Comments (9)

• happylee

• Outstanding. Thank you.

• Published: July 19, 2007 4:19 PM

• Yancey Ward

• I have beat my head into concrete trying to explain to people that the overall health of a population has little to do with the quality of the healthcare, and has much more to do with hygiene, diet, and other lifestyle choices. I have asked repeatedly how socialized healthcare is going to make Americans lose weight, exercise, and stop shooting each other.

  Stefan, I intend to link to your analysis often. A very nice job.

• Published: July 19, 2007 9:31 PM

• Jim

• Americans lose weight? Certainly, through starvation resulting from rapidly increasing taxation. Our health care will be founded by our general well being.

• Published: July 19, 2007 9:39 PM

• William H. Stoddard

• One of my list of "If I were dictator" fantasies, in recent years, has been to impose an ultimatum on countries with socialist health care systems: as long as they continue to have all or nearly all medications purchased by their governments, and use that leverage to force purchase prices down, the United States will not license any newly developed medication for export to them. They can go on getting already developed drugs at artificially low prices, but if they won't pay a share of research costs for new drugs, they can go without. Of course, this is rather dubious as a libertarian policy, but it has a certain element of poetic justice to it, in the line of hoisting them with their own petards.

• Published: July 19, 2007 11:12 PM

• Anthony

• "I have asked repeatedly how socialized healthcare is going to make Americans lose weight, exercise, and stop shooting each other."

  I suppose by making it a requisite to qualify for healthcare, you must take good care of yourself. Talk about leeway for mild fascism. ;)

• Published: July 20, 2007 6:18 AM

• Gabriel

• Also worth mentioning is this tidbit (taken from the Wikipedia article on Medicare):

  Others, such as the Cato Institute, point to the fundamental interference Medicare has on market prices. Medicare specifies standard rates for nearly every medical treatment. Because participating health-care providers must adhere to these rates for all patients, these policies effectively create a regulated price structure for all medical care. [emphasis added]

  Thus, the "free market" healthcare system in the United States must operate under the government's system of price controls. In other words, it's more like the opposite of a free market!

  I mention this because I have seen folks who oppose socialized medicine who seem to think it is their duty to come rushing to the defense of the current American healthcare system. They seem to think, "I must defend our system or I'm letting the socialists win." In reality, our current system is not very good at all. It is something that opponents of socialized medicine should actually be attacking, not defending!

• Published: July 20, 2007 12:28 PM

• D. Saul Weiner

• "I mention this because I have seen folks who oppose socialized medicine who seem to think it is their duty to come rushing to the defense of the current American healthcare system. They seem to think, "I must defend our system or I'm letting the socialists win." In reality, our current system is not very good at all. It is something that opponents of socialized medicine should actually be attacking, not defending!"

  Exactly right. No one in his right mind should defend the beast we currently have as though it were a free market. Our job is to demonstrate how the current system basically does not allow a free market to operate and that is why things are so screwed up. And that if you want to fix it, the proper approach is to eliminate the barriers to an open, competitive marketplace. That is what is so frustrating about films like Moore's. He looks for scapegoats for problems while blithely ignoring the real roots of the evil.

• Published: July 20, 2007 2:16 PM

• Kevan Huston

• All true. The issue has been quite successfully "framed" by the left as free market versus just plain "free"; whereas the reality is that excessive regulation and minimum coverage mandates are the real culprit behind the inefficiencies in the industry. But as I think PJ O'Rourke once said: if you think hc is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when its free. Look out.

• Published: July 20, 2007 3:10 PM

• Black Bloke

• LvMI should make this a daily article:

  Government Medical "Insurance"
  From, Making Economic Sense
  by Murray N. Rothbard

• Published: July 21, 2007 5:58 AM