A Four Step Health Care Solution

Discussion in 'Politics' started by aaronman, Aug 21, 2009.

  1. A Four Step Health Care Solution
    By Hans-Hermann Hoppe, c 1993



    Some interesting ideas. Thoughts?
     
  2. Sounds good. Needs more tort reform, though.
     

  3. I am happy to see a proposed solution, but i don't find this one very realistic.

    1. "national standard" of health care is important and is maintained by licensing medical facilities. It would make the cost of driving cheaper to remove all licensing of American drivers, but you don't because licensing provides safety.

    2. This is very extreme and would lead to deaths and illness from all the drugs that would flood the market. There would be no one regulating what is actually in the advil you take, or anything else we consume.

    3.I understand where the "healthy" citizens of America would certainly agree with this one. The "unhealthy" tho I'm sure would be fairly insulted by this reasoning. We need a reform that works for everyone or we'll all pay for it with cost shifting.

    4.He could have made the same point wit three words "fuck the sick". Not only would "cutting off" the sick cause an increase in health care cost, it is inhumane.
     
  4. Numbers one and two, like hydros said (and I'm paraphrasing), are retarded. They're both reliant upon the notion that all people are well-read and are able to either analyze complex medical studies, chemical interactions, levels of toxicity, etc. or to have to figure out someone who is trustworthy who can analyze this stuff for them. If they can't do either with 100% accuracy, they can be duped by pharmaceuticals into taking dangerous medication. The general public shouldn't be expected to have to ensure the safety and effectiveness of medication. It's totally unreasonable.

    3 sounds good. But, since I believe in the right to basic healthcare, I think there needs to be also some type of public option to go along with that.

    The argument for 4 is really stupid. Basically, he's saying helping sick people creates more sick people. What? I think this is an issue of ethics and morality; if you don't think healthcare is a right, you can agree with 4 (although stay away from that line of argument, because it makes you end up sounding like a dumbass). If you do think it's a right, then #4 isn't your cup of tea.
     
  5. Read it again:

    Competing voluntary accreditation agencies would take the place of compulsory government licensing - if health-care providers believe that such accreditation would enhance their own reputation, and that their consumers care about reputation, and are willing to pay for it.

    Much like the way producers are labelling their products with environementally friendly certificates to attract consumers, or hotels have star ratings. The argument is that a private agency that corporations pay for licensing can be just as good a protector of consumer safety as the government.

    You think a company would last if it was selling a killer drug? You think you would buy an unknown brand that had no guarantees or certifications from a private inspection agency?

    You realize the FDA has done a piss-poor job of protecting us over the years, right? I think we could do better, after all we the people are not influenced by bribes.

    Health Insurance companies have mandates for coverage, meaning they are forced to always cover certain illnesses, even those that are preventable and largely dependent on the responsibility of the consumer.

    If we remove those regulations the insurance companies will be able to make different packages catered for different people. If you are an unhealthy, fat disgusting slob you should have to pay more for insurance... that's just rational.

    We shouldn't be forcing insurance companies to do anything, it just raises the cost for everyone and results in net suffering. The utilitarian response would be to sacrifice the right to insurance for the unhealthy for the good of the majority.

    The uninsurable can be dealt with in a different, and still voluntary, way. Charity. Or if you want, consider a government program solely for those uninsurable.

    He's not really saying fuck the sick, he's saying stop the institutionalized theft to prop up an unhealthy segment of the population. He has a point though, every problem we throw money at gets worse. War on drugs, terror, poverty...

    There are other, better ways of helping the sick than Federal taxation.
     
  6. You think the FDA is trustworthy? :rolleyes:

    I think a private institution, like the BBB, could regulate the industry and protect consumers much better than a Federal bureaucracy. We should encourage self reliance anyways.

    Yea, see above. I feel compassion for the 'untouchables', maybe we can work something out for them, preferably a private charity. Otherwise, the point was that we can't insure something that is uninsurable, like suicide.

    He says they're drastic. I'm not so sure that following step 4 in the long run wouldn't prove beneficial for the majority.
     
  7. I like those 4 steps. It's amazing that those were published 16 years ago and apply today more than ever.

    My thoughts on some of the issues brought up in this thread:

    - The national standard of health care is bs. If you don't believe me then you only need to look at a hospital in an inner city versus a hospital in rich suburbia.

    - The FDA doesn't care about us. If they did, cannabis wouldn't be schedule I anymore.
     
  8. 1. Yes much like companies label they're products as environmentally friendly because they can, and not because they are. Most of that stuff is still just as bad, and there are no regulations preventing them from duping your average Joe into paying more for nothing.
    I don't want to have a my health products and food being rated like a hotel! It's muuuuch more important to have safe food and drugs then how many towels are stocked in the hotel room.

    2. Medicines that kill and cause illness should never be on the market, not your plan "once it kills enough people, no one will buy it anymore!"

    3.Charity/ government option for the sick? Sounds like medicaid man, that's gonna cost too much just like it does curently. Even tho the "winners" and "losers" don't want to be lumped together, that is how we can make a self-sustaining system operating in the black.

    4. Sick people and the poor are not in the same category as the War on Drugs, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When you throw the sick people to the curb with no insurance... they will have an emergency and need care at some point. The hospitals are forced to treat the uninsured for emergencies, and we will end up with their bill through cost shifting. Do you propose we also refuse emergency care to avoid that problem?
     
  9. How has the FDA done a terrible job? The vast majority of drugs on the market are relatively safe. The FDA rarely allows seriously dangerous ones to reach the market, and when they do (like in the case of addictive drugs like Oxycontin, Xanax, Morphine, etc.) they regulate it.

    See, your model of good product = profit and bad product = no profit work, but the problem is, when you're dealing with potentially dangerous products, the bad ones shouldn't be allowed to reach the market. It's unacceptable for ten or a hundred or a thousand people to die before people decide to stop buying the drug.
     

  10. Well, they certainly haven't done a good job regulating food since everything we consume is poisonous. Genetically modified, full of neurotoxic chemicals, devoid of nutrition... prescription drugs are the same way. Pretty bogus situation when the people approving the drugs are the same people selling them. :rolleyes:
     
  11. The free market has negative reinforcement regulations built in, rather than pre-crime regulations. There is consumer protection legislation to prevent fraud, much like we have now. Private businesses are held liable by the purchasing contract as well, if you are misled or harmed by their product you can sue them. A smart business would not want lawsuits or criminal fines.

    You clearly missed the point on hotels, but ok. JD Power & Associates tells you how safe a car is and how happy consumers are with it. A Pharmaceutical consumer watch dog agency can do just as much as the FDA, except they will have to face competition of other accreditation agencies.

    First of all, the pharmaceutical industry isn't a bunch of witch doctors anymore. Second, go here. The FDA is the same thing I am proposing, except it does not have to compete with a more credible agency, and it is never held accountable for its failures.


    There would be no coercive taxation so charity will make a lot more sense in a free market. And I said consider a government program only for the small percentage that can't get accepted by any of the private insurance groups. It could either assist you financially, give you tax rebates, or negotiate with insurance companies.

    Insurance would cost a lot less in the free market, as explained, so the only people that would have difficulty getting insurance would be those with terminal illnesses and unhealthy genetics.

    No, I propose voluntary medical institutions that are tax exempt, like the churches used to do before the government shut them down, for example.

    That's why I support an accreditation agency to replace the FDA. See my google link above for FDA failures. You know the saying about socialism, how it fails because eventually you run out of other people's money?

    Lack of FDA resources put public at risk, GAO report says


    That would never happen in a free market institution, they wouldn't stand for inefficiency.
     
  12. Would the pharmaceuticals have to be accredited by an agency? Or would people just be able to decide if they want to use an accredited company or not? If it's the latter, then again, you're depending on people to be smart. I don't have faith in the general public to always do that. And even if they have to be accredited, what's to stop them from setting up their own agency and accrediting themselves?

    And how exactly do we know which accreditation agency is effective? If the answer to that is let the market figure it out, that means that some agencies will have an opportunity to accredit bad drugs and will have done it, causing the public to lose faith in that agency. And that's fine, except for the public to lose faith, something bad has to happen. That bad thing is going to mean horrible side effects or deaths. I'm not comfortable with that happening.
     
  13. Do you think recreational drugs should be legalized? Like heroin, cocaine, meth...? I say yes because the responsible people shouldn't have to suffer because there are idiots out there. Let all the idiots die and the world will be a better place... or is natural selection too radical a concept for humans?

    No, they don't have to be accredited, but they want to be. There could be a brand that is famous for not getting accredited, and they will be dirt cheap, and sold only in the least respected stores.

    I'm not sure where people would buy drugs, but lets say its CVS or something, CVS would want to make sure the drugs they are selling are safe, wouldn't they? As would the company selling them, and the accreditation agency.


    I'm not denying that the transition period would be brutal, the nanny state has created an uninformed and ignorant consumer base.

     

  14. if #4 is inhumane, how can you live with yourself not supporting healthcare for the entire world? where does it stop being humane, when we lose more than 1,000,000 people a year to malaria, an almost preventable disease we are not funding to eliminate?
     
  15. The USA has been funding Aid for Malaria alone since the 1950's. One specific program is called the PMI or the President's Malaria Initiative.


    The following statistics are from USAID Health:
    "PMI funding in FY 2006 was $30 million, rose to $135 million in FY 2007, to $300 million in FYs 2008 and 2009, and will increase to $500 million in FY 2010."


    You are a little off point though. How can you make such an extreme claim that a government's responsibility to provide affordable health care to it's people, is the same thing as my personal responsibility to eliminate one of the most destructive Diseases on the planet :confused:

    The topic is the Op's posted 4 points. The biggest problem i still see is you want to remove government agencies, and hope for a kick ass replacement. I mean correct me if i'm wrong but it sees like the proposed "voluntary" options for licensing, Food and drug control, and insurance for the sick are only in your head. These companies don't exist and when/ if they ever do no one can say how efficient/ beneficial they'll be at all. That is again fine for my hotel rating system, but not My health and well being.
     
  16. What we do know is that government fails, consistently. They operate at a loss and slow down everything. The FDA is broke and this shows in their ability to perform. There is also little doubt that they are corrupt, so who else are we to turn to for consumer protection? There is no competition, and that is never a good thing.

    That is why we are proposing NEW solutions to old problems, instead of old solutions to old problems. Everything being presented by corporate lobbyists today is more subsidies to the current system, just another push to keep it going till the next generation.

    Interesting HUffPo Article:
    Private Regulation of Medicine: A win-win for Dr's, patients and public
     

  17. If you posted a thread about the FDA i would be very for some kind of reform. Food and drugs should be separated into two agencies. What you posted was NEW ideas, but not REALISTIC ideas. The public option will not be a push to the next generation. Our generation will pay for the transition, and then it will sustain its self. Health insurance has a very profitable business model, and the profits of a government option can pay to reduce the amount of subsidies being payed for by taxes.
     
  18. Better watch out guys! I don't think anyone inspected the cannabis we consume...:rolleyes:
     
  19. Actually yes they did and found that cannabis is not going to cause illness or death used in moderation. So i know i can smoke as much as i want and never OD. Are you saying that you believe our food should be as unregulated as MJ or any other illegal drug or that there is no reason to inspect anything?
     

  20. Are we talking about the same FDA? You trust their studies?

    Let's look at their statistics:

    Marijauna 1997 - 2005
    Primary Deaths: 0
    Secondary Deaths: 279

    Ok, so at least they admit 0 deaths occurred directly because of pot.

    Oh wait, what's this?

    FDA Approved Drugs in Place of Marijuana!
    Compazine: 15 Deaths
    Reglan: 37
    Marinol: 4
    Zofran: 79
    Anzement: 22
    Kytril: 36
    Tigan: 3



    Fuck your FDA man. :rolleyes:
     

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