The definitive debunking of 4 liberal lies on healthcare

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Health Care Costs are Soaring

No, they are not. The amount we spend on health care has indeed risen, in absolute terms, after inflation, and as a percentage of our incomes and GDP. That does not mean costs are soaring.

You cannot judge the "cost" of something by simply what you spend. You must also judge what you get. I'm reasonably certain the cost of 1950's level health care has dropped in real terms over the last 60 years. Of course, with 1950's health care, lots of things will kill you that 2009 health care would prevent. Also, your quality of life, in many instances, would be far worse, but you will have a little bit more change in your pocket as the price will be lower. Want to take the deal? In fact, nobody in the US really wants 1950's health care (or even 1990's health care). They just want to pay 1950 prices for 2009 health care.

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The Canadian Drug Story

The general story is how you can buy many drugs in Canada cheaper than you can buy them in the US. This story is often, without specifically tying the logic together, taken as an obvious indictment of the US's (relatively) free market system. This is grossly misguided.

Here's what happens. We have a partially free market in the US where drug companies spend a ton to develop new wonder drugs, much of which is spent to satisfy regulatory requirements. The cost of this development is called a "fixed cost." Once it's developed it does not cost that much to make each pill. That's called a "variable cost." If people only paid the variable cost (or even a bit more) for each pill, the whole thing would not work. The drug company would never get back the massive fixed cost of creating the drug in the first place, and so no company would try to develop one. Thus, manufacturers have to, and do, charge more than the variable cost of making each pill.[3] Some look at this system and say to the drug companies "gee, it doesn't cost you much to make one more pill, so it's unfair that you charge much more than your cost." They are completely wrong and not looking at all the costs.

So, let's bring this back to our good natured friends to the North. They have socialized medicine and they bargain as the only Canadian buyer for drugs, paying well below normal costs. Drug companies that spent the enormous fixed costs to create new miracles are charging a relatively high cost in the free and still largely competitive world (the US) to recoup their fixed cost and to make a profit.

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We could go with the Canadian system and have super cheap drugs, if only we can find a much bigger, more medically advanced, freer country right next to us to make miracle drugs for themselves, and then we insist that we pay them only a bit above their variable cost for our share, and then they in turn agree to let us be their parasite.

Socialized Medicine Works In Some Places

This is a corollary to the "Canada as parasite" parable above. The funny part is socialized medicine has never been truly tested. Those touting socialism's success have never seen a world without a relatively (for now) free US to make or pay for their new drugs, surgical techniques, and other medical advancements for them. When (and I hope this doesn't happen) the US joins in the insanity of socialized medicine we will see that when you remove the brain from the body, the engine from a car, the candy from the striper, it just does not work.

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Right now the US's free system massively intellectually and financially subsidizes the world's unfree (socialized) ones. That sucks. The only thing that would suck worse is joining them without anyone to subsidize us all.

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Health Care is A Right

This is more philosophy than economics, and I'm not a philosopher. But, luckily it doesn't take a superb philosopher to understand that health care simply is not a "right" in the sense we normally use that word. Listing rights generally involves enumerating things you may do without interference (the right to free speech) or may not be done to you without your permission (illegal search and seizure, loud boy-band music in public spaces). They are protections, not gifts of material goods. Material goods and services must be taken from others, or provided by their labor, so if you believe you have an absolute right to them, and others don't choose to provide it to you, you then have a "right" to steal from them. But what about their far more fundamental right not to be robbed?

In fact, although it's not the primitive issue, the constant improvement in health care gives another good example of why the "right" to health care makes little sense. Did you have a right to chemotherapy in 1600 AD? You could have protested to Parliament all you wanted, but chemo just didn't exist. Then, did you have a right to it the moment some genius invented it? You did not pay for the research. You did not make the breakthrough. Where do you get the right? How did it come into existence for you the moment somebody else created these things? I'm pretty sure you cannot have rights to material goods that don't exist, and I am pretty certain that the moment some genius (or business, or even government) brings them into the world your "rights" do not improve. But strangely, many disagree.

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While we may choose to provide a minimum standard of health care to our neediest, we should not be ashamed that better health care, like all material goods, comes with success. Capitalism is simply what happens when you mix freedom and economics. Capitalism says if you achieve and build more, you can spend more and have more. You can have a bigger TV, a bigger house, a hotter spouse, and shinier teeth for your pets. How on Earth did the notion that it's "unfair" to spend the money you earned on your own health care, probably the most important thing to you, come about? Well, I know how it came about. It has been pushed by a far left academia, political candidates who don't have a clue about economics beyond cashing a lobbyist's check, trade union organizers pining for a workers revolution that just never came but now they're trying to steal on the sly, and a biased media who just thinks they are smarter, better and kinder people than everyone else because they enjoy making snotty sarcastic comments about Republicans.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/...logy_97552.html

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

OMG...

[Ban Hammer 14,569]

In fact, although it's not the primitive issue, the constant improvement in health care gives another good example of why the "right" to health care makes little sense. Did you have a right to chemotherapy in 1600 AD? You could have protested to Parliament all you wanted, but chemo just didn't exist. Then, did you have a right to it the moment some genius invented it? You did not pay for the research. You did not make the breakthrough. Where do you get the right? How did it come into existence for you the moment somebody else created these things? I'm pretty sure you cannot have rights to material goods that don't exist, and I am pretty certain that the moment some genius (or business, or even government) brings them into the world your "rights" do not improve. But strangely, many disagree.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

OMG...

Please share the joke with the rest of us.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I read it again.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

I read it again.

Shocked that all those lies, painstakingly built up over years with the end game of a government-takeover of a big part of the economy, with a secondary goal of turning health care professionals into serfs, have been demolished in one single article?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Yes, AJ.

Indeed.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

I have to admit, I am a bit sympathetic. There are nurses who I wouldn't mind turning into my housepets.

[Tahoma 2,298]

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Will somebody please tell me what's so damn funny!