's exclusive tenure for him?

You need to stop typing and start thinking.

There is a difference between paying for the addition of valuable improvements and paying for the pre-existing privilege of pocketing the subsidy. Paying for the pre-existing privilege merely changes who is entitled to pocket the subsidy. It does not create any value.

Unimproved land value records how much more the owner can expect to legally take from the community by owning the land than he will ever repay to the community in the form of taxes on it. That is the net subsidy.

Being legally entitled to steal something is not the same as producing it, as chattel slavery proved.

Yes you did. However, I will also add that a national health care system should also be funded in part by Pigovian taxes on things that impair the public health, like sales of tobacco, alcohol, and other recreational drugs.

The monopolies are not nonexistent, and I identified them for you. Read and learn:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robert...a-conglomerate-of-monopolies/?sh=389ddf8a2e4d

Sorry, but I am not very interested in a discussion in which your "arguments" consist of nothing but your bald refusals to know indisputable facts of objective physical reality.

That claim is objectively false, as already explained. When a drug, device, etc. is under patent, no one else is allowed to bid for the contract to supply it. That is very much the point.

That is a bald falsehood. I have answered your questions clearly. You merely refuse to know the facts I identified because you have already realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.

Bald falsehood.

Bald falsehood.

You are merely uncomfortable because I have proved your beliefs are false and evil, and you know you can't refute a single sentence I have written.

Too bad you couldn't find a willingness to know any facts.

G'Bye.

 

As I commented before, it's not just that your understanding and mine are as different as day-and-night -- it's as different as day-and-night on DIFFERENT PLANETS. Go in peace on your difficult way. Truly, to get traction with just about anyone else, you'll need all the help and good fortune you can find. It's OK to be different... build 'a better mousetrap'... develop a system that is better than free-market capitalism, because it certainly is not perfect. Good luck!

 

It's lonely being right.

No, I will only need them to be a little more honest.

Free market capitalism doesn't and can't exist because it is an oxymoron, as I already proved to you.

 

[QUOTE="bringiton, post: 1074423548, member: 70792"

Free market capitalism doesn't and can't exist because it is an oxymoron, as I already proved to you.[/QUOTE]

I had said, "It's OK to be different... build 'a better mousetrap'... develop a system that is better than free-market capitalism, because it certainly is not perfect." Indeed, there are many flaws in our own free-enterprise system, the most glaring of which is the way that wealthy people can use tax lawyers and tax accountants to thread their way through the U. S. Tax Code, using many exemptions, exclusions, loopholes, shelters, and other write-offs to avoid anything even close to paying a 'fair share'. In some ways, our opinions may be closer than you think.

My focus has been, and remains, on JUSTICE and equal treatment for all under the law. So, I bristle at the idea of the rich being able to use unjust, unfair, unequal taxation policy to pay little or nothing -- and -- I bristle at the idea of a growing, virulent parasite class in society being able to get nearly everything they need in life for FREE, from the government. Pardon the 'editorial'... part of me is conservative, and part of me is actually liberal (like on the matter of taxation)... thus, "Conservaliberal". Just thought I'd clear the air before I head on to other matters.

Believe this if nothing else -- we simply cannot afford to provide a gigantic 'free healthcare for all' circus. Somebody has to PAY for it, and if we let those people enroll for free who won't pay for anything, they'll wreck the whole thing! Have a superb day!

 

Until you can find a willingness to know the fact that the capitalist system under which the privileged, especially landowners, own other people's rights to liberty without making just compensation to the victims -- which forces the latter to subsidize the former -- is by definition not a free market, you have no hope of understanding the real issues.

No, because you are ignoring the biggest "loophole" of all: the privileged, especially landowners, not being required to repay the subsidies they are given at everyone else's expense.

No. You are in favor of the greatest injustice in history: the forcible, uncompensated removal of people's rights to liberty by government, and the conversion of those liberty rights into the private property of the privileged, especially landowners.

It is precisely the law that creates the unequal legal status of the privileged, especially landowners, and their victims.

You mean like the property tax system that typically requires repayment of only a small fraction of the subsidy to landowning?

You are describing the privileged, especially landowners. The greed of the welfare chiseler for unearned wealth is to the greed of the landowner as the brightness of the moon is to the brightness of the sun.

I actually agree with you that health care should not be free. People tend not to respect things they get for free (consider the fools who want to defund the police), and making something free foregoes any potential benefits of price-based market allocation of scarce resources.

However, in general, people only seek health care when they need it, as it is not a luxury consumption good and is normally inconvenient -- and often unpleasant, and even risky. That is why in advanced countries that actually offer free, universal health care, most people do a pretty good job of allocating the resource even though they do not pay for it (though there are exceptions, like lonely seniors who make medical appointments just to have someone to talk to). So it is therefore not the free enrollees that would be the main problem with a free, universal, single-payer health care system in the USA: it is the same monopoly privileges that make health care cost 5-10x its free market cost of production under the current system.

 

I've 'liked' your post, even though you and I have some profoundly different views about a number of things, but not everything. I wish you well, and at some point I do wish you would present your idea of how a universal American healthcare system should be funded. All the best to you... see you later!

 

I actually don't think there are good reasons to make universal health care a national program (IF the monopoly privileges are rescinded, which only national governments have the power to do). In Canada, universal health care -- and it is free -- is a provincial responsibility, although most of the money does come from the federal government. IMO most government functions should be devolved to junior levels of government, which are more suitably funded by location subsidy repayment (LSR). Not coincidentally, LSR also has by far the greatest capacity to obtain public revenue with total justice and efficiency (see Gaffney, "The Hidden Taxable Capacity of Land: Enough and to Spare"). I've stated that universal single payer health care should and could be funded by a combination of LSR and Pigovian taxes on things that impair public health, like alcohol and tobacco.

 

So that all of us can have a more comprehensive idea of relatively unknown concepts like a "Pigovian" tax, I'd like to share this explanation from a usually reliable source: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pigoviantax.asp . After all, if this could supply revenue for a major healthcare initiative, it does bear examination!

I had less success in finding anything really useful (to me) in understanding "location subsidy repayment (LSR)", but this came up first and most prominently when I googled it: https://www.healthinsurance.org/obamacare/beware-obamacares-subsidy-cliff/

Here's the thing -- in trying to find a solution to what healthcare is challenged with in the near future, we need to examine all alternatives, and our colleague @bringiton has suggested these possibilities for our consideration.

To the matter of "monopolies", which @bringiton is certain would survive even in spite of having to submit to the rigorous competitive pressures of a federal government invitation-for-bid (IFB), perhaps one of the better ways to address monopolies would be to allow American citizens to order drugs legally for their personal healthcare from any country in the world -- directly -- unless they are proven to being categorically unsafe.

Is this a useful start?

 

The idea of Pigovian taxes is that they discourage behavior deemed socially harmful by making it more costly. We already use them for alcohol and tobacco. In theory, we could legalize and tax all other recreational drugs, too, at a level that would result in the same amount of use -- but the effect would be substantial revenue for government instead of the immense costs of enforcement and incarceration.

That looks like a spurious hit. Location subsidy repayment has most often been associated with the centuries-old concept of land value taxation (LVT), but LSR is IMO both more accurate and more general.

That would certainly be a large step in the right direction. But drug patent monopolies are not the only ones.

Yes, and it shows you are thinking of at least some of the right issues.

 

Your post above is informative and useful. For instance, based on your elaboration, I think that there is quite a lot of useful potential in Pigovian taxes. Those should certainly be explored further because, indeed, higher prices for things like cigarettes (largely due to higher taxes) have been proven to be large factors in people quitting smoking -- and thus to a healthcare system, very beneficial. Having been a smoker myself, ages ago, I remember that habits like that are easier to give up permanently when there is some very real financial PAIN associated with it....