and they call us "Astro turfers"

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

I had a very well thought-out response to this, replete with an asessment of price controls, but my browser decided to stop working.
Here's the jist of it; price controls= bad, they generate shortages and surpluses, so says some notable economists. The US does not have a healthcare shortage, it has a surplus, and there are more effective ways than state healthcare reform to make it more widely available and more resonably priced.

I'll re-type it all when I have some spare time and will.

Edit- almost forgot, I was going to bash tribesman's last post as well. If someone could do it for me and save me some time, I'd be most obliged.

Haha, I hate when that happens.

I do agree that price controls are generally bad, but I believe we're in a situation where there's already price "controls", except that they are dictated by insurers and the uninsured. Perhaps control is not the best word because its more like a giant, artificially inflated cluster you-know-what.

The problem with universal healthcare has typically been one of rationing (i.e., shortages). The problem with OUR version of universal healthcare (the defacto one we're currently using) has been different - it's the inflation of cost WITHOUT shortages.

Healthcare is about as artificial of a capitalist system as one can find. It is an item that is always in a state of increasing demand by the very nature of a burgeoning population enjoying increased longevity. Hell, even oil, as a commodity, has its competitors. But unlike oil and real commodities, healthcare is far more notional meaning that its specific value can nigh be determined.

So what happens is that even in the private sector bloated bureaucracies form ratcheting up the costs of an already hyperinflated sector. Now people must not only pay for the costs and profit of the doctors, nurses, medical equipment and supply manufacturers, drug companies, etc., but also the costs and profits of the bloated institutions that pay them (insurance companies), and even then only so much. Add to that an out of control civil legal system, and you've got a recipe for an unmitigated disaster of a system which determines its own value by nature of essentially just saying that "this is my value".

Hence my position that a drastic, universal overhaul is needed. But, let me restate - Obama's and this Congress' plan is absolutely, 100% guaranteed to be a worse disaster than what we already have.