[ExI] The Dogs of Immortality

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Thu Jul 17 20:36:25 UTC 2008


Stathis writes

> Lee writes
> 
>> It's called socialized medicine. First, by taxing the bejesus
>> out of everyone, only the very rich will still be able to afford
>> private health care, private doctors, and private hospitals.
>>
>> The rest of us will just have to take a number and pray.
> 
> You're clearly completely convinced that publicly funded medicine is
> inferior. Would there be any contrary evidence that would make you
> reconsider?

Great question!  We should ask each other that more often.

A semi-controlled experiement would suffice.  Suppose that a
wave of good sense came across the U.S. and they abandoned
Washington's involvement in public care, returning billions each
year to the states, and then suppose that we could undertake
fifty separate experiments:  assuming feasibility (e.g. people
couldn't cheat by paying zero health-related taxes in one state
and slipping over the border to another to enjoy free medical
care) wouldn't that *soon* tell us something?

I would say that within 15 years we would know almost beyond
a doubt which system worked better.

(I admit---one big problem might still remain:  we conceivably
could still have different values.  To take an extreme and unrelated
example, I wouldn't mind if a very few people in a country were
to starve to death each year due to their total indolence, if it
provided vastly, vastly improved standards of living for everyone
else.   So it could happen---for example---that a very small number
of people who needed help couldn't get it from charity, and their
stories, while tragic, might be a deciding factor for you but not for
me.)

But yes. If the outcome of fifty separate experiments (that were 
able because of that large number to control for demographic
and cultural distorting factors) showed that government run health
somehow worked better, I'd change my mind.

Lee




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