[ExI] Yet another health care debate.

[Lee Corbin]

BillK characterises with some, but IMO not quite enough,
accuracy the libertarian response.

> How about:
> 
> 1) The US medical system is more expensive because of profiteering
> by the drug  and medical equipment industries, helped along by
> profiteering all the way down the chain from insurance companies,
> hospitals, doctors inflated wages, lawyers suing every which way, etc.

Yes, but you must also look at just *where* the medical and
technological advances are being made. Doesn't the U.S. by
far outweigh other countries' contributions?

> 4) Extreme libertarians do, from time to time, bring up the suggestion
> of letting all the poor, mentally disabled, physically disabled, etc.
> fall by the wayside (evolution in action),

Yes, except that you forgot to mention the role of charity. 
What is great about charity is that it's chancy, and so therefore
no one grows up expecting an entitlement. One may also turn
to one's Uncle Paul who has made a lot of money (because of
the unconstrained capitalist nature of a free economy---wish
as I do that we really had any major economic country that
truly had a free-market), and because Uncle Paul knows you,
your incentive from the get-go would have been to make
prudent decisions about saving and taking fewer medical
risks.

Even more important, we libertarians expect that just as prices
have plummeted for cosmetic surgery, so free-market 
mechanisms would place enormous downward forces on
the cost of all medical care. Of course, it's based on capitalist
self-interest. You can made more money if you can find a way
to make your service cheaper, and get far more people able
to afford it. The problem with government or communal care
is that the mechanism is short-circuited, and the incentives to
find cheaper solutions are much less. Hence the completely
astronomical costs of medical care, anywhere. (Except in
cosmetic surgery and other non-regulated areas.)

Lee