I522 - Pros and Cons

[olyclimber]

No, Sauron prevailed. Soon all the little hobbitzes will be zombie hobbitzes, and a darkness will fall over the Shire.

 

[rob]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/180817948/Washington-Consumer-Alert-pdf

[Fairweather]

Has anyone here checked on Kimmo?

[Kimmo]

I heard someone say it's not over yet.

 

Any truth to that???

[ivan]

like they say in baseball...

[prole]

If it does go down, will anyone here really be happy about it? Why?

[Kimmo]

If it does go down, will anyone here really be happy about it? Why?

 

Here's the official list:

 

1. Massive unending lawsuits;

2. Massive compliance costs to farmers;

3. Ginormous RED TAPE;

4. Washington becomes PARIAH STATE;

5. MASSIVE FOOD COST INCREASES.

 

 

Didn't you see the ads?

[Kimmo]

BTW, ads for "No on I522" developed by Omnicom/Publicis Group, world's largest ad agency.

 

I admit to admiring their focused lack of flair in reaching the "common-sense" principles of Washington's smart voters with a "Shock and Awe" assault on their amygdalae.

 

[prole]

No, I meant here, as in the people putting this crap down their gullets.

[Kimmo]

Here at Cascadeclimbers.com, opposition to I522 was based on a thorough understanding of science.

[prole]

No, I meant here, as in the people putting this crap down their gullets.

[prole]

Oh yeah, fewer costs passed onto the consumer. Same rationale fro everything from sweatshop labor to using the ocean as a toilet. What's the endgame with this?

[ivan]

Here at Cascadeclimbers.com, opposition to I522 was based on a thorough understanding of science.

naw, i based my oppostion on the snazzy ad-bar at the bottom that told me what to think

[Kimmo]

a wonderful trick it is, to make someone think, that their thoughts and beliefs are their own.

 

 

[ivan]

fawk yeah, bro - master kong had that shit dailed since wayback: when the best leader's work is done the people say, 'we did it ourselves'

 

[Off_White]

Oh yeah, fewer costs passed onto the consumer. Same rationale fro everything from sweatshop labor to using the ocean as a toilet. What's the endgame with this?

 

Oh, I think we both know who will wind up paying for those tens of millions of dollars spent to defeat the initiative. "Gosh darn it, anti-gmo sentiment raised my food costs!"

[Rad]

a wonderful trick it is, to make someone think, that their thoughts and beliefs are their own.

 

Even better is to have them think your ideas are their own.

[olyclimber]

yA

[olyclimber]

WHOSE thoughts r WHOSE

[E-rock]

Depends on your point of view.

[JayB]

In developed countries, blabitty blah. Payor regimes blabbitty blabitty blabbity blah. blah. Blah blah blabity bla. Health status blah. Blah. [/Quote]

 

Your assertion was that a more centralized approach would lead to worse medical care.

 

That's only one undesirable outcome, but - yes. The reason is that the underlying realities that change the costs of producing things - ranging from X-ray machines to gauze - change so quickly that bureaucratic price-control regimes can never keep up and it becomes impossible to coordinate supply and demand. Even Friederich Fucking Engels understood this point, however dimly, in the 19th century:

 

To desire, in a society of producers who exchange their commodities, to establish the determination of value by labour time, by forbidding competition to establish this determination of value through pressure on prices in the only way it can be established, is therefore merely to prove that, at least in this sphere, one has adopted the usual utopian disdain of economic laws.

 

Secondly, competition, by bringing into operation the law of value of commodity production in a society of producers who exchange their commodities, precisely thereby brings about the only organisation and arrangement of social production which is possible in the circumstances. Only through the undervaluation or overvaluation of products is it forcibly brought home to the individual commodity producers what society requires or does not require and in what amounts. But it is precisely this sole regulator that the utopia advocated by Rodbertus among others wishes to abolish. And if we then ask what guarantee we have that necessary quantity and not more of each product will be produced, that we shall not go hungry in regard to corn and meat while we are choked in beet sugar and drowned in potato spirit, that we shall not lack trousers to cover our nakedness while trouser buttons flood us by the million."

 

I'll leave that point aside for the moment, though, and simply ask you to ponder what would happen if someone was able to wave a magic-wand and impose medicare/medicaid for all tomorrow? What percentage of care that's currently delivered, and clinics/hospitals currently in operation would stay open?

 

-International comparisons:

 

1) you can't just point to a given country and assume that it's a strict single payer system. Most countries have mixed public/private systems.

 

2)A statistical survey comparing the health of Swedes or Japanese with Americans tells you way more about how well Swedes and Japanese take care of themselves than it does about how well their doctors and hospitals take care of them.

 

If someone told you that people in Alabama are in significantly worse health, cost more to take care of, and tend to die sooner than people in Utah or Vermont on average would you uncritically attribute the differences in morbidity and mortality to differences in their respective health systems? Or would you say to yourself "People in the South tend to be fatter, poorer, dumber, and more reckless than people in Vermont, on average so it stands to reason that they tend to be sicker and die sooner since there's limits to what doctors and hospitals can do to counteract unhealthy lifestyles."?