Sarah Palin: bat****, or howling-at-the-moon bat****?

[Guynemer]

The whole health care debate is just infuriating.

No one is talking about ways to reduce costs. No one, on either side of the aisle. That is where the crisis is. We spend (at least) twice as much as nearly every other industrialized nation on health care, and we get the same results as everyone else--or worse. And our spending continues to go up and up. It is ****ing insane.

We can debate about whether it is a moral imperative to cover everyone, whether or not it is the responsibility of government to take care of those who can not--or will not--take care of themselves, etc. But the real problem is the money.

The GOP is rightly opposing the current proposals, for all the wrong reasons.

Part of this is the maddening, unthinking nationalism we have as Americans. We all have the knee-jerk thought of "America has the best ______ in the world," even when it is evidently false, and no prominent politician anywhere on the political spectrum has the courage to suggest that we don't have the best of something.

[Arrian]

No one is talking about ways to reduce costs. No one, on either side of the aisle.

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with this as well. On the one hand, the supposed party of less spending has hung its hat on "death panels" and crap like that, instead of talking about cost control. Note: I know some Republicans and/or conservatives *have* been talking exclusively about cost-control, and I've no problem with that.

The party that is nominally for things I agree with (at least a basic level of coverage for all, regulation that addresses the worst abuses of the current insurance system) appears to be: 1) not serious about cost control (and if they were to bring this up at this point, they'd play right into the hands of the "death panel!" people. Since the Dems are mostly political cowards, they mostly run away at that point); and 2) totally in bed with the health insurers (and other stakeholders, I imagine), who wish to retain their current role in the system (and no doubt would love it if they could manage to suckle at the gummint's teat too).

This sucks.

-Arrian

[Guynemer]

There isn't a single politician in this country who has the stones to stand up and say, "Yes, health care should be rationed, needs to be rationed, and will be rationed, or our country will go bankrupt." We are ****ed.

[Dinner]

[Kidlicious]

NO.

If the government said: "we will pay for the health care of all people who have a full time job" then that WOULD be a subsidy to business in that sense. People would lower their reserve price for labour in order to receive the benefit of health care, and businesses would maintain the same demand curve, so more labour would be supplied. However, universal "free" coverage means that the government is saying "we will pay for health care of all people PERIOD". There is no first order change to the reserve price of labour. In fact, whatever 2nd order change showed up would be NEGATIVE both because of income effects AND because of budgetary constraints leading to increased taxes on income, labour etc.

You are a complete ****ing imbecile, kiddypie.

As you said in another post. People work no matter what. People don't lower their price for labor. They just go out and get the best job they can get.

What changes is the price that business who offer health insurance as a benefit will pay for labor, which means that they will hire more people.

[Kidlicious]

I don't see that as being intuitive.

I think there's a few issues here though. First of all, where healthcare is private, and my employer provides healthcare insurance to me, do I assign a value to the insurance that is equal to or greater than what the insurance cost my employer? Secondly, in a world where government pays for healthcare, will this cause my taxes to increase by an amount equal to or greater than what the cost of insurance would have been in a private system?

For example, imagine a scenario where healthcare is private. I get $30 an hour take home pay at my job, and my healthcare that is provided to me is worth $5 an hour to me (further, lets assume it also costs the company $5 an hour to provide it to me). To make the analogy easier, we'll assume there are no other benefits provided.

Compare this with a situation where healthcare is government funded, and taxes are higher. Everything else is equal, and I work at the exact same job. Because my employer does not pay for healthcare, he can afford to pay me $5 an hour more. However, due to the increase in taxes, I still only take home $30 an hour.

Both situations, my take home pay is the same. Both situations I have healthcare. Yet, the first situation is more attractive, because the total compensation is higher. If the first situation was the lowest marginal wage I was willing to work at, then the second situation would be a wage that I would not be willing to work at.

If you still don't understand, I'll try a different explanation.

Imagine a country where the government guarantees everybody decent living standards (food, housing, clothing etc). Let's say to do this, they give every adult a cheque for $2,000 a month. But to fund this, they have a regressive tax system, whereby the first $2,000 of income you earn every month is taxed at a 100% rate. How would this impact the supply of labour for jobs where the salary is less than $2,000 a month?

I understand that employees would likely be taxed to pay for universal health care. In that case businesses who previously paid for their employees health care would have their costs reduced. Which means that they would 1) probably pay more for labor and 2) hire more workers.

Now what I disagree with is your assertion that people drop out of the workforce because of universal health care. They still have to pay rent etc.. And even if they didn't most people don't want to be unemployed.

[Kidlicious]

If a definition of a subsidy is simply that businesses will hire more employees, government healthcare may qualify, though I'm not even sure. I'm not convinced government healthcare would in and of itself allow businesses to hire my employees.

More to the point though, I don't think that "allowing a business to hire more employees" is an accurate description of what a subsidy is. The well maintained and efficient highway system we have in the USA and Canada, combined with the well funded police and legal system certainly helps trade and allows businesses to hire more employees, yet I don't think that is a subsidy.

If it increases total output then it's going to increase exports. That's my initial point.

[Jon Miller]

Everything I read is that our healthcare is currently being rationed. It is just being rationed by for profit corporations, the insurance agencies.

While I am sure rationing is part of our problem, the biggest seems to be having a system that is neither capitalist nor socialist.

JM

[KrazyHorse]

As you said in another post. People work no matter what.

Any post in which I said that was obvious sarcasm, ********.

[Drake Tungsten]

There isn't a single politician in this country who has the stones to stand up and say, "Yes, health care should be rationed, needs to be rationed, and will be rationed, or our country will go bankrupt." We are ****ed.

The beauty of a free-market based healthcare reform is that people will ration their own healthcare thanks to price signals and self-interest. No need for death panels.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

But then they don't get to ration someone elses health care where is the fun in that?

[KrazyHorse]

The fact that labour supply tends to RELATIVE inelasticity means that the quantity of labour supplied does not change THAT MUCH when, for instance, a tax wedge is placed between the purchasers and suppliers of labour. That doesn't mean that the quantity of labour supplied remains THE SAME. And it certainly doesn't mean that increasing the tax wedge INCREASES the quantity of labour supplied.

****wit.

[KrazyHorse]

Anybody who thinks that universal health care is a business subsidy, or thinks that the taxes required to pay for it do not reduce economic output should consider replacing health care by something more fungible and seeing what conclusions they reach.

In other words, say that the gov't decides to give everybody in the country 5000$ a year and funds this by applying a surtax of X% on income. Do you think that this universal grant is a subsidy to pay for the first 5000$ of an employee's salary? Do you think employment will be higher or lower with this program in place?

[KrazyHorse]

Now, this is not to say that universal grants like this are necessarily bad. I am in fact a strong proponent of per capita lump sum payments to individuals every year. But what you're engaging in is redistribution at the expense of overall output. Now, maybe you can make the argument that the health care market in the US is so ****ed up, and the problems with it are so intractable that the efficiency gains from moving to a tax-funded system outweigh the output costs of increasing taxes to pay for this grant. In this case, you have what I'd consider to be good (redistribution) at no cost (or even perhaps at a positive benefit). But the key claim here is that government will be SIGNIFICANTLY better at delivering health care than the private sector is. The other element of the equation (that ANY tax-funded government grant tends to reduce output) is not in doubt.

[Arrian]

The beauty of a free-market based healthcare reform is that people will ration their own healthcare thanks to price signals and self-interest.

And you deal with the poor being ****ed under such a system how? Or is that not an issue for you?

-Arrian