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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007 Location: retired
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Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 10:26 am Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| I wanna know what wealthy individuals from developed countries come here. I'm very skeptical of that claim. |
To bypass waiting lists quite a few members of the mises clan have gone to Montana and the Dakota's. My brother was told he might have a brain tumor and yet they could only get him fully looked at several months later. He had the scans done the next night in Helena (and is fine). It wasn't all that expensive either. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 10:31 am Post subject: |
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Authors
Daniel P. Kessler - Stanford University
John F. Cogan - Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Glenn Hubbard - Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia University
http://healthpolicy.stanford.edu/news/wall_street_journal_oped_advocates_freemarket_solution_for_us_health_care_20040506/
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...Having sketched a portrait of the problems, we offer some suggestions for an overhaul:
Reform the tax treatment of health-care expenses
The most far-reaching and misguided government policy, established more than 60 years ago, allowed employer-provided health care to be exempt from taxation. Under this policy, medical care purchased through an employer's insurance plan is tax-free, while direct medical-care purchases by patients must be made with after-tax income.
The tax preference for employer health insurance has been instrumental in creating today's third-party payment system. In this perverse world, true insurance, in the form of coverage for catastrophic health events, is the exception; prepaid health care, in the form of coverage with low deductibles and copayments, is the rule. The tax preference for insurance is the primary reason five out of every six dollars of health-care spending are paid by third parties.
Using third parties to pay for health care is so pervasive that we accept it as a natural part of the health-care system. Yet there's nothing natural about it. Food and shelter are even more basic to our well-being, but we don't use insurance to buy bread or repair broken windows.
Low copayments and deductibles fuel excessive cost growth and breed wasteful medical practice. The reason is, as Milton Friedman put it, "Nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely as he spends his own." Medical care is no exception; when it is purchased through a low-copayment employer-sponsored health-insurance plan, the patient thinks he or she is paying only a fraction of the costs. Somebody else is paying the rest. As a result, consumers have little incentive to limit their use of unnecessary medical-care services, little incentive to shop for the health plan that best suits their needs in a cost effective way, and little incentive to evaluate their care on the basis of value |
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The above is a good illustration of a half way resolution to the health care problem. Better than we have now, it doesn't go in the fascist-socialist direction that will reduce both the quality and availability of health care as proposed by the fascist-socialist controlled Congress today. |
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Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 3:10 pm Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
Absolutely, the US has the best health care in the world. This is not in dispute by any intelligent observer.
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Why do you condemn the intelligence of so many professionals who make a job of comparing the way various nations provide health care?
| ontheway wrote: |
| This does not mean that every American is a consumer of these high quality services. Most people are healthy. Some choose not to be treated even when they have the resources or insurance. Some choose not to buy insurance even though they can afford it. |
And then there's the rest, who lack access because they're too poor, because their insurance policy essentially amounts to "junk insurance", or because they're essentially uninsurable due to things like pre-existing conditions (there have been reports of small businesses even being pressured into firing their employees by insurance companies in order to keep high-risk patients off of company insurance policies, usually through the means of totally unrealistic premium increases until the offending employee is gone). Why aren't these people worthy of mention? |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 4:41 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| bucheon bum wrote: |
| I wanna know what wealthy individuals from developed countries come here. I'm very skeptical of that claim. |
To bypass waiting lists quite a few members of the mises clan have gone to Montana and the Dakota's. My brother was told he might have a brain tumor and yet they could only get him fully looked at several months later. He had the scans done the next night in Helena (and is fine). It wasn't all that expensive either. |
How did that work insurance-wise? |
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Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 5:11 pm Post subject: |
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Why do Republicans speak in this fashion?
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| "I urge the president to take the public option off the table," Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "It is a roadblock to building the kind of consensus we need to move forward. . . It would be best to just move forward." |
The Republican Party has made it clear their goal is to prevent any meaningful reform. No compromise will be sufficient to "win over Republican skeptics." Why should they even be taken into account at this point? Interaction with the Republicans should be limited to repeatedly asking them, "Why do you support medicare but oppose government-provided insurance for the rest of the population?"
Olympia Snowe is correct, it would be best to just move forward. Moving foward requires total Democrat unity and Republicans being locked out of the process. That's the unfortunate truth. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007 Location: retired
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Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 8:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| mises wrote: |
| bucheon bum wrote: |
| I wanna know what wealthy individuals from developed countries come here. I'm very skeptical of that claim. |
To bypass waiting lists quite a few members of the mises clan have gone to Montana and the Dakota's. My brother was told he might have a brain tumor and yet they could only get him fully looked at several months later. He had the scans done the next night in Helena (and is fine). It wasn't all that expensive either. |
How did that work insurance-wise? |
They paid cash. 4k I think, plus air/hotel. |
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Gibberish
Joined: 29 Aug 2009
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 1:37 am Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
Absolutely, the US has the best health care in the world. This is not in dispute by any intelligent observer.
[/size] |
Try #37.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
I'd also like to say a big "f star star star you" to every obese American who suffers a heart attack while eating a Big Mac, smoker who gets lung cancer treatment, and moron who hurts themselves by doing stupid crap and will now be able to continue to pass on their unworthy genes thanks to my dime. |
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seonsengnimble
Joined: 02 Jun 2009 Location: taking a ride on the magic English bus
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 4:41 am Post subject: |
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| Gibberish wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
Absolutely, the US has the best health care in the world. This is not in dispute by any intelligent observer.
[/size] |
Try #37.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
I'd also like to say a big "f star star star you" to every obese American who suffers a heart attack while eating a Big Mac, smoker who gets lung cancer treatment, and moron who hurts themselves by doing stupid crap and will now be able to continue to pass on their unworthy genes thanks to my dime. |
I'm a smoker and couldn't agree with you more. This is why I would like to see taxes from cigarettes going towards health coverage. I smoke 1-2 packs a day. If cigarettes had a tax of $2 which was specifically allocated towards healthcare, then I would personally be contributing $1095/year towards healthcare. If I get lung cancer in 20 years, I will have spent nearly $22000 to cover my medical costs in addition to the other money I will have spent on premiums and/or co-payments. |
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bacasper

Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 8:15 am Post subject: |
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| Gibberish wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
Absolutely, the US has the best health care in the world. This is not in dispute by any intelligent observer.
[/size] |
Try #37.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
I'd also like to say a big "f star star star you" to every obese American who suffers a heart attack while eating a Big Mac, smoker who gets lung cancer treatment, and moron who hurts themselves by doing stupid crap and will now be able to continue to pass on their unworthy genes thanks to my dime. |
I'm with you on the first two, but I just love Jackass!
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 8:40 am Post subject: |
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These are worthless stats. In fact, they are so poorly computed that they are not "statistics" at all, but little better than random numbers on a page.
The reason is that to properly compare health care, you have to adjust for demographic factors that have more to do with health outcomes than the actual health care received, including: age, race, national origin, sex (the only factor WHO properly adjusts for), and personal health habbits.
Note this caveat from the site:
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| The World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems was last produced in 2000, and the WHO no longer produces such a ranking table, because of the complexity of the task |
When proper analysis is performed, comparing properly matched groups, country by country, the US health care system outperforms the others. |
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RufusW
Joined: 14 Jun 2008 Location: Busan
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Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 4:09 am Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
| You need to understand terms before you begin |
I was referring to the 'fed' in the same way criminals refer to the 'feds' - the federal government. Your enlarging and bolding of text makes you seem like a lunatic.... more silliness debunking to come..... |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 7:31 am Post subject: |
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| RufusW wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
| You need to understand terms before you begin |
I was referring to the 'fed' in the same way criminals refer to the 'feds' - the federal government. Your enlarging and bolding of text makes you seem like a lunatic.... more silliness debunking to come..... |
Either way, you've still got it wrong.
The "Fed" means the Federal Reserve.
The "Feds" means law enforcement officials from the Federal Government.
The "Federal Government" is called "the Government" or "Washington" and numerous other things.
I enlarge, bold, highlight and italicize things in order for you to be able to see that there are differences and to help you understand basic concepts. It seems you still have trouble with basic vocabulary, as well. |
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