Apr 26th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Swine Flu!
I have no opinions on this subject beyond the observation that it would be nice to live in a country where, if fell seriously ill due to viral infection, your access to effective medical remedies was not determined by your wealth, income, or employment status.
116 Responses to “Swine Flu!”
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April 26th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I have no health insurance. I live in NYC. They apparently found several cases of this flu in NYC today. Now I’m terrified and don’t want to leave my apartment.
April 26th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Considering that you owe your whole career (from the strings pulled to secure admittance to your $30,000-a-year Upper East Side Manhattan prepschool on to Harvard, etc.) to wealth, connections and status that’s mighty big of you, Matt!
The danger is, alas, that public healthcare may prove to be as bad as, oh say, the public schools most of us attended, but which you were able to avoid thanks to your money and connections!
Still — it’ll be better than nothing. So again: mighty big of you!
Now if you could just write sentences that weren’t missing words.
April 26th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Yes, and thanks to the internet, alarmist panic can now spread faster than ever before. Freak out! Be afraid!
April 26th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
I wonder what’s worse: to grow up without much privilege, or to grow up with privilege and have someone throw it in your face every time you make a comment about any public issue whatsoever.
April 26th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Huddled masses speak for yourself. The public schools I attended from grade school on were just fine.
April 26th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I’m in agreement that we need universal healthcare but this example is not the reason why. Indeed, if someone who did not have health insurance were to get Swine flu today, they could go to the emergency room and receive treatment without paying anything.
April 26th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Well,
it seems as if now is a good time to short pork-bellies.
April 26th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
I was wondering who the first person to score political points of swine flu would be. Yglesias wins!
April 26th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Umm, I thought emergency rooms existed for cases like this. Isn’t this the time one would go to the hospital? What does wealth, employment, or income have to do with treatment of a pandemic contagion. I think the government is pretty proactive on that front. Doesn’t the CDC handle issues like this with minimal snark?
April 26th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Matt can sometimes be logical, but often he is ideological. He can be very much like the right-wingers, tying everything to issues he supports, no matter how tenuous the link. I am all for universal healthcare, preferably single payer, but these kind of ad hominem arguments only dilute the good case being made.
April 26th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Re: Courtney
It does, I assume Mr. Yglesias was referring to health care in an international perspective. (No deaths outside Mexico…)
April 26th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
One minor sticking point in MattY’s EuroPlan – one that neither he nor CAP will acknowledge lest their Soros shock collars are activated – is that millions of those who don’t have ins. are foreign citizens, with many of them here illegally. And, their plans would lead to even more low-wage people coming here to take advantage of their largess, swamping the system. The fact that MattY and CAP ignore or at most would try to handwave concerns about that away show that their plans can’t be trusted. They’re like bridge engineers who put their hands over their ears whenever someone tells them about once-in-a-decade high winds where they want to build a new bridge.
Also, I see that the BHO admin didn’t learn about the situation in MX for a week or so. Heckuva job.
April 26th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Brent, thanks for the response, but I am pretty sure he was specifically referring to this country.I could be wrong, but that is the sense I get.
This statement was more in line with the comments about the Fed Ex founder talking to his city council.
April 26th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I have no health insurance. I live in NYC. They apparently found several cases of this flu in NYC today. Now I’m terrified and don’t want to leave my apartment.
Seriously? You live in a city of, what, 8 million people. And they found, what, 6 cases? Get a goddamn grip.
More to the point: if you go to the emergency room with this flu, you can’t be turned away. So I’m not sure what Matt’s specific gripe is.
But anyway, I’m so glad we are all contemplating a highly efficient, highly responsive, non-corrupt and fair public health care system against what we have today. Because that’s such an honest appraisal of what public health care will be like.
April 26th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
What’s this emergency room bullshit?
I’ve done it, used the name of my ex-brother in law who had used my identity to get tickets and legal charges in my name. It’s not really easy, you will get sweated about your claim to lack identification. Is that the course the fans of the ER are putting forth? Is it just give your real name and eat that four figure bill? Throw the bill in the trash and wait it out for seven years in collections? WTF are you even advocating?
April 26th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Courtney H., um, what ad hominem attack, by whom? Do tell?
Then again, please don’t – I can’t imagine worse judgment than inviting you to again (figuratively) open your mouth and pour out this kind of gibberish.
For the emergency room proponents: not to put to fine a point it, but, you know, f*ck off.
April 26th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
What this really demonstrates is the need for more gun control. What’s it gonna take for this country to reinstitute the assault weapons ban?
April 26th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
What an explosion of senselessness today! So Matt grew up privileged. What connection this fact has to his arguing for adequate health care for the nonprivileged utterly escapes me.
That ‘huddled masses’ harbors acute resentment toward the privileged is the sole fact or idea communicated by his comment.
April 26th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
“Seriously? You live in a city of, what, 8 million people. And they found, what, 6 cases? Get a goddamn grip.”
Inadvertently funny? In many languages grip means flu.
April 26th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I don’t respond to internet insults.
The statement concerned Matt’s argument conflating pandemic contagion with the national healthcare debate. The two have nothing to do with each other, and conflating them only dilutes the strong argument in favor of universal healthcare.
Matt often does that but rightly calls out conservatives when they do the same with their pet issues.
April 26th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Is it really so hard to see the connection Matt is trying to make b/n health insurance and access to care? Yes, all you trolls are right: if you come down with an illness of any kind, you can go to the emergency room. Once there, you’ll be treated and discharged and then you’ll be billed hundreds if not thousands of dollars, with no discounts added for being part of an insurance group’s coverage. So, in this economy, when the people who have no insurance are the ones least likely to be able to pay such huge bills, those most in need of coverage will be paying for the nose for care they have no choice but to seek.
Now, was that so hard? Sheesh. Idiots.
April 26th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
meant to say “through” the nose, not “for” the nose. Typo.
April 26th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Containing the spread of a highly infectious disease would be easier if everyone who became symptomatic thought, “I’ve got to have this looked at now.” If you worry about such things, as people without insurance do, then control of the disease won’t be as easy. I’m sure that’s what Yglesias meant. It’s a political point in this country because access to medical care is seen as a private concern rather than as a public health issue. “No man is an island etc etc.” I know it’s shocking to make a disease political because, gosh, letting it spread willy-nilly is so much easier to defend.
April 26th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
It’s true that you can go to an ER for emergency treatment, but you are charged an arm and a leg for the visit. When I was unemployed and un-insured a few years ago, I went to the local ER for severe pain on the right side of my face. I was diagnosed with a really bad ear infection & charged $800 for the visit. If I hadn’t paid within 60 days, they were ready to hand my account to a bill collection agency. This is precisely the reason why so many of the uninsured avoid seeing their doctor or going to the ER, b/c many of them can not afford the astromical fees.
April 26th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
But anyway, I’m so glad we are all contemplating a highly efficient, highly responsive, non-corrupt and fair public health care system against what we have today. Because that’s such an honest appraisal of what public health care will be like.
Other countries spend a fraction of what we do and have better results than we do because their health care is designed from the start with the idea that everyone can use it. In America we have a weird political party which is determined to prove that government can’t deliver what most of the rest of the world enjoys so it actively sabotages American government services. It’s one of the strands of evidence that we’ve all died and gone to Hell.
April 26th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I was diagnosed with a really bad ear infection & charged $800 for the visit.
You can go to a walk-in “Doc-in-a-box” clinic (Wal-Mart has its own in-store clinic version) and spend $59 for the service and (thanks to their amazingly low prices on generics) even less on a prescription. $15 for antibiotic drops, a few dollars more for pain killers, and in three days you’re done. This model could be extended to much of health care, but people like MY never even mention it.
April 26th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
MY (of course) never mentions that he and his liberal friends could form non-coercive nationwide institutions to offer free medical care. There’s this thing called the internet that would make this process easier. It never even occurs to people who are in love with the power of the gun.
April 26th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
[...] http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/04/swine-flu.php [...]
April 26th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
You can go to a walk-in “Doc-in-a-box” clinic (Wal-Mart has its own in-store clinic version) and spend $59 for the service and (thanks to their amazingly low prices on generics) even less on a prescription. $15 for antibiotic drops, a few dollars more for pain killers, and in three days you’re done. This model could be extended to much of health care, but people like MY never even mention it.
Assuming that there’s a Wal-Mart in the area.
April 26th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
@23
Or one could think: “I can go to the ER, sit for 5 hours around really sick people before being seen myself, or I can just wait and see if I have anything really serious.”
Lots of people *with* insurance will think that.
April 26th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Assuming that there’s a Wal-Mart in the area.
Wal-Marts are everywhere. And there are different providers all through the country. Add to this Wal-Mart’s $4 prescriptions and real solutions to disease are everywhere in the free market for cheap.
April 26th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
$15 for antibiotic drops
Will do nothing for influenza. Some reports suggest Tamiflu is actually able to control this particular strain, which is somewhat surprising, as it has had decidedly mixed results in the past.
April 26th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Duh. Gary Coleman’s Conscience mentioned an issue he had and (being the benefactor that I am) I noted a free-market solution that will save hundreds of dollars of any infected-ear reader of my comment. No appointments are needed. You’ll never hear “doc in a boxes” mentioned by MY and his ilk because they don’t want you to know about them.
Based on how many flu epidemics result from close interactions with feedstock, I’d say the best solution is to press near or total veganism. And vegans also suffer almost no atheriosclerosis.
April 26th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Well, I was in Southeast Asia for the outbreaks of both SARS and Bird Flu, so I’m not too worried. What I am worried about is whatever disease I have right now. I think I caught it in either India or Laos, but I’m really not sure. So far, no American doctor can tell me what it is. And countless blood tests haven’t helped. I’m starting to think it’s schistosomiasis, but who really knows what you’ll catch in Asia. I do know this: don’t get dengue fever, it really sucks. I thought it sucked less than the toxic chemicals needed to deter mosquitoes, but now I know better.
“I’d say the best solution is to press near or total veganism.”
Now that’s good advice.
April 26th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Assuming that there’s a Wal-Mart in the area.
You know, Micheline, this almost sounds like a liberal wishing for more Wal-Marts… That’s awesome.
April 26th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
I didn’t realize all health concerns could be reduced to an analogy about inner ear infections.
But to be more serious, this is a perfect example of how our current system disadvantages people. Tamiflu has no generic, leaving uninsured requiring emergency room care in the case of an actual pandemic. And while they may get treatment, it will be at a dramatic later expense that could destroy what meager finances they may have. Alternatively, they may not seek any treatment, operating as an incubator for further cultivation of the pathogen, damaging any attempts to limit it’s spread.
April 26th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
If what HM is saying is true, then it should be put out there as an alternative, particularly because Wal-Mart’s tend to be in less-rich neighborhoods (I think, anyway, from my limited experience with the store).
I consider myself a liberal, and if this option were available, I would use it myself. I don’t know what HM’s on about with “liberals don’t want people to know about it”. But I didn’t know it existed. I also wonder how available it is, 24hrs? There was a place called Medcheck I would go to now and again as a teenager, but my parents covered the bill, and we had insurance, so I’ve no idea if it’s something similar.
April 26th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
They can’t and I didn’t. If you checked any of my links you would notice no mention of treatment of cancer either. “Doc in a boxes” do, however, treat a raft of maladies with no insurance, government coercion, special relationship with one provider, or appointment. They only want a little money. They already are front-line providers and their roles could be expanded. Our current system “disadvantages” everyone because it’s barely free-market. It’s the remnant of wage controls during WWII. It’s unbelievably expensive. It crowds out solutions like the ones I’ve mentioned (which are scaleable, cheap, and a model for many kinds of health care providers).
And not only are “Doc in a boxes” never mentioned by Socialists (oops… social democrats) like MY, but they’re barely mentioned by our public benefactors, the MSM. Which is weird.
April 26th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Fundamentally, it doesn’t matter if what HM is talking about exists or not (they do) it’s that the example he cites is an extremely limited case that demonstrates the lowest possible cost of treatment possible. Antibiotics are cheap, more elaborate and more modern medicines are much more expensive, and there is nothing inherent in a Walmart doctor that will make his treatment for leukemia any cheaper, or reduce the costs of radiology incurred by a broken leg.
April 26th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
the huddled masses, you are completely wrong. Matt owes his success to the fact that he started blogging at the right time, and that in the early days he had the appropriate pro-war opinions necessary to get a link from Instapundit. But hey, don’t let the fact that you know nothing about the history of political blogging get in the way of your little fantasy.
April 26th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Oh, I also nominate the use of Socialist as epithet as qualifying for Godwin’s law.
April 26th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Liberals are devoted to the idea of government-coerced health care. If Americans at large knew of real, cheap, market solutions to many of their extant health problems, they’d be less inclined to buy into the idea of the single-payer solution… a solution that would involve the total expropriation of about 20% of GDP (based on current health care spending and undoubtedly sure to grow).
Some are 24 hours. If this model catches on, it would be common. I’ve gone to one (non-Wal-Mart) and it was open every day for more than 12 hours.
The reason you didn’t know it existed is because (this will sound crazy) most media is run by liberals. Even if MY does read his comments, I doubt he’ll post anything about “Doc in a boxes” because he prefers government coercion as a solution to problems.
April 26th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
If you don’t want public healthcare then buy private health insurance, just like you do now. It won’t be any more expensive to do that (and may well be cheaper!) once there is universal health care. I never cease to be amazed by those who can never get it through their thick skull that there will *always* be private options for those who want to pay for it.
Heck, the UK has had universal healthcare for 50 years, and there are still plenty of private healthcare options available. My own mother, living off nothing much more than her state pension opted for private surgery to shave a few weeks off the waiting time.
April 26th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Here’s a list of treatments at MinuteClinic. I didn’t claim they treat leukemia, but that they are a good model for front-line providers. Also, if they catch on and people come to accept the idea of paying for their own health care in cash, these ideas are scaleable to other symptoms. Plus, dentistry could be revolutionized in a year with this and a couple tweaks.
There is nothing inherent in any single WalMart doctor that makes treatment of broken legs cheaper, but I’m not claiming that either. The suite of effects that make truly free markets work would come into play if people paid, in cash, for most of their health care. Twenty years ago, we all listened to music on cassette. NO ONE saw the MP3 player coming. Improvements happen rapidly, margins drop, and people become much better off when they pay for their own stuff in cash.
April 26th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
tacitus,
If the government is taxing me to pay for health care, then (irrespective of the many lost opportunities when market solutions are abandoned) I’m already being forced to buy government health care. This is an idea even a liberal can get: if you pay for the same thing twice, it’s more expensive than if you pay for it once.
April 26th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Zed,
A codicil to my prior response:
You don’t have to use coercion to pay for the more complicated health care of poor people. Go over to Daily Kos and rally the rich liberals to form institutions (using their own money) to pay for health care. You guys make trillions of collective dollars yearly and can afford to do this without forcing your solutions on people like me who value freedom, non-aggression, and respect for the wishes of people to spend their money as they will, instead of as you will.
And how high must the percentage of GDP grabbed by the government be before I can correctly use the word “Socialist?” I’m serious, how high?
April 26th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Those factors cannot be determinative if there is no access to be had, so let’s Cuba this thing up, boyyy!
April 26th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Those factors cannot be determinative if there is no access to be had, so let’s Cuba this thing up, boyyy!
An American liberal calling for a Cuban solution that doesn’t have anything to do with Ry Cooder… I wonder if Zed would call that “Socialist?”
April 26th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Well one of my patients who died last week may or may not have had the swine flu, but he definitely waited too long to get treated. He started out with flu symptoms for a week, then (we think) caught pneumonia on top of it. He started coughing up blood and the bacteria penetrated his blood stream. By the time he finally was brought into the E.R. he was in septic shock and his kidneys were failing. No amount of adrenalin infusions could keep his blood pressure up. So the ICU intensivist started Xigris, a $13,000 drug treatment that decreased his odds of dying by about 5-10%. That didn’t work either.
I don’t know why he waited so long. Maybe the Wal Mart clinic would’ve treated this guy appropriately, maybe not. But Wal-Mart jiffy clinics are not the answer either, because their customers only go there for antibiotics when they are sick.
The jiffy clinic’s commercial viability depends on passing out antibiotic prescriptions whether the drugs are indicated or not. Nobody wants to pay $59 for advice to go home and suffer with some Nyquil and plenty of fluids.
So the Wal-Mart clinics are more likely to accelerate the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria than to prevent a pandemic of influenza. The conservative commenters in this thread make their usual mistake: micro thinking about macro problems.
I, as an individual, am sick now. I want my antibiotics now. The free market should provide them to me yesterday already, and it’s not my responsibility to suffer for 4 extra days in the service of some abstract notion of public health. Add up 60 years of that behavior, and penicillin is nearly useless.
If medical care were socialized and the urgent care visit were free, patients would be more amenable to important things like using antibiotics correctly and doctors would be more likely to offer the correct advice, rather than just prescribing stuff to mollify the customer. There would be better outcomes for the money.
April 26th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Matt did you know you are in the demographic most likely to die if infected? Cheers.
April 26th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
And those without the necessary tools would advise the patient on the next step.
Going to the doctor when you are well is a bad idea. That’s where all the diseased people congregate.
You know as well as I that this is the case at all medical facilities, not just “jiffy clinics.” Providers at standard medical facilities often prescribe antibiotics for people exhibiting viral symptoms and they have a host of poor reasons. Taking money from people to make health care “free” is obviously not the solution. Education on the dangers of antibiotics and times where they are useless is.
BS for the above-mentioned reason.
Conservatives have given us nothing but war, spending hikes and tax cuts. If you’re talking to me, here’s my response:
FORM A COLLECTIVE OF WEALTHY LIBERALS TO PAY FOR YOUR MACRO “SOLUTIONS.” QUIT POINTING GUNS AT ME.
Are you now referring to people with symptoms that could be treated with antibiotics, instead of the above-mentioned virus-infected? If so, you can work to spread the word that antibiotics have dangers, enervate one, and that for minor infections avoiding them is best.
I’ve used it a few times when it’s been prescribed by standard physicians for bacterial infections and my improvements have seemed immediate. I’ll accept that it’s not as useful as it used to be, however, penicillin has many children.
Suppositions based on what? Do you have lots of good data showing that Americans take fewer drugs when their health care is free?
Fine. If you think that’s the truth then form institutions with your wealthy liberal friends and offer free health care to people instead of forcing me to pay for them and forego the benefits of the market. Frankly, the whole thing smells like your desire to lessen competition and I don’t think I should assume the goodwill of someone advocating more coercion to reach his ends.
April 26th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Re: And how high must the percentage of GDP grabbed by the government be before I can correctly use the word “Socialist?”
Socialism is not a function of GDP or taxes. It is defined by the percentage (a majority, at least) of the means of production that is owned by the government.
Don’t the schools teach anything these days?
April 26th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Godwin’s Law is nothing at all. A tautology. As internet discussions extend the probability of Hitler being mentioned approaches 1. That’s true of anything, of course. Hitler. Glue lice. Whiffle ball. Jerome K. Jerome. The probability approaches 1. What else could it do?
April 26th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Hmmmm… no good response from Google to ["glue lice" wiki]
…of the means of production that is owned by the government.
How much control and funding of a business must government provide for you to call that business “government owned?”
April 26th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
No, I think Michelle Malkin beat him handily.
April 26th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
I’d assume we all understand the current colloquial understanding of the term Godwin’s law. Words and phrases’ meanings do evolve over time.
April 26th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
We don’t leave public health to a mythological “free market” for the same reason that we don’t leave military defense and policing to the “free market” unicorn. Because some things are too important to let libertarians fuck up with their stupidity and to let Republicans fuck up with their deceitful greed.
We’ve all seen how well the “government should keep hands off and deregulate in order to release the magic of the free market” has worked in the financial sector , haven’t we? So why are Courney H and Healthy Markup promoting a discredited ideology which -if it was ever implemented — would cause the deaths of a million people? How can people be that fucking selfish and irresponsible?
If swine flu becomes a pandemic , millions will die because of our shitty public health system. They will die because whores for the rich like Courtney and Markup have been allowed to dominate the national debate with obvious bullshit for the past decade. As a result , we let George W Bush waste $6 TRILLION — a mere fraction of that could have been invested in strong public health sytems. Because we let the Republicans promote their “Free market ” bullshit without challenge, another $10 TRILLION of taxpayer dollars have been put at risk to keep the “free market “proponents from destroying the US Economy.
hich means the government may not have the money now to deal with real threats to national security.
If swine flu strikes, then social chaos may ensue. In that chaos, maybe someone who has lost a loved to the flu due to lack of medical care will beat Courtney’s skull into powder with baseball bat. If God is just, that is.
April 26th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
1) To see how flu can spread, look at this depiction of US airline flights during a 24 hour period (starts at dawn , flight activity grows more intense during the day, tapers down in middle of the night (although some flights are flying from West Coast to the East so as to land in early morning on East Coast.
As sunrise hits East Coast, activity there begins to pick up and then spread west.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WRisy7dw3o&feature=related
2) Now look at global airline activity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XBwjQsOEeg&feature=related
3) Now imagine that many of those airliner –those little sparks of golden light — suddenly begin carrying people stricken with a deadly, contagious flu.
How long should we wait for the “free market” to develop a response? 3 months? And the response is a LOT fewer planes flying and about 2 billion dead.
I know –let’s call the solution “creative destruction”.
April 26th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
#57: Never mind the swine flu contagion – the reason the trolls keep on beating the free market drum is that they’ve lost the argument – big time – in the public and policy spheres, so they beat and beat and beat that same ugly-sounding drum out of desperation and unbelief. The FACT is, the U.S. will implement universal coverage through some combination of mandates, regulation of insurers and a public insurance option – proven, cost-effective methods of insuring and ultimately guaranteeing access to health care for an entire population. No one takes seriously anymore the idea that the marketplace will take care of everyone if left unsupervised, and the trolls can’t stand that – they can’t stand the fact that they’ve lost. So they’ll beat and beat until they’re “beated” out.
April 26th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
@49 Aatos “The conservative commentators in this thread make their usual mistake: micro thinking about macro problems.”
Yes, that and short term solutions for long term systemic problems.
As MY is alluding to in his post and don williams points out @57, it is a national security issue not to have a National Healthcare System. The disjointed nature of the current system means that it could easily be overwhelmed in a variety of ways, that is if you are one of the few who believes it hasn’t already been overwhelmed in a variety of ways.
No, to believe our national health and national security should forever remain in the hands of ruthless cutthroats and privateers is treason, pure and simple.
April 26th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Buddy, Matt didn’t go nearly as far as he could have or should have:
We don’t need no stinkin’ stimulus funds for pandemic flu preparations!
If the GOP had any sense of shame they won’t block Sebelius for HHS in the middle of a possible flu pandemic, but who are we kidding?
April 27th, 2009 at 12:37 am
Depend on how much you’re paying. American’s pay far more for health care, per capita, than any other place in the world, and much of that cost is already being paid for by the tax payer, for emergency treatments for those who could not afford to see a doctor when they still had a chance of avoiding emergency and critical care. You’re already paying twice for health care and it’s getting more expensive in leaps and bounds every year.
The French health care system is one of the best in the world and one of the most expensive universal systems. Yet the French tax payer still pays only about half what Americans do for their system. $6k/yr to $3.5k/yr. Given that private health care providers will have to avoid pricing themselves out of the market in a universal system, you would probably still have more money in your pocket at the end of the year if you opted for extra private insurance as extra cover.
April 27th, 2009 at 12:45 am
Healthy Markup
You argue for the wider use of cheap, limited-in-care clinics as a substitute for doctor’s visits and emergency rooms.
Yes, for the majority of health care visits, such clinics could provide health care more efficiently. The main reason why ER’s and hospitals are so expensive is that they can and do deal with a host of more complicated, urgent situations that don’t arise in the average acquisition of health care.
Of course, ER’s aren’t that expensive if you have insurance. And then you’re also not at WalMart if you’re on the verge of organ failure.
The problem with your argument is that you seem to be saying that these clinics are a substitute for a first world emergency room. Otherwise your argument amounts to an irrelevant truism: yes, many forms of health care would be tremendously cheaper if they were more basic in scope and technological complexity.
Of course, you seem convinced that your argument isn’t irrelevant. It seems rather important to you. Thus you imply that cheap clinics are a substitute for ER’s. I.e. there’s no real value in having trauma surgeons, MRI’s, internal medicine physicians, etc… available 24/7.
And that’s just heaps of stupid to argue. Yet that must be your point: either emergency rooms are without value, or human suffering is entirely outside the scope of your conception of social policy, or talk of the crisis in health care financing has you so completely confused that you’ve overlooked the fact that ER’s function for hundreds of millions of people worldwide without creating social dystopias for those who can afford them.
Please clarify your point, I guess is what I’m saying.
April 27th, 2009 at 1:16 am
Wal-Marts are everywhere.
Wal-Mart has clinics in precisely 30 of its stores.
What’s your fucking point, though? For the uninsured, the ideal situation for every pay-as-you-go doctor visit is to make it like the STD clinic: give a fake name, no questions asked, nothing goes on the medical records to render you uninsurable when the opportunity arises to sign up. That reduces the efficiency of treatment, because doctors are less aware of previous treatments and conditions, and is especially bad for potential contagious disease outbreaks.
So the Markup-approved Jiffy Quack Clinic is undermined by the rest of the holy holy for-profit US “healthcare” “system”. Quel fucking surprise.
And really, it’s no surprise that Markup is a vegan libertarian, the most insufferable of all assholes.
April 27th, 2009 at 2:14 am
Good old Wal-Mart. Little do they know they are America’s last hope!
When we unionize those motherfuckers 1.5 million American workers will instantly move from shit jobs to pretty darn good jobs.
Thanks Wal-Mart! Keep growin’ baby!
April 27th, 2009 at 2:23 am
Even liberals are starting to understand how dangerous it is to give a semi-private corporation a monopoly on production of money. That’s what we have in our central bank, a public-private partnership that between ‘01 and ‘08 drove lending out of proportion to any real demand and artificially lowered important prices: interest rates. You can regulate or deregulate the consumer banks all you want, but if the central bank is unregulated by anything but a few lines of legislation, it won’t matter what you do to the “private” ones.
I’m not telling you to leave it to the free market. You’re a liberal, there are tens of millions of you making trillions of dollars. Form a partnership that doesn’t involve coercion and offer free health care at liberal-run clinics. Don’t point guns at me to force me to your will.
April 27th, 2009 at 2:30 am
Yes, it’s an ugly-sounding drum because it’s exposing what you want to do: use guns to bend people to your will. There are NO excuses for your plans. Communications are amazing and liberals have trillions of dollars. You could form national free clinics and work your ideas out with NO resistance from libertarians or conservatives, but you have no interest in that because you want to take from people you dislike, not meet some goal.
April 27th, 2009 at 2:33 am
The differences between liberals and conservatives are minute. It’s just like the Iraq War was a “national security issue” (of which MY was also a proponent). If you want to give free health care to people, go over to Daily Kos and start a national chain of liberal clinics which you freely fund instead of sending people to my door with guns to pay for your “Utopian” ideas.
April 27th, 2009 at 2:49 am
Yet liberal commentators who claim to care about poor people make no effort to bring this information to the minds of the 40,000,000+ Americans without health insurance. Why hasn’t MY ever pointed these out before? He has a pretty big soapbox. Can there actually be a good reason?
I’m not arguing that’s not the case, but “Doc in a boxes” could take over lots of care and their example would change other elements of health care. If you go to one now, and they can’t handle what you have, they send you on to an ER. Plus, there are two ways to minimize health problems: to quit eating animals (and their by-products) and freak foods like sat-fats and to start exercising regularly. MY and his ilk don’t talk about this nearly as much as they do about socialized medicine. Plus, you and the other liberals could offer free health care to people without pointing guns at me. You’re rich.
April 27th, 2009 at 3:15 am
There are dozens of other providers and these things have only been around for a couple years. There are probably hundreds in the US.
It looks like you answered your own question, kind of.
This is gibberish. Most health care is paid for by the government or insurance instead of directly by the client. So there’s little in the way of market forces. Plus, profit margins in most markets are in the low single digits. All companies do is strive to better their competitors, even though their costs are very similar. It’s why markets work and socialism doesn’t: everyone seeks lower costs and higher revenues, but their competition are always looking to take their market share by undercutting their prices. Real costs of all the elements of industry are then found and profit margins are tiny. Socialism has no way to figure all these things out or find new solutions because all you get are some smart but limited people in a room trying to guess at what’s fair or whatever.
It’s what I seem like to you because my ideals, unlike yours, are consistent. Pictures of animals caged, violated, and tortured their entire lives strictly for the amusement of people who are made sicker with every bite are horrifying. Listening to liberals talking about limiting people, taking their money, denying them freedom just so they can reify their wish-lists are too. I don’t like force. You probably say that’s the case and hate the Iraq War for its obvious coercion and violence, but treat Americans who don’t agree with you as enemies of the state and drive others to take as much of their money as possible and force them to do what you want — all with the threat of the state’s guns.
April 27th, 2009 at 3:51 am
This is gibberish.
I’m sorry that you’re so stupid.
The market has given the US a system built upon adverse selection, the pre-existing condition, and the three-hour phone call to a drone at the end of the phone when the bill arrives. That towering shitpile is not compatible with no-questions-asked doctoring. Jiffy Quack simply institutionalizes an existing system of under-the-counter medicine, in which people get samples instead of prescriptions, or ask a friendly doc to write the Rx for them. And that kind of no-questions-asked doctoring is not compatible with the wider goals of public health, a concept that has done pretty well for itself for the past century.
Arguing for a return to pure fee-for-service doesn’t work either. The cost of treating a serious illness is more than all but the wealthiest can bear out of pocket; Ezra Klein is right when he says that “Medical technology is not priced to be bought by individuals. it is priced to be bought by large groups and used on those individuals that eventually need it.”
There’s a very simple solution, and that’s pooled risk and universal coverage. Again, I’m sorry that you’re forced to come up with all manner of bullshit kludges to preserve your ideological purity, but it’s not much different from silver-ring teenagers thinking that anal sex lets them keep their virginity.
It’s why markets work and socialism doesn’t
Uh huh. The free market has given the US a “healthcare” “system” that every industrialized nation on earth seeks to avoid emulating. Taiwan is pretty damn market-driven, but it chose to avoid the US example. The Swiss took a wide berth around it too.
(And really, the whole “at gunpoint” thing got tedious at about the fifth invocation.)
April 27th, 2009 at 3:54 am
[...] Yglesias, blogging for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, expresses concern over how those without health insurance in the U.S. will deal with this disease: “I have no [...]
April 27th, 2009 at 4:15 am
With more of health care paid for out-of-pocket, these become less of an issue.
You get sick. You go to the “Jiffy Quack.” They prescribe something, send you home, or advise a trip to a different clinic. This is like many of the interactions we have with other market providers. There’s nothing strange about it.
Public health would be best improved by people dropping animal and freak foods and exercising most of their fat off. No socialized medicine is required.
If that’s what you believe, fine, form a union of liberals who pay for free health care without pointing guns at me. There aren’t only two solutions here. But I’m not advising pure fee-for-service for large medical expenses.
Liberals need to internalize this idea: you don’t get what you want by convincing people; you get what you want by terrorizing and coercing them. You can’t be against coercion and for socialized medicine. Once every liberal has accepted this fact, then consistently non-aggressive people like me will quit talking about it.
April 27th, 2009 at 5:05 am
Healthy Markup: You’ve never, ever been to Western Europe, or Canada, or talked with anyone from those regions?
Socialized health care works everywhere else in the First World, and provides better results for a cheaper price than the American muddle.
If you were actually interested in what’s financially smart and good for the country, you too would be for an European-style system. Instead, you are a tool shilling for the profits of the American healthcare industry. If you’re a paid tool, it’s understandable, if still despicable; but if you do it without any returns, it’s merely pitiful.
April 27th, 2009 at 6:04 am
You have no idea how much better or cheaper a market system would be because we don’t have one.
In all, government spending accounted for 45.1% of total health spending in the U.S. in 2005.
Beyond that, most care is paid for by “insurers” because of our idiotic tax system. So, we have the muddle. Emergent order is stifled. Creative destruction is stifled. The greedy obsession with undercutting the competition is stifled. Look around you at other markets and notice similarities: early adopters pay much more for products than people do a couple years later. These people tend to be wealthy and tend to be guinea pigs because the early models are imperfect and the manufacturing of them is so new. I want this model for health care. I want the rich and/or the adventurous to pay more for new, less tested treatments and health products and the less wealthy or adventurous to follow along and adopt the stuff that seems to really work and has dropped in price. Many of even the USDA tested drugs turn out to be expensive duds. Finally, most ill health in America is not the result of dirth of medicine, but of an excess of vice.
Profits tend to be single-digit percentages of the revenue streams of companies in markets because competition from similar providers makes this the case. If you want to know why American health care is so expensive, focusing on this generally insignificant number will lead you nowhere. And you don’t understand people like me; I’m a liberal who doesn’t suffer from class-hatred or corporation-hatred: a libertarian. Modern liberalism has this huge self-contradiction which is that it professes to love peace, diversity, and freedom from coercion, but screams bloody murder at people who are different, fines people for driving without seat belts or smoking in smoke shops and bars, and views the desire of wealthy people to will the remains of their fortunes to their children (in the words of MY) “obscene.”
Form a liberal collective and pay for “free” health care out of that. I came up with two acronym URLs for your clinics, but both were already taken: FDRC.net and FDRC.org
April 27th, 2009 at 6:25 am
Re: You have no idea how much better or cheaper a market system would be because we don’t have one.
Yes, and unicorns and leprechauns would be nice to have too. But in the real world some things don’t (and can’t) exist. Healthcare is a mixed public/private good, like education, and should be funded accordingly. Take off the ideological blindfold and see reality.
April 27th, 2009 at 6:27 am
Healthy Markup
Walmart is not everywhere for that reason I think it’s misguided to tout this as the solution.
April 27th, 2009 at 6:40 am
Step 1)Admit that we don’t have a market system. (Check… finally)
Step 2)Quit putting guns in my face. (No check yet)
Step 3)Form the FDRC and provide “free” health care for the poor. (No check yet)
April 27th, 2009 at 6:49 am
Walmart is not the only provider of these services; there are dozens. Even if this were not the case, the system has shown it has merit. Beyond this, there’s a good chance I’ve saved some readers of this comment section hundreds of dollars by mentioning a market solution that ostensible public benefactors like MY can’t be bothered to mention for ideological reasons.
April 27th, 2009 at 7:25 am
You mentioned Wal-Mart so I was going by what you are saying. But my point still stands. Those clinics are useless if they are not widely available. This lack of availability cannot be blamed on liberals since it’s the company that determined the number of clinics. So this is not about liberals wanting government to monopolize healthcare. We have to deal with what we have at hand and right now the the emergency room is most realistic option for most people. When people are sick, I don’t think they really care if it comes from the government or a private entity.
April 27th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Re Healthy Markup at 66: “Don’t point guns at me to force me to your will.”
————–
I myself would only ever point a gun at someone in order to blow their fucking head off. That’s the law. Mere Banishing of firearms is a no-no.
Healthy Markup may be complaining about the coercive power of the State. I sympathize. Unfortunately, when you are a RESPONSIBLE politician — as opposed to an incompetent whore for the Rich or a heavy drug user — you feel a need to ensure that the complex systems that protect and sustain a population of 300 million people actually work.
That’s what government is. We are no longer in the prehistoric world of 12,000 years ago — where if Markup disagreed with his neighbors, he could move over to the next river valley.
If it makes Markup feel any better, he should realize that we are not collecting money from him to provide healthcare to the mud people. We are collecting money from him to pay off the $9 TRILLION in debt run up by his last three Republican Presidents –”free market” proponents Ronald Reagan, George H Bush, and George W Bush. Plus money to secure that additional $10 Trillion in loans, guarantees, bailouts etc we’re having to pay because George W Bush took that “free market” bullshit seriously when it came to overseeing the financial industry.
April 27th, 2009 at 8:40 am
1) Healthy Markup might also realize that this country was founded on a simple premise:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
2) You and others of your ilk have been abolished, Markup. Not as permanently as I would have done, but I unfortunately don’t make policy. Check your desk — memo should be there somewhere.
April 27th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Re Markup at 75: “You have no idea how much better or cheaper a market system would be because we don’t have one.”
—————-
Yes — and when you are actually ready to take on the RESPONSIBILITY of caring for 300 million people –including protecting them from a flu pandemic — you get back to us.
Excuse us if ,in the meantime, we don’t let thousands die in order to implement your airy, hand-waving ideological bullshit.
Which has already caused multiple national disasters in other areas.
I wouldn’t advise Markup to expect much help from the Republicans. In spite of Newt Gingrich’s bullshit, the Republicans in practice pretty much operated like the Soviet Union’s Politburo.
The only “free market” they wanted was the one in which they tried to sell their asses to as many billionaires as possible — the one in which they competed at developing news ways to betray this country in exchange for campaign dollars.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Is there anything more tedious than the dorm-room libertoid who thinks that paying taxes is “putting guns in my face?”
Waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! There are taxes waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!
April 27th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Healthy Markup’s health care reform:
1) Quinoa and arugala salads for everyone…and exercise!
2) Only get mild flus and colds that can be treated at out patient pay-for-service clinics.
3) Rely on rich liberals to donate health care to some section of poor people.
Comment seems superfluous.
Okay, it’s a commment section so I’ll add:
The reason why MRI’s and trauma surgeons and the like are so cool is because, when you go into see a doctor you don’t actually know what care you need. HM admits that (paraphrasing) “If you need more intensive care WalMart sends to an ER”. So what’s your point again?
April 27th, 2009 at 9:15 am
Those clinics are useless if they are not widely available.
They are widely available and becoming more so every day. This is a growing field that deserves attention and although they don’t answer nearly all the health care questions, they answer many.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Take heart
If and when we see the “next Black Death” strike, the last place you’ll want to be is within 10 miles of any sort of medical care facility. The people with good insurance, and their health care providers, will die first, potentially giving the people without good insurance enough early warning to avoid their fate.
Not only would an outbreak of catastrophic dimensions flood the health care system well past overload, and thereby render its services useless, simply having all of those sick, infectious people concentrated in one place will make health care facilities live up to the traditional name for hospitals, Pest Houses, the places of pestilence. Hospitals were originally designed and funded by the public specifically to warehouse the indigent sick in the event of an outbreak, so that they would die off without spreading the pestilence among people who count, as they would if you just let them die in the street. A new Black Death would restore that old function to our hospitals, only now it would be the rich who would die off in their gold-plated pest houses.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Re b9n10nt at 85: “Healthy Markup’s health care reform:
1) Quinoa and arugala salads for everyone…and exercise!”
——————
You forgot the enemas. Because Markup’s medical school — advertisements in right wing Newsmax.com — informs him that
clean colons would cure many of our health issues.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:30 am
1) If I am sick, I may not being in shape to schlep all over the county, sampling the wares of the “free market”.
“Nah, I can’t help you — but Joe over at “Knives R Us” may be able to take out that gall bladder. That might fix the problem. maybe not”
2) Also, suppose I do find a competent doctor. He tell’s me:
“You’re having a heart attack.
I need to operate –but it’s gonna cost you”.
What the fuck am I supposed to do — NEGOTIATE?
April 27th, 2009 at 9:34 am
When you advocate for more government you are advocating for more guns in my face.
No central government can provide for its people; all it can do is help or hinder the ability of people to find their own solutions. Barack Obama has no idea how to grow wheat and the best thing he could do for that industry is remove subsidies. Obama has no idea how to make cars and the best thing he could do for that industry is to quit coddling destructive unions and funneling money to corporations that are failures. If you think “free” health care is the answer, start a movement among liberals who (with your trillions) can create your own liberal solutions without threats. If you guys do a good job, I’ll contribute.
We can all live in peace; it requires that you and your allies quit advocating coercion. I’m not doing anything to you. I’m not trying to bend you to my whims, take your money for my projects, force you to act in the way I consider best. I’m the ideal neighbor, one who freely helps people without stealing from others.
I’m a libertarian, not a Republican.
All vile. All obsessed with force and violence, just like Clinton and unfortunately (because I voted for him only because I thought he would be less interventionist than McCain) Obama.
We’ve spent and inflated our way into a hole and your solution is to spend and inflate our way out. Bush is not a free marketeer or he wouldn’t have pressured Greenspan to print so much money, leading to one long bubble since 2001. If a president advocates a weak dollar, he’s destructive of capitalism.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Hearkening to a time when federal taxes were so low they would go unnoticed today.
You speak like somebody who enjoys coercion.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Don Williams,
You think we have had some kind of free-market overload for the last eight years. How is that possible when over 40% of GDP was spent by various governments? Do you not see the contradiction? Some clown like Bush can say he’s one thing all he wants, but remember, he’s a big liar. All he gave us were wars, much higher spending and government mandates, tax breaks now leading to higher taxes later, and an errant central bank. You’re too obsessed with the atmospherics of a Republican government. They did almost nothing in eight years to please anyone who cares about freedom and low coercion.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Google [obesity number one killer]
There’s no substitute for more plants, less animals, and exercise. Ask your GP.
I’d advise against putting foreign objects up there, unless that’s something you like. Even then, it’s probably not the best idea.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Re “You speak like somebody who enjoys coercion.”
—————–
1) Usually It takes great wealth to coerce — to buy politicans and prosecutors, to imprison a large portion of the population, to seize a huge share of the national income and national wealth for the benefit of a favored few.
2) There are a few political philosophers who have explained how the coercive power of great wealth can be resisted — how a people can hold the capitalists bloodsuckers in check so that their greed doesn’t destroy a nation:
————–
” “Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because ‘the last decisive battle’ with the kulaks is now under way everywhere. An example must be demonstrated.
* 1. Hang (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers.
* 2. Publish their names.
* 3. Seize all their grain from them.
* 4. Designate hostages in accordance with yesterday’s telegram.
* Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometres around the people might see, tremble, know, shout: “they are strangling, and will strangle to death, the bloodsucking kulaks”.
Telegraph receipt and implementation.
Yours, Lenin.
Find some truly hard people”
3) Lenin also had an interesting answer to your complaint re tax collection:
“The purpose of terror is to terrorize.”
April 27th, 2009 at 9:57 am
What method do you and MY plan to use when you raise the top marginal rate above 50%? If it doesn’t involve guns, it will fail. You cannot get what you want without increasing coercion and threats.
Of course the biggest US tax for a while is going to be the inflation tax, which is a tax that works even on people who don’t live here.
April 27th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Should Kulaks be capitalized?
I await your response to how (40% GDP being spent by government) equals (we have a free market)
April 27th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Re Markup at 92: “You’re too obsessed with the atmospherics of a Republican government. They did almost nothing in eight years to please anyone who cares about freedom and low coercion.”
——————
Yes — and I remember the massive demonstrations and scathing criticisms that the libertarians launched against the Bush Administration.
No, wait…
Of course, you might argue that libertarians made no move to oppose Bush because you are too small and insignificant to have influence. But in that case, why should we care what you think?
April 27th, 2009 at 10:04 am
You shouldn’t, because good ideas never come from a minority.
April 27th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Public health would be best improved by people dropping animal and freak foods and exercising most of their fat off. No socialized medicine is required.
And almost nobody is going to do this voluntarily (aside from the ones already doing it). Are you going to *come to their houses with guns* to make them drop the cheeseburgers?
The intrusive government action required to force vegetarianism on the unwilling public would go far beyond any tax system. You can have my pasta in bolognese sauce, and my sausage jambalaya, and my roast beef sandwich, and my skinless baked chicken brushed with BBQ sauce when you pry them from my cold dead hands.
Speaking of tax systems, while I am of course impressed by your generous offer to not protest while free riding on health care systems built and paid for by others, history has shown that there are serious problems with that approach (e.g. most people with huge piles of money are selfish bastards, which is usually how they got a huge pile of money), which is why taxes were developed to fairly apportion the cost of public goods. The fairness of taxes is not always perfect but it’s a heck of a lot better than “whatever sucker doesn’t realize he can get the same benefit for free” as a funding method.
April 27th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Most of the people you tax to bring about socialized medicine won’t be paying voluntarily. This, for you, is probably a policy feature and not a bug.
I pay for my own health care and will continue to do so. When you form the FDRCs you can allot “free” health care however you wish.
Obama didn’t offer to raise taxes to pay for his programs, but to raise taxes on a minority, which is something an aggressive, coercive, selfish majority can get behind. You have no idea how it is that people accrue wealth, so you ascribe it to a nearly ubiquitous emotional state and demonize people you don’t understand because you lack empathy.
Taxes are as they are now because politicians buy votes by appropriating funds wherever they can to hand out as a signal of their largess. Have you ever noticed how politicians never brag so much as when they’re handing out someone else’s money? It’s sickening. At least when Bill Gates puts forward his big man act, you know his actions are uncoerced.
April 27th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Re Markup at 98: “You shouldn’t, because good ideas never come from a minority.”
——————
Well, NOT from the Libertarians certainly.
To call the Libertarians “useful idiots” for the Superrich’s Republican whores is to vastly overstate the intelligence of the Libertarians.
The whine about “coercion” is moronic. Every day, most of the population experience REAL coercion — forced to work themselves into the ground for decades only to see the fruits of their labor diverted to the wealthy few. That, of course, is the part of the population that’s not spending most of their life behind bars — or crippled for life because they couldn’t disobey an order to go to Iraq.
A population unable to have any say in the decisions that rule their lives. Because no President can win an election without raising $700 Million in order to just defend himself from the lies on our “publicly -owned” airwaves.
The deceitful bullshit of the Libertarians has promoted a political system in which NO politican can get elected without betraying the American people six times before breakfast.
Coercion? You’re lucky we’re not digging your fucking eyeballs out with a pocketknife.
April 27th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Re Markup at 100: “You have no idea how it is that people accrue wealth, so you ascribe it to a nearly ubiquitous emotional state and demonize people you don’t understand because you lack empathy.”
————-
We do know how you accrue wealth — you bribe some Congressmen to write laws that favor your enterprise and which protects your monopolies. Also to divert a shitload of federal procurement dollars to your business. Maybe give you a sweetheart deal to exploit public resources at low royalties. Focused $2 Trillion tax cuts to benefit the wealthy few and the occasional $10 Trillion financial bailout. All financed by stealing $3 Trillion from the Social Security/Medicare Trust Fund and writing around $13 Trillion in IOUS that the public will have to pay off.
Do you think that the $1.5 Billion the Presidential candidates alone received came in as $25 checks and was given solely to support “good government”
Mention the “free market” to K Street lobbyists or to a group of campaign managers and watch them piss themselves laughing.
April 27th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Well, NOT from the Libertarians certainly.
Most libertarians are against the TARP which Obama is pushing through. Those dollars are going to bail out the rich instead of just nationalizing the banks outright.
Americans are still incredibly wealthy now compared to prior times. It’s the march of science and the part of the market that is free. Differences in income numbers aren’t as meaningful as you think.
Libertarians are averse to excessive prison and call for drug legalization, which would lower the rate. It would also make the ghettos richer by removing drug dealers from a place of violent power. The Austrians, many at Cato, many neo-classicists and I were against the Iraq War, unlike MY.
Voting is silly. Your vote is meaningless except as an amusement because you’re not changing any outcomes.
Ron Paul wants to legalize drugs, stop the empire-building, return this country to sound money, and generally leave people to their own devices.
You’ve never been in a real fight.
April 27th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Yes, you’re describing Obama’s actions to a T. These things are anathema to libertarians, who explain it with concepts like the Tullock lottery. We want to shrink the scope of government, not usurp it.
Yep, it sucks. Should have listened to Ron Paul when he was talking about our unsound dollar.
There’s no trust fund and never was. That’s just an accounting joke. It’s possible they don’t want to pay those trillions off, but inflate our way out in order to avoid actually saying that we’re bankrupt.
Our definitions of “good government” may not coincide.
True, Libertarians hate the depredations of K Street as much as those of standard liberals who want to steal everyone else’s wealth to give out “free” health care.
April 27th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
True, Libertarians hate the depredations of K Street…
Just not enough to stop them from supporting the Republican depredations of K Street. Supprorting some corporate welfare and lobbying for earmarks to private companies is a small price to pay to prevent universal health coverage.
They might not like what Republicans do, but at least they’re helping the “right people” as far as libertarians are concerned.
Libertarianism’s nothing but about some rabid anti-liberalism than anything else, and the Republicans are willing to serve that purpose.
April 27th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Tyro,
Read the writings of Mises, Bob Murphy, Peter Schiff… When you talk about libertarians you show that you don’t really know anything about them. The only voice in national politics that I hear talking regularly about K Street, crony capitalists, buyouts of the rich, etc is Ron Paul. Obama is just handing all of Geithner’s friends trillions of dollars.
April 27th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
You have no idea how much better or cheaper a market system would be because we don’t have one.
And communism has never been tried yet, either.
Tell it to the fucking Swiss.
An adequate healthcare system would have provided the mental health treatment that Soycheese McMises so desperately needs.
April 27th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
For all the whining about coercion that Libertarians do, there would need to be taxes of some kind even to support the limited government they advocate. They differentiate themselves from anarchists mainly in saying that they see the legitimate exercise of government power being the enforcement of contracts and national defense. Well, even that’s not going to pay for itself. There’s going to need to be some sort of taxes no matter what. Which, if you go by HM’s logic, is “guns in my face,” even under his own utopian Libertarian wonderland.
So let’s be honest and admit that we’re disagreeing on a matter of degree and not one of kind. It’s the amount of taxes you’re opposed to, not the fact of taxes.
April 27th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
[...] Yglesias, der für Center for American Progress Action Fund bloggt, äußert sich besorgt darüber, wie diejenigen in den USA mit der Krankheit umgehen werden, die über keine [...]
April 27th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
[...] die voor het Center for American Progress Action Fund schrijft, geeft uitdrukking aan zijn bezorgdheid [en] over hoe mensen zonder ziektekostenverzekering in de Verenigde Staten met deze ziekte zullen [...]
April 28th, 2009 at 12:47 am
The ideal tax rate on anything would be 0%. That’s what I want to work towards. Even if my ideas became the norm, I wouldn’t call for immediate rates of 0% because there are too many people who’ve been forced into the S.S. Ponzi scheme their whole lives and it’s hard to know how long it would take to reach a situation that was kind of fair. But the general idea I’d want is one expressed by Bob Higgs in reference to government, “Don’t just stand there, undo something!” That would be the mandate of a legitimate government: reduce the number of drugs considered illegal; reduce social programs; reduce tax breaks; reduce regulation on everything; reduce taxes. Make the job of government the simplification of government and remove any legislator who doesn’t get it. Keep paring away until the whole thing is small enough that one can get a handle on it, because in its current state it’s too large to make any sense of or to effectively watchdog.
The problem with you guys is that you think you can capture the apparatus of the state without letting any of the evil, rich guys do any of their own capturing. This will never be the case, as seen recently in Obama’s pick of Geithner, who is using the TARP as the ultimate goody bag. Even if you got rid of these most blatant money grabs, you’d still be left with the fact that government would be forever making deals with big business because that’s who you want to tax and that’s who the govt has to buy stuff from for “the people.” You’ll never know when someone’s getting a BS sweetheart deal, etc.
April 28th, 2009 at 12:54 am
Actually, Communism was tried briefly and failed so quickly in several places that those governments quickly just moved to Socialism.
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Ask your G.P. whether you would get atheriosclerosis if you were to treat animal products as condiments or things to be altogether avoided. There’s lots of good data here and you can start with something simple like Ornish. Or you can hold out for the needles of socialized medicine to fix your rotting, clotted body.
April 28th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Let’s make our system more like Mexico’s, more universal. We’ll be the envy of the world.
April 28th, 2009 at 4:44 am
[...] Liberal bloggers are surmising that universal healthcare would somehow make a difference. [...]
April 28th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Night of the Libertarian Dead again.
May 3rd, 2009 at 8:11 am
[...] Yglesias, dalam blog Center for American Progress Action Fund, menyatakan kekhawatiran akan bagaimana mereka yang tidak mempunyai asuransi kesehatan menangani penyakit ini: “Saya tidak [...]