[extropy-chat] Re: Ethics and evolution

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Alfio Puglisi <puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
> 
> There aren't too many data points on what happens with state
> intervention in health care. But there are some. The OECD Health Data

> (http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/10/20/2789777.pdf, first table) shows
> that the United States has the highest percentage of GDP (about 13%)
> spent on health care of all the Western world. Traditional socialized
> health-care nations like Germany and Switzerland only spend 10%, and
> I believe that the health care is of comparable quality. All OECD
> nations show a slow rising of the GDP % spent on health care.

Reasons for this are as follows: 
1) The US is experiencing its health care baby boom crisis first.
2) Socialized nations are exporting their most expensive patients to
the US. They do this by rationing expensive procedures with waiting
lists that are longer than the life expectancy of the patients on the
lists. This drives patients to travel to the US to buy the procedures
with their own money, while at the same time driving up demand for the
procedures here, and thus driving up price with demand as the free
market laws dictate.
3) Free health care given to millions of illegals who do not pay for
their services, skip on the bills, etc and don't even pay taxes because
they are paid under the table. Literally billions of dollars nationwide
are spent on this, which would not be tolerated in Germany or
Switzerland.
4) To be fair the US is not doing enough to protect US workers from
corporations defrauding their retirees of their health plans they
already paid for, especially by abusing bankruptcy law to do so.

> 
> The second table in the paper shows that the American and German 
> government spend about the same amount per capita, but American
> citizens 
> need to spend a much larger amount for additional private health
> care.
> 
> The wikipedia article 
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_and_American_health_care_systems_compared
> looks at the differences in detail, and notes that only 9.5% of
> Canadian 
> GDP is spent on health care.
> 
> So the availble data suggests that socialized health care is 30%
> cheaper 
> than the US model, which I consider more marketized given the 
> prevalence of private insurance. Of course this data should be
> corrected 
> for the quality of health care, life styles, etc. but I believe the 
> countries are similar enough.
> 
> >> Pure libertarian free-market environments to my
> >> eyes resemble too much an evolution-like "survival
> >> of the fittest" game, where you'll do great if you are
> >> good (or better, if you have marketable skills/assets),
> >> and suffer a lot if you aren't.
> >
> > The problem is thinking that the welfare state and socialism
> somehow
> > escape evolution.  They don't.  On a pure free market, people
> freely
> > interact to choose what they believe are most profitable means and
> ends.
> > This goes for everyone, low or high IQ; low skill or highly
> talented;
> > impoverished or richly endowed.
> >
> > In a welfare state or under socialism, it's still survival of the
> > fittest, but it's just a different way of interacting.  Now,
> political
> > usefulness and political connections become much more important.
> 
> With this reason of thinking, everything is survival of the fittest.
> Which 
> could be true in a sense :-)  But each system can direct evolution
> towards 
> its goal. Markets are probably more flexible, because they can adapt 
> quickly to changes and different wills, but there's the question of
> how 
> long they'll take to optimize things, how much they oscillate around
> the 
> equilibrium, and how stable is the point of equilibrium itself.
> 
> Alfio
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> 


Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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