If Larry Niven ever wrote a colder sentence, I haven’t read it – and it was in the back of my head as I was plowing through Senator Clinton’s recent New Yorker article about health care issues. It was less dry than I expected; unrepentant VRWCer I may be, but I give her full points for starting off with “I know what you’re thinking. Hillary Clinton and health care? Been there. Didn’t do that!” Not Eddie Izzard-level humor, mind you, but for a career politician it wasn’t bad.
As to substantive comments, Jane Galt doesn’t agree with Senator Clinton that the difficulty of people with pre-existing problems to get insurance represents a market failure (although her comments section is debating the issue quite politely, in the main), but is more concerned that (in her opinion) this article violates the spirit of the campaign-finance rules; Robert Tagorda liked the idea of better use of information technology, but has issues with her number of uninsured Americans. (Links via Pejmanesque)
As for me… well, it’s not a technical piece, to be sure, and it’s certainly not designed to serve as an argument against getting a national health care system. That being said, a good number of the problems listed are not partisan ones. We do need to revamp our disease protocols to handle the modern era, our existing healthcare system is notably inefficient and we really should start assessing just what modern diagnostic techniques are going to do to our health coverage, just to pick three examples at random*. Discussing them can’t hurt. Truth be told, I also find that I am happier about contemplating the national health care proposals of the duly elected junior Senator from New York than I am in those of the unelected First Lady, which is no doubt some sort of horrible flaw in me, but what the heck. I’m allowed to be quirky, seeing as I’m just this guy on the Internet.
No, really. There’s, like, a blanket permission for it somewhere around here…
Moe
*Which is why the title quote. We as a species can get pretty cold-blooded when it comes to our own lifespan, or lack of same: if it turns out that insurance companies decide to run amok with genetic testing for premiums, I advise them to be very cautious about it. One false move and they’ll be dealing with mobs with pitchforks and torches.
The preceding was a cliche, but not a metaphorical one.
Context on the Niven?
Also, yeah, so HRC can laugh at herself – she’s a politician, it’s part of the job description. (Incidentally, David Sedaris’s piece in that New Yorker is either wonderful or deeply evil.)
“Context on the Niven?”
Umm, actually, I’d rather not. Generally speaking, it’s associated with one of those speculative ideas that should really, really stay speculative. It was bad enough when Kevorkian picked up on the notion…
Moe
PS: As for the humor… (shrug) We’ve seen little of it these last few years. I’m happy to see some, mind you.
as someone with a pre-existing condition who has had trouble in the past with insurance, here’s a hearty FU to Jane Galt.
Ok, I’d been looking for an excuse to try Amazon’s text search. – From that article I referenced, it sounds like one guy writes all the self-deprecation you hear in DC…
rilkefan, I’m pretty sure it’s in the context of one of Niven’s stories about organlegging; the idea is that organ transplantation has gotten easy and cheap enough that the government starts harvesting organs from criminals sentenced to death, and it spirals out of control from there until jaywalking is a capital crime. It was an effective enough idea when I first read the stories, but I find that time has dulled Niven’s charms for me. Mostly at this point I want to buy him a biology textbook and make him read it cover to cover.
Josh, thanks, I did in fact find the context by putting Moe’s phrase (in quotes) and Niven into Amazon’s search. The book was _Flatlander_, which seemed to consist mostly of clunky exposition (at least such was the case for the five pages returned by the search.) I didn’t note jaywalking, but “a fourth offense of false advertising” being a captial crime was amusing.
Take it from someone in the “biz”: we will end up with a single-payer, government run system no matter how much the far end of the right kicks and screams. The wheels are coming off the current system. The only question is whether we will step in and fix the system before a crisis occurs, or after.
Take it from someone in the “biz”: we will end up with a single-payer, government run system no matter how much the far end of the right kicks and screams.
A movie comes to mind. Tom Hanks, Shelley Long. I can’t seem to remember the title, though.
First, although I am bitterly opposed to “socialized medicine”, we need to recognize that it’s hopeless. We have socialized medicine–more than half of every dollar spent on health care comes from government. There is no conceivable process by which socialized medicine is going away. We will continue to have socialized medicine. The trend of full-time employed non-employer uninsured relative to full-time employed employer-insured does not suggest that our employment based system will endure forever. It’s time to give up on this fight and work to have the best possible system of socialized medicine.
Second, everyone’s ox will be gored. There will be health-care rationing (there already is). Physician salaries will not continue to rise at the rate at which they historically have. And you’ll pay more.
Third, our current system is deeply immoral. Unless you believe that the salaries we pay M. D.’s here and the huge number of M. D.’s we import annually has no impact whatsoever on the cost of health care outside the U. S. then it’s got to be self-evident that we’re raising the cost of health care worldwide.
Never have understood the logic of being bitterly opposed to a more effective and cheaper system. Socialized health care works: the free-market system in the US demonstrably doesn’t work. It is, however, immensely profitable to pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies, and so long as they have their hand firmly on the pulse of government, we can expect to continue to see the same lousy system prevail in the US. Who cares how many thousand Americans die each year through lack of health insurance?
I happen to think that with a single payer health my daughter wouldn’t be asking me, weeping as I type this, why the bone doctor wouldn’t fix her broken arm. “It’s HMO beaurocracy, dear.” I explain. “An extra 36 hours of intense pain and Tylenol 3s are a small price to pay in the fight against creaping Marxism.” I’m sure she understands that stubborn resistance to a sane health policy is helping to preserve her freedom.
A follow up, because I’m still mad about this.
When somebody wants to purchase a good, but can’t find a seller, isn’t that classic market failure?
When somebody wants to purchase a good, but can’t find a seller, isn’t that classic market failure?
Can’t find a seller? At any price?
as of a few years ago, as a freelancer, yes.
But wait, isn’t “market failure” an oxymoron on the level of “fallible god”?
Gromit