health care in France

[Ghent12]

Re: health care in France

c1ue, I will again try to re-rail this conversation.

1. Scarcity is why all forms of rationing occur. This is why there exist wait times, prices, and denials of insurance claims, etc.

2. The only reason the definition of economic scarcity was brought up was to correct your erroneous claim of rationing not occurring. I believe this is because you think in terms of the politicized connotation of the word "rationing" and not the economic connotation of it. This doesn't imply some Sarah Palin "death panel" but rather that a limited good/service will, by definition, be limited in its distribution. Scarcity means that there are prices, but the reason why they are so high relative to both those in the past and those in other economies is not an implication of scarcity, at least in my opinion. I have not been saying what you think I have been saying.

A theoretically limited supply is causing health care costs in the US to escalate?

Then provide evidence of this limitation and then explain why the US' problems aren't happening anywhere else.

3. No, I am not saying that health care's scarcity is the cause of the much higher price of health care in the US. Hopefully by following the previous two points, you will understand that this is not what I am saying. Just read what has been posted using your new knowledge of what scarcity and rationing actually mean in an economic context and you will understand that I have never made the argument you think I have made.

4. The source of the high prices is the structure of the US health care system which removes pricing power from the hands of the consumers. That's what I've been saying all along, and is merely my opinion based upon all available evidence that I have seen.

[c1ue]

Re: health care in France

1. Scarcity is why all forms of rationing occur. This is why there exist wait times, prices, and denials of insurance claims, etc.

Wrong. First, you have to demonstrate rationing - which you have failed to do.

A wait time can occur for all sorts of reasons - rationing isn't the only one and it isn't the reason why there are wait times for health care.

You wait for the train. Is that rationing? No, it is because the train isn't on YOUR schedule, it is on its own.

You wait for an electrician to come. Is this rationing? No, it is because the electrician cannot predict ahead of time how long the previous jobs will take.

You wait for an operating room. Is this rationing? No, because an OR is an expensive capital investment which the owners seek to maximize utilization of. Unless you have an emergency, you wait your turn in order to maximize the utilization.

There could be 10 times as many ORs, and the same wait situation will occur for the same reasons. Only if there are so many ORs that they sit empty most of the time could the so-called scarcity you keep carping on disappear.

Need I point out the ridiculousness of that situation?

2. The only reason the definition of economic scarcity was brought up was to correct your erroneous claim of rationing not occurring. I believe this is because you think in terms of the politicized connotation of the word "rationing" and not the economic connotation of it. This doesn't imply some Sarah Palin "death panel" but rather that a limited good/service will, by definition, be limited in its distribution. Scarcity means that there are prices, but the reason why they are so high relative to both those in the past and those in other economies is not an implication of scarcity, at least in my opinion. I have not been saying what you think I have been saying.

You keep bringing it up because you somehow think this trumps the argument.

It does not, because you still have failed to demonstrate why it matters or even if it exists.

3. No, I am not saying that health care's scarcity is the cause of the much higher price of health care in the US. Hopefully by following the previous two points, you will understand that this is not what I am saying. Just read what has been posted using your new knowledge of what scarcity and rationing actually mean in an economic context and you will understand that I have never made the argument you think I have made.

If scarcity doesn't matter in the price of health care, why even talk about it?

4. The source of the high prices is the structure of the US health care system which removes pricing power from the hands of the consumers. That's what I've been saying all along, and is merely my opinion based upon all available evidence that I have seen.

This is totally false.

Everyone is feeling the bite of increasing health care costs, so to say that pricing power is removed is false.

What the problem is, is what I noted before:

1) A gigantic bureaucratic struggle between health insurance companies and health provider companies.

2) A failure in the assumption that for-profit somehow equates to lower cost. This one can be laid directly at the feet of the neoliberal economists because classic economics dealt heavily with monopoly as a primary way of driving up profits and thus increasing consumer costs. That we have oligopoly today instead of monopoly doesn't change the dynamic.

3) A failure to recognize - at least in the US - that health care is a public good. This isn't about iPhone vs. Android - these are useful and important but only matter incidentally to the overall welfare of the populace. Health care, much like public education, does matter.

4) Due to the failure to recognize health care as a public good, a failure to provide a non-profit alternative for health care in order to benefit the public.

If instead the US chose to closely regulate health care as is done with for-profit natural gas, electricity, and various public utilities, that would be fine also.

But clearly this has not been the case, and to expect this to occur anytime soon is extremely unrealistic given the massive influence of the existing for-profit health care industry on politics.

[Ghent12]

Re: health care in France

c1ue, you speak an entirely different language. I don't understand how you can use mostly the same words and have an entirely different understanding of the meanings of a few specific, critical words.

Wrong. First, you have to demonstrate rationing - which you have failed to do.

A wait time can occur for all sorts of reasons - rationing isn't the only one and it isn't the reason why there are wait times for health care.

You wait for the train. Is that rationing? No, it is because the train isn't on YOUR schedule, it is on its own.

You wait for an electrician to come. Is this rationing? No, it is because the electrician cannot predict ahead of time how long the previous jobs will take.

You wait for an operating room. Is this rationing? No, because an OR is an expensive capital investment which the owners seek to maximize utilization of. Unless you have an emergency, you wait your turn in order to maximize the utilization.

There could be 10 times as many ORs, and the same wait situation will occur for the same reasons. Only if there are so many ORs that they sit empty most of the time could the so-called scarcity you keep carping on disappear.

With regards to the last sentence in the quote, scarcity is not the same as shortage in an economic sense! I implore you to get these definitions straight.

All of those instances where you say that I am "wrong about rationing" are, in fact, excellent examples of real rationing in effect. I am not speaking of the connotation that involves rationing cards, long lines at the gas pump, and etc. I am speaking of the limitations that exist in reality that prevent people from getting something they otherwise would want. Every instance of "waiting your turn" for a good or service is an instance of economic-reality rationing, and these instances occur because essentially all goods or services are scarce. The basics go like this: There is not enough of some good or service to meet everyone's whim or desire for it --> prices, waiting, bureaucratic limitations, claim denials and other means are used to determine who gets what. This is the definition of rationing that I am using, which is somewhat looser than the layman definition of a government controlled distribution program. Strictly speaking, in economics there exist price rationing (prices) and non-price rationing (basically everything else) that limit a person's access to a given good and/or service. I am referring to all of them when I use the word rationing.

If wait times, insurance claim denials, and people being priced out of the market are not considered rationing to you, even though the end result is that people who want something are not able to get it due to political, physical, and economic limitations, then what do you call those things?

This is totally false.

Everyone is feeling the bite of increasing health care costs, so to say that pricing power is removed is false.

What the problem is, is what I noted before:

1) A gigantic bureaucratic struggle between health insurance companies and health provider companies.

2) A failure in the assumption that for-profit somehow equates to lower cost. This one can be laid directly at the feet of the neoliberal economists because classic economics dealt heavily with monopoly as a primary way of driving up profits and thus increasing consumer costs. That we have oligopoly today instead of monopoly doesn't change the dynamic.

3) A failure to recognize - at least in the US - that health care is a public good. This isn't about iPhone vs. Android - these are useful and important but only matter incidentally to the overall welfare of the populace. Health care, much like public education, does matter.

4) Due to the failure to recognize health care as a public good, a failure to provide a non-profit alternative for health care in order to benefit the public.

If instead the US chose to closely regulate health care as is done with for-profit natural gas, electricity, and various public utilities, that would be fine also.

But clearly this has not been the case, and to expect this to occur anytime soon is extremely unrealistic given the massive influence of the existing for-profit health care industry on politics.

c1ue, you misunderstand my use of the phrase pricing power. I can't believe how dense you are! Stop taking something said, misinterpreting it, and then running away with it like a child with a balloon. What I said is that customers have no power in influencing the price any longer--they certainly had such an option in the past and do have it, in one degree or another, in most other industries.

1) We completely agree on your first point--in fact that is exactly what I have been saying.

2) Your second point is political nonsense and doesn't really jive with history. The oligopoly exists and can only exist because of the extraordinarily complex legal and political structure of health care and health insurance. Byzantine legal systems are hardly the hallmark of "neoliberal economists."

3) That's one failure I'd like to keep repeating over and over. I would really, really like to avoid health care of the same quality as US public education which, by the way, also suffers from exploding costs--especially higher public education. I would also really like to avoid the added wait times for the various "Nurses Union" slowdowns. For some reason people think unions are a justified response to greedy for-profit companies, yet most union members are working for the public sector, and such membership is often more prevalent.

4) A choice between Medicaid and some random "non-profit" alternative? Shoot me now.

You oddly recognize the core of the problem in the last quoted sentence, but you seem to have no realization about the implications of it.

[c1ue]

Re: health care in France

If wait times, insurance claim denials, and people being priced out of the market are not considered rationing to you, even though the end result is that people who want something are not able to get it due to political, physical, and economic limitations, then what do you call those things?

I've already noted wait times have nothing to do with scarcity - because there isn't a scarcity. It is simply the reality of differing schedules.

Scarcity is when there is insufficient supply. There is plenty of supply in electricians, in hospitals, in pharmaceuticals (for the most part), in doctors, etc etc.

You keep repeating simply because there isn't infinite supply, that there is therefore scarcity. There is a gigantic middle ground between infinite supply and actual shortage of supply - and that's where we're at. Within this ground there is economic friction: only in books does good A travel to consumer B with zero loss due to a myriad of reasons.

You do not seem to acknowledge the reality of this friction, instead choosing to term it scarcity.

Continuously trying to say "not infinite supply, therefore scarcity" is a completely false dichotomy.

As for insurance claim denials: there are many reasons why a denial can occur. There is fraud. There is the insurance company seeking to maximize its profits. There is error.

Unless you can demonstrate that insurance claim denials are due to lack of supply, I do not see what this category has to do with supply whatsoever. The insurance company doesn't provide health care - it only is supposed to mediate costs by averaging out any given health care need over a large group of otherwise healthy people. Any supply in this case would be a supply of money, not health care.

As for pricing - again you have yet to reconcile why every other 1st and 2nd world nation has dramatically lower prices. They aren't poorer. They aren't stupider. The quality of care isn't dramatically worse or better. They aren't different ages, or races, or whatever else you can name.

Thus to assert pricing in the US is a function of supply is again to create a false dichotomy - unless you can in fact demonstrate actual scarcity leading to competitive price increases in order to procure supply. Show me some bidding wars.

What I said is that customers have no power in influencing the price any longer--they certainly had such an option in the past and do have it, in one degree or another, in most other industries.

You again assert something without providing any proof.

Auto insurance is exactly the same form of insurance as health: the customer does not in fact have anything to do with auto insurance claims being paid.

Yet customers do influence the repair industry as well as the auto insurance industry via their premium payments (or lack thereof).

Again you're creating a false dichotomy when you fail to account for similar instances with dramatically different results.

2) Your second point is political nonsense and doesn't really jive with history. The oligopoly exists and can only exist because of the extraordinarily complex legal and political structure of health care and health insurance. Byzantine legal systems are hardly the hallmark of "neoliberal economists."

You can believe what you like. I've seen many of these other systems face to face - both 'public option' and 'private health care'.

There is nothing fundamentally unsolvable about the present health care system in the US. There is only lack of will - and that lack isn't an artefact of nature. It is due to lobbying.

The legal and health care system in Russia, for example, is infinitely more Byzantine than in the US. I know a person who was born in Georgia, moved to Russia, has been on state disability pension for at least the 14 years I've known him (he's now 55-ish). He used to be a bureaucrat in Georgia in Soviet times, and recently got the government to send him on a 2 week 'medical vacation' to a government sanatarium in North Ossetia for his health - because he wanted to visit relatives in Georgia.

He could do this because the regulations for this - indubitably dating to Soviet times - are still on the books, and he knows how to work the system to activate this feature.

Tell me you can do that here.

I would really, really like to avoid health care of the same quality as US public education which, by the way, also suffers from exploding costs--especially higher public education. I would also really like to avoid the added wait times for the various "Nurses Union" slowdowns. For some reason people think unions are a justified response to greedy for-profit companies, yet most union members are working for the public sector, and such membership is often more prevalent.

The quality or lack thereof in public education is purely a function of political apathy combined with good old fashioned machine politics.

To attempt to deny a public option - when you have full recourse to the existing private system - is quite strange given that every other 1st and 2nd world nation seems to be able to make it work. And Public Education as well. Perhaps the problem isn't the governmental nature of these public goods so much as the nature of the US government.

A choice between Medicaid and some random "non-profit" alternative? Shoot me now.

Again you create a false dichotomy: Medicaid as an institutionalized payment scheme for health care vs. a 'non profit' payment scheme for health care.

A huge part of the problem is exactly that the only government involvement in health care in the US is via payments. Why not have the government also offer a public option in health care supply? The government already does so via its VA network - and you can always just go to your existing private health insurance/private health care provider if you don't like it. It isn't like you don't already pay Medicare taxes.

Unlike others I do not and never have advocated a Canadian style public monopoly on health care supply.

[Ghent12]

Re: health care in France

c1ue, you are still getting your economic definitions wrong. Up is up. Down is down. Limited resources means scarce resources. It simply is. That's how the English language works. We define words to mean things within certain contexts. In the context of economics, scarce resources is synonymous with limited resources. This is just a truism, the starting basis point for all study of economics. If you continue to be obstinate for no valid reason, then I can only brand you as an argumentative ignoramus when it comes to economics, no matter what your experience, background, or education on the subject; I would be forced to do the same for anyone who insists that matter isn't made up of atoms, or one that continues to argue that numbered feathered pillows have nothing to do with American football.

Just take this statement that you made to its logical conclusion:

Scarcity is when there is insufficient supply.

Insufficient supply for what, c1ue? There are an infinite number of conditions that could be considered "insufficient supply" so let's be specific. Is it insufficient supply to provide anyone with any of the particular good or service? Is it insufficient supply to provide everyone with perfect services or goods? The economic definition of scarcity, which you refuse to use for some unknown reason, is defined as the latter. You are refusing to acknowledge the reality of the study you are delving into when you define scarcity as anything else.

Continuously trying to say "not infinite supply, therefore scarcity" is a completely false dichotomy.

You overuse the phrase "false dichotomy" and use it erroneously in this instance. Other instances were used for rhetorical flourish. However, saying "not infinite, therefore scarce" is not a false dichotomy--it is a reality that exists by definition. That's the end of it. There is no more. The economic definition of scarcity is that a resource is limited.

Thus to assert pricing in the US is a function of supply is again to create a false dichotomy - unless you can in fact demonstrate actual scarcity leading to competitive price increases in order to procure supply. Show me some bidding wars.

Show me where I asserted that. You haven't even read what's been posted, so you're done here as far as I'm concerned. You are destructive to the conversation for no reason whatsoever; refusing the most fundamental of economics definitions and arguing against strawmen that you set up yourself are hardly conducive to finding any solutions to the situation.


Onto the actual discussion about the problem with US health care, I don't think offering a public option is an outright bad idea philosophically, but I have no faith in any level of American government to create and maintain such an institution. There are no parallels in any other industry where the government has a "public option" that inspire faith.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: health care in France

... There are no parallels in any other industry where the government has a "public option" that inspire faith.

The FAA certifies commercial aircraft as airworthy and operates the national air traffic control system; both are as good as any in the world.

The USDOT built and maintains the interstate highway system.

NASA is the only organization that has ever landed a person on the surface of the moon.

The USDA ensures safe and wholesome food on our tables every day.

The US Bureau of Reclamation built, maintains, and operates Hoover dam, which has produced an average of 4.2 terrawatt hours of power every year since 1936.

[Munger]

Re: health care in France

The FAA certifies commercial aircraft as airworthy and operates the national air traffic control system; both are as good as any in the world.

The USDOT built and maintains the interstate highway system.

NASA is the only organization that has ever landed a person on the surface of the moon.

The USDA ensures safe and wholesome food on our tables every day.

The US Bureau of Reclamation built, maintains, and operates Hoover dam, which has produced an average of 4.2 terrawatt hours of power every year since 1936.

BUT THAT DOESN'T JIVE WITH MY LIBERTARIAN FANTASIES!!!!

[dcarrigg]

Re: health care in France

The FAA certifies commercial aircraft as airworthy and operates the national air traffic control system; both are as good as any in the world.

The USDOT built and maintains the interstate highway system.

NASA is the only organization that has ever landed a person on the surface of the moon.

The USDA ensures safe and wholesome food on our tables every day.

The US Bureau of Reclamation built, maintains, and operates Hoover dam, which has produced an average of 4.2 terrawatt hours of power every year since 1936.

Thank you thrifty. I'm sick of this "the gubment's too stupid to run insurance" argument. Who do you think bails all of the insurance companies out when they make a bunch of bad bets? Government has done so much that is so much more complicated than underwrite a simple policy.

Show me a private entity with the track record above. Bell labs probably comes closest in my mind - but it got $ from the US gov and European govs too.

It's not like a private corp never screwed something up, or are you typing on a Tandy right now whilst listenting to your Zune through your quadraphonic speakers?

For every failure of the government (and there have been quite a few) there is a success (and they are grand).

Here are a few more successes just to drive the point home:

• Medicare already takes care of the elderly.
  
• The Marshall Plan worked out pretty well.
  
• How's your Polio? Malaria? Small Pox?
  
• How's that flowing fresh water working at your house?
  
• What about the military? From sea to shining sea they went before they crossed the drink.
  
• Workplace injuries are down by more than 50% since OSHA.
  
• It's nice to get hurricane and tornado warnings, no?
  
• What about MRI machines - developed under NIH funding.
  
• NIST maintains standard measures - including time and time zones - not to mention scanning-tunneling microscopy and atomic clocks.
  
• Let's not forget my personal favorite - ARPANET - that thing the government did that paved the way for you to complain about the government being useless and incompetent right here with screens and 1s and 0s.

Any organization that accomplished this much can clearly do what a silly insurance company can. You could even keep the same bureaucrats and actuaries that the insurance company had - except now you could fire the advertising executive getting 200k/yr for putting snoopy on another stupid sign or reminding us that Blue Cross cares about your family.

I for one see FIRE as a tax all the same as Government. They're two sides of the same coin in the money world. At least this cuts out one of the middle-men. The health insurance industry is about as "private sector" and "innovative" as amtrak and the post office. Only it doesn't work as well.

[flintlock]

Re: health care in France

Have you ever tried to bargain shop for anything remotely covered by health insurance? It is literally almost impossible to get a quote on what something will cost.

When I got my operation in the US, the doctor literally had no idea. His estimate was more than 200% too low.

The hospital financial planner I spoke to right before the operation (read: the money collector) also did not know. Her estimate provided to me was 40% too low.

My friends who have asked around, have literally had to make a half dozen calls and threats before a number is produced.

All of this goes beyond simple "not my job" division into outright obfuscation.

Very true about trying to get a price from a doctor! Some of this is not their fault, some is. They certainly should be able to tell us what their initial charge submitted to insurance is. I just think they know its easier to put it off than face a patient's wrath. Man would i love to be able to blame my bill on some insurace company.

[flintlock]

Re: health care in France

I've noticed since the economy tanked that I never have to wait long at all to get in to see doctors, even specialists. The waiting rooms are like ghost towns on some days. Obviously people's ability to pay has had a major impact.

As far as why they cannot give you a price. This is because they are trying to play the system so that they get the highest of two prices. One is their own price( usually shot high) and the other is what insurance will pay. Perhaps they fear missing out on a payment by insurance HIGHER than their usual charge. Nothing is stopping them from saying, " we charge this, but will usually accept what insurance pays". Instead they act as if they have no input whatsoever on pricing. Which is BS. Apparently businesses have developed that do the billing for the doctors. I presume they hire these people not only because they are experts in the field, but because they promise to input the bill to insurance in a way that will maximize what Insurance will pay. Health care is a money cow both sides are milking for all its worth before it ultimately dies from exhaustion.

[DSpencer]

Re: health care in France

I'm very confused by some of these examples of government "grand successes"

The US Military - Really??? In a discussion about how government involvement could control costs, someone brings up the US military as an example of similar success?! You do realize how much money the US military spends right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...y_expenditures

The USDA ensures safe and wholesome food on our tables every day.

Safe is debatable. Wholesome? That's just comical.

Medicare - Let's examine this 15 years from now and see just how grand this success turns out to be.

I don't dispute that government has had successes. It's also not really a level playing field. Sure, government can pay for Medicare or X program but they just decided how much money they need and take it. And they can legislate their competition out of business. Most of these successes are just government monopolies.

If starting a "silly insurance company" is so easy, what is stopping you from starting an insurance company that doesn't rip people off? Wouldn't people be lining up for it?

Please keep in mind I think the insurance industry is corrupt. I just think the problem is the government protection the industry has bought for itself, not the "free market".

[c1ue]

Re: health care in France

Show me where I asserted that. You haven't even read what's been posted, so you're done here as far as I'm concerned. You are destructive to the conversation for no reason whatsoever; refusing the most fundamental of economics definitions and arguing against strawmen that you set up yourself are hardly conducive to finding any solutions to the situation.

Frankly bringing up the "most fundamental" of economics definitions is completely ridiculous. My view on the accepted school of economics is one of tremendous disdain.

I've attempted over and over to bring actual real life data into this discussion, and over and over you retreat into definitions and other legal minutiae.

If you truly have anything to say, then say so.

I repeat the questions I have been posing:

1) Is there an actual scarcity in the area of health care - defined as insufficient supply of doctors, medication, hospitals, whatever - in the United States?

If yes, provide concrete examples

2) Is there a demonstrably different level of health care in the United States vs. other 1st and 2nd world nations?

If yes, provide examples

3) Is there a demonstrably different ratio of per capita income vs per capita health care spending?

4) If there is no actual scarcity, and no actual demonstrably different levels of health care, and a demonstrably different ratios of per capita income vs. health care spending in the US vs. other nations, then clearly the problem has nothing to do with the fundamental economics of health care.

The USDA ensures safe and wholesome food on our tables every day.

Safe is debatable. Wholesome? That's just comical.

Compare the state of food in the US today vs. the US in the era of 'The Jungle' by Upton Sinclair, or the state of food in China today.

You may not like everything they do, but to argue that the USDA does not accomplish anything significant of benefit is frankly ludicrous.

Medicare - Let's examine this 15 years from now and see just how grand this success turns out to be.

Medicare's problem was that it was created 1965. In 1965 - health care was a trade.

However, since 1965 health care - and Medicare in particular - is an all you can eat buffet on a government contract.

While I fully agree Medicare is a huge problem, it was not a huge problem when it was created in 1965 nor was it a huge problem until the last 2 decades or so - as the banksters and their health care equivalents realized the bottomless nature of the Medicare slop bucket.

If starting a "silly insurance company" is so easy, what is stopping you from starting an insurance company that doesn't rip people off? Wouldn't people be lining up for it?

Let's see:

1) Must raise capital. To really achieve significant scale, we're talking literally hundreds of millions of dollars
2) Gigantic regulatory hurdles. Compliance with Medicare, state, local, federal regulations is non trivial. See: http://www.insurance.ca.gov/0250-ins...rity/index.cfm for what you'd need to do in order to get certified in California.
3) Getting market presence. Marketing a new insurance company to thousands of companies, or millions of individuals, is also a non trivial endeavor.

While creating an insurance company is somewhat easier than a sewage disposal company, or an electricity generator/distributor, it is on the other hand still a huge deal.

The problem though isn't the insurance companies per se. It is both the health care supply and the health insurance payments.

[Ghent12]

Re: health care in France

The FAA certifies commercial aircraft as airworthy and operates the national air traffic control system; both are as good as any in the world.

The USDOT built and maintains the interstate highway system.

NASA is the only organization that has ever landed a person on the surface of the moon.

The USDA ensures safe and wholesome food on our tables every day.

The US Bureau of Reclamation built, maintains, and operates Hoover dam, which has produced an average of 4.2 terrawatt hours of power every year since 1936.

FAA -- A moderate success. I wonder what the true cost is, however? How about its over-built cousin, the TSA? Has someone you know had their labia area rubbed by one of those goons yet in the name of national security?

USDOT -- Is this the same entity that oversees what the American Society of Civil Engineers say will cost $2.2 Trillion to repair or to bring out of disrepair? I like the interstate highway system, but that is conceptually the polar opposite of case-by-case, person-by-person medical coverage.

NASA -- Excuse me while I vomit. Citing its past is useful for inspiration but can be poor for judging future expenditures. Its current primary calling is studying weather. NASA in its current form is not a model that should be repeated for anything.

USDA -- Excuse me while I induce vomiting to remove the garbage that passes as food from my system. This and the FDA have had more than their share of failures and breaches of trust.

Hoover dam? Well here comes Great Depression II, so maybe we can build another Hoover dam. It's no surprise that such an accumulation of public capital can produce something, but do you know what the opportunity cost was for Hoover dam when it was built?


Government can succeed. Sometimes even spectacularly. With a $4 Trillion budget and counting, it is mathematically improbable to believe there wouldn't be any successes. However, for $4 Trillion, I would expect a whole hell of a lot more success than what is being delivered.

If you don't think most variants of the public option, if tried in the US, won't end up like public education, social security, and other similarly huge-in-scope programs, then you're kidding yourself. It will have problems roughly parallel to them.

[flintlock]

Re: health care in France

What was this thread about again? I read some of it a month ago and can't seem to tell if anything was resolved.

[flintlock]

Re: health care in France

BUT THAT DOESN'T JIVE WITH MY LIBERTARIAN FANTASIES!!!!

You could post the same picture with the caption " Liberal fantasies!" or " Conservative fantasies! ". There are always some not open to listening.