http://sinblancaporelmundo.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/una-imagen-una-palabra/

Second – Capitalism has some holes and may be shitty sometimes, but it is the best thing we have available. The harder/smarter you work, the greater your rewards. Seems pretty fair.

Third – I agree with your premise that our society depends on low income jobs, and therefore there is a responsibility to take care of those people with generla needs such as health care. I am perfectly fine with subsidizing peoples healthcare costs if they have a job/are on legitmiate unemployment.

Fourth – I don’t trust our government to run anything effectively.

Fifth – the postal service is not a government agency. It is just regulated by the government and is not allowed to make a profit. They have rights just like a business and unlike a government organization such as:

power to sue (and be sued) under its own name
power to adopt, amend and repeal its own regulations
power to “enter into and perform contracts, execute instruments, and determine the character of, and necessity for, its expenditures”
power to buy, sell and lease private property
power to build, operate, lease and maintain buildings and facilities

- My understanding is that a lot of the R&D these companies do is government subsidize anyways. There is no reason you couldn’t have private health care continue to do research and development. The only difference would be that maybe we would stop just trying to find drugs that will make a lot of money (erection related products) and focus on drugs people actually need. Also aren’t we talking expressly about Health Management Organizations profits not pharmaceutical companies, what sort of research and development are HMO doing to help us? My guess is absolutely none. All the HMO does is sometimes pay your medical bills when they come.

“We need to defend profits. Profits from medical companies or healthcare providers are not transferred into bank accounts of the CEOs”

This list is from 1996 of HMO CEO yearly salaries (i am sure in 11 years they have gone up a lot)

Stephen Wiggins, CEO, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $29,061,599

Wilson Taylor, Chairman and CEO, CIGNA Corporation $11,568,410

David Snow, Executive Vice President, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $10,403,451

Robert Smoler, Executive Vice President, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $10,085,972

William Sullivan, President, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $7,823,076

Joseph Sebastianelli, President, Aetna, Inc. $7,394,506

Michael Cardillo, Executive Vice President, Aetna, Inc. $7,069,969

Leonard Schaeffer, Chairman and CEO, WellPoint Health Networks $7,010,698

It doesn’t bother me that these people make a lot of money, it bothers me why. These people are paid millions of dollars a year not because they do a good job taking care of their actual customers the people paying for insurance, but quite the opposite. They get paid like this because they basically are really good at stealing money from their customers. They take all the unpaid (and often deserving claims), as they call them profits and pay that to the CEO, investment companies, and stockholders: the people who in my estimation don’t deserve the money at all. (I know that is a simplistic way of looking at it)

-I think capitalism like all government systems that have ever been created is going to die eventually and something new and improved will evolve (at least I pray this is the case). I think there are fundamental flaws in our profit based ideology that need to be considered. A great majority of these problems are based around the reality that what is profitable and what is morally and socially correct often do not line up. Maybe I am wrong, but in my little world it just doesn’t seem like this is the best way for people to live.

Yes it is, and I think you are missing my point. Let me run my logic here for a second. We need to defend profits. Profits from medical companies or healthcare providers are not transfered into bank accounts of the CEOs. Most companies, especially those involved in technology fields like medicine, reinvest profits heavily into Research and Developement. If not then they pay out dividends to shareholders, which rewards investors who made the good decision to invest and allows them to invest in new companies. Quick example, 2 medical companies will IPO next week on the NASDAQ. Bioheart and MAKOSurgical (symbols BHRT and MAKO), two companies that put robots in you and save your life. Next week they will raise a couple Million $ each for the company to use (obviously making the founders and early investors very rich along the way). The company would use this money to get their robots in you as soon as they possibly can. I don’t think that letting the government dole out giant health care contracts (think: special interest groups, bureaucracy, Kevin’s jews, blah blah blah) will help us.

You could use the same example above with whatever companies Sicko says does a bad job. Insurance companies work no differently (they just dont use robots, yet…). Although Corey’s chart does not show it, these companies make our hospitals the best in the world (that’s why people from Canada and the UK come HERE for care). Does your heart bleed for the all the lives lost because the R&D wasn’t in place to stop some future disease? Mine (apparently, who knew?) does.

I guess I’ll shut up now and stop pissing you guys off because its more of my economic philosophy on private enterprise that I am explaining, which you are probably well aware of, and took more classes on in college, and dont want to hear any more about…

Again I am not saying we dont need any change, but I wont agree with pushing a system that works against meritocracy.

With regard to Parker’s concern about cost and socialization of health care, I believe the socialization of health care could greatly reduce costs if done even slightly efficiently.

First way it would cut costs; stop paying doctors so much money. I will guarantee you will have just as many people who want to be doctors if they are paid 1/2 as much. You may lose some smart people who got into the medical field to make money, but they will be quickly replaced by slightly less smart people who genuinely want to help people and are getting into medicine for the right reason. England is having no shortage of doctors and they pay a fraction of what we are paying.

Second cut would be all those profits corporations are making. Look at the profits some of these HMO are making each year. Put those back into the system. I understand profits are making them work in a streamlined fashion, but is that really in our best interest. Do you really want the person deciding if you get an operation making that decision with a cost benefit analysis? There is something inherently evil to me about deciding matters of life and death by dollars and cents.

I disagree with Parker’s comment that socialized health care would just mean shitty health care for everyone. First off you would be welcome to keep your private health care coverage if you wanted. Second, our private health care isn’t even good. Here is some info from the World Health Organization about world health care.

This is a pretty interesting article

(http://www.photius.com/rankings/who_world_health_ranks.html)

Passage from the article

“The U. S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds. The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on health services, ranks 18th . Several small countries – San Marino, Andorra, Malta and Singapore are rated close behind second- placed Italy.”

Rank of the top 50 countries in health services (you will notice a majority of those above us have socialized health care)
1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland
21 Belgium
22 Colombia
23 Sweden
24 Cyprus
25 Germany
26 Saudi Arabia
27 United Arab Emirates
28 Israel
29 Morocco
30 Canada
31 Finland
32 Australia
33 Chile
34 Denmark
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 United States of America
38 Slovenia
39 Cuba
40 Brunei
41 New Zealand
42 Bahrain
43 Croatia
44 Qatar
45 Kuwait
46 Barbados
47 Thailand
48 Czech Republic
49 Malaysia
50 Poland

(again non edited)

My guess is the problem with the industry has something to do with the amount of regulations and the requirement of government involvement. HMO’s, maybe they are to blame. They are bad right? OK, I have no idea what they are. As always, I am shooting from the hip here and have no basis, just my gut feeling.

Also, like Eric said, we already have socialized institutions like schools and the postal service, lets try not to fuck health care completely up like those.