Drlee wrote:Lousy analogy.
If you think this is a bad analogy, you would have to refine your argument.
Your argument for public provision of health are went:
1. The American people will not accept hospitals turning away sick people.
2. Their care costs money that they can't pay themselves
3. Therefore, government ought to fund medical care.
Clearly, you don't believe the same logic applies to food provision. What is the relevant difference?
The market is failing WRT healthy food too.
How do you know? The market gives people what they are willing to pay for. If most people prefer tasty and convenient to healthy, a market providing those goods isn't failing.
Eran you opt for theory and NEVER provide examples. Here is one I will provide. The eighth largest economy in the world allows competition among insurance companies. The result? Prices are skyrocketing and access is falling. Outcomes are failing as well. In this minimally controlled market the insurance company profits are up and the dumping of unprofitable patients on the roles of the state increasing.
Competition between insurance companies is just one component (btw, don't believe political headlines; more often than not, such "competition" is still expected to take place in a highly-restricted marketplace).
We also need competition at the provision level, i.e. relaxation (ideally, complete removal) of the thicket of regulations and restrictions around provision of medical care.
Finally, we need to allow people to pay for their own cost, or, at least,
care about that cost. A good idea would be to remove the silly rule that employer-provided health-insurance (but not privately-purchased health-insurance) are tax deductible. This rule creates endless distortions in the market, such as preference for very broad "insurance" that actually is pre-paid medical services.
What would happen to food prices if people were incentivized to only consume foods through programs that allow, for a fixed monthly fee, unlimited access to a range of restaurants?
Now you tell me Eran. You maintain that your system can reduce prices so that everyone can afford effective insurance. Tell me what a family of four that earns less than $20K per year can afford. 20% of households do you know. Tell us exactly where the money will come from to pay for their care and make it profitable for an insurance company to insure them.
Who knows? If we relaxed medical licensing laws, and allowed most minor medical diagnosis and procedures to be performed by experienced nurses and pharmacists, created high deductible insurance policy that only covered catastrophic health-care (e.g. being diagnosed with cancer), as opposed to covering every doctor visit to diagnose and treat an ear infection, if we allowed qualified medical professionals from other countries to offer services in the US, if Wal-mart offered a quick consultation with their own trained employees, covering routine health-care issues, relying on advanced computer-driven expert systems and outsourcing diagnosis to Doctors living and working in India...
I repeat - who knows what innovations might come if you unshackle entrepreneurs and allow them to think?
Go for it. If you have something that the best experts in the country don't know tell me.
This is not how innovation and progress works. You don't condition allowing innovations on a specific roadmap of where those innovations might take you. You unleash entrepreneurs and see what they come up with.
Free men are not equal and equal men are not free.
Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.