Author Topic: My Problem with Universal Health Care  (Read 931 times)

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Alia

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Re: My Problem with Universal Health Care
« on: September 07, 2009, 08:41:02 pm »
To speak of deserving something, as you just have, is admitting that it is a right. You do not want to see poeple die because they cannot pay, and there isn't anything wrong with that.

Health care costs are ballooning out of control for all the reasons the Republicans say. However there is a very nasty reason nobody ever mentions. Medicine does not belong within capitalism because it's not capitalistic. Medicine is either needed to live, or it is not. Even after you strip away the government scamming hospitals out of billions by forcing them to accept everyone in the emergency room, even if they cannot pay, even after you reform the insurance system, medicine will always be left with an ugly, anti-capitalistic flaw: You cannot refuse it if you need it.

Let me elaborate. If ten people suffer amoung five doctors, and are each paying the doctors $10 a week to treat their condition, the doctors make $50 a week each. However, if the doctors increase the cost of treatment to $20, even if two of the ten can no longer pay, the doctors each have four clients left and make $80 a week, and for less work, too. If they increase the cost to $40, and another two cannot pay, they still each have three clients left and each recieve $120 a week. Taking this even further, the ideal situation is to charge exhorbitantly, let us say we make the cost of treatment $200 a week, and only the last two people can pay, leaving the doctors with minnimum work and maximum profit of $200 a week each, because no one who can pay will refuse. This is the ideal. If one of our two doctors lowered his prices back to $10 a week, he would recieve double the work he originally had and only $100 a week compared to $200 for just one client.

I believe in Socialism where Capitalism must fail, and here is an example. Whenever need works to the benefit of the trust and oversupply cannot counter it, I think intervention must come.

Food is another such commodity, and this will eventually be realised. Now, deliberate oversupply counters need. This is so farmer after farmer is put out of business because low prices do not allow him to compete with massive growers, and when all the skills are comfortably in the hands of a select few, a shortage will be engineered and prices will skyrocket. This is waiting in the wings, I assure you. People not on Welfare will die. The starving will roam the streets raiding peoples' homes. This is not Depression II, this is utter Catastrophe.

I believe in price fixing, but, only for necessities. Someone needs to see to it that providers of necessities make enough to live, even when there are a great many provders and harsh competition. This forestalls Catastrophe.

The way I see it government should probably step in on health care, but the problem needs to be faced from the bottom up. Firstly, medical school is too expensive. Government-run medical schools should admit students, and even pay them to live comfortably for high academic achievement, and enough to at least live even if they have a C-average. If they never graduate, they must repay their entire debt to Society. If they do graduate, they should be put to work as doctors, and paid a fair price for their hours rather than an exhorbitant one. The face of medicine should change; no longer harsh competition in which the brightest few with their eyes on money from the outset earn the right to stand beyond competition and drive up prices. Instead, a decent system where those genuinely willing to help can be doctors, paid a fair wage for a fair job. If people want the best, with no chance of error, they can pay for that. If they're sick and need help from an honest Joe for an honest price, then they can be helped.