Quote:Scrat, the government is only part of this equation.
Yes, the worst part. The part that set the stage for many other problems.
Quote:Tell me, if medicaid and medicare went away today, would the system fix itself?
I believe the problem would begin to improve, yes.
Quote:Medicaid and Medicare are nothing more than government sponsored insurance companies. They are doing what insurance companies do.
Name one insurance company that can force a doctor to do business with it.
Quote:And they don't cover everything. What about the huge supplemental market? What about the prices for things medicaid doesn't pay for? Who's fixing those? You see where I'm going.
If I artificially inflate the price of rye bread, the price of all types of bread will rise in response. When the US had tarrifs of about $1,000 per unit on import cars in the past, it inflated the price of domestic cars by about $700 per unit, because the price with which those cars had to compete had been raised. (This effect is not absolute, but it is evident.)
Quote:It is incredibly convenient to label the government the problem and it's consistent with some ideologies, but in this case, it just isn't that simple. At least, not in the way that you are suggesting.
If you thought I was saying they were the only problem, I was not. If you think they have not caused most of the problems, I think you are wrong.
Quote:I'm surprised you haven't mentioned the way we subsidize employer provided health insurance as a further erosion of market principals by the government?
Who subsidizes it? Who is "we"?
Quote:You're right that it's not a free market, but that's not just because of medicaid and medicare. Maybe we just have to accept that it isn't a free market system and try to fix it.
Maybe the fix is to make it a free market.