The Healthcare Debate

[digitalpoetry]

Among all the other rhetoric flying around about health care, one sentiment keeps jumping out at me. I've heard it repeated in several places by a variety of people: "if all these people are so angry about the president's plan, why is no one proposing any alternative solutions

Comments

[digitalpoetry]

I said nothing about forcing sick people to go bankrupt - if anything, they'd have a higher average standard of living than they do currently, or would under a more socialist system, because the total cost of their care would be far lower. It's also entirely possible (and desirable) to set up voluntary non-governmental solutions like charities and non-profit hospitals to help people in that situation. With the cost of care being lower, such solutions would be easier to implement.

Systems like this can continue to operate for a very long period of time - it's not a question of whether they work at all, but a question of whether it's a good way to allocate resources. (There's also the competing moral and ethical frameworks the two systems are based in, but that's a whole separate discussion) A centrally-run system can never allocate resources (whether those resources are doctors, operating rooms, etc.) as well as a free market, because there is no profit incentive pushing people to find better options. In real-world terms, that means that a free market finds cheaper, faster, better solutions, and leaves people with more money, time and options - more doctors, and more and better medicines - than socialism.

It's important to remember that in either system some individuals would be better off and some worse, compared to now. The difference is that over time the free market solution pushes everyone's standard of living up by reducing prices and making products and services more abundant, compared to socialism.