[ExI] Medical Costs

[Lee Corbin]

Tom writes

> What *does* seem broken under the current system is the extraordinary
> care that goes towards newborn infants, vs. mediocre care for many
> adults.  Any adult of at least middling intelligence is worth more
> than *any* infant, and it strikes me as insane that medical resources
> are poured towards the latter without any thought to cost.

Let me tell you about a fairly obscure but very interesting practice
in some western societies that used to address this. True, on the one
hand good arguments can be made that adults are more important;
but on the other hand, good arguments can also be made that
"children are our future" and that they should be deemed the
more important.

How to resolve this impasse?  Oh, I know---your solution as most
people's is "let's vote!", and then the winning sides gets to force the
losing side to do it their way.

But about this practice/tradition I was talking about.  Up until fifty or
sixty years ago it was still fashionable in the West to avoid voting
on such things altogether.  As unworkable as it may seem, everyone
was allowed to work to earn money, and then *pay* for whichever
solution worked best for them!  For example, people in a family 
could *choose* whether to spend their money on the children's
illnesses or prevention, or spend it on the wage-earner's illnesses
without whom, perhaps all would go hungry.

It actually functioned very well:  you see, in any given family it can
be very complicated what is the best thing to do. So traditions
would evolve that would be suitable (most of the time) for whoever,
and if a family tried one thing and was unsatisfied, they could
immediately stop it and start trying the other. They could even
solicit opinions from friends, neighbors, and distant relatives.

I know that it seems odd not to have the government just *force*
the optimal solution on everyone.  After all, the government can
hire extremely smart people to figure out what is best, and then
see to it that everyone follows the prescriptions of these regulators
(alphabet agencies) or law-makers (federal court justices). But
I'm telling you, it actually worked better back then using the old
traditions, called, incidently---for future reference---freedom
and liberty.

Lee