Chou Toshio
Over9000
So yesterday CNN hosted a debate on the fate of Obama care between Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz:
http://digg.com/2017/sanders-cruz-obamacare-debate-cnn-full-video
An oasis of intelligence and candor, a reprieve from the shit fest of idiocy that otherwise is the news. You couldn't help but think-- wow, what could have been.
Now, I'm no fan of Cruz... I think his arguments are either disingenuous or misguided (probably the former), either way fundamentally wrong about how to fix health care-- but that said, the level of candor and honest discussion of this debate makes it a far better one in my book than any even Obama and Romney had four years ago.
Sure, it's easy to chock it up to Cruz and Sanders being off the campaign trail, not fighting over an immediately relevant election, and the depth of discussion was obviously enhanced in terms of substance by staying on just 1 topic, and not the whole of everything like a typical presidential debate would-- either way, it was not only watchable (depressingly so compared to Trump vs. Hillary), but engaging and thought provoking. I actually gained a bit of respect for Cruz, but because of his sharpness and input, Bernie burned brighter than any speech or debate on the campaign trail, and the brilliance and urgency of his message was underscored to greater affect. Please, please, PLEASE CNN have the follow-up you promised off-handedly here to have them back to debate tax reform.
Anyway, free market is the best model for development and distribution of goods and services in most industries, but any economist will admit that there is a limited number of markets where public/semi-public models do it better. This usually has to do with the nature of the good/service-- and healthcare is one of those things. The Republican stance ignores not only the global reality of healthcare, but the fundamental economics surrounding it.
The key economic piece here is that a) Health care itself has a very inelastic demand b) The repercussions for "not servicing" individuals is extremely heavy-- they will literally die. Inelastic demand means demand changes little despite changes to price-- a sick person has to pay anything for treatment, or suffer/die. When you have inelastic demand, the balancing price point for a "free market" model sets very high prices-- which is where b) kicks in because high prices mean that some in the market will go without service, but in this case the repercussion for that is extremely heavy (letting many people die). While there are plenty of people (especially under Obama care) who are willing to not buy insurance, an effective model of insurance where everyone invests into the system is needed to provide widespread distribution of health care, where of its nature as a necessity would naturally set very high prices in a government vacuum.
The global reality of health care is that other systems simply do it better-- in that the universal models in other developed countries deliver better health statistics by any measure; from life expectancy, infant mortality, etc. Countries like Japan and Taiwan actually do it with shorter wait times than the United States, and most Republican voters would be surprised to find that even the UK, which has created a competitive model that shuts down under-performing hospitals, has driven down its waiting times and improved its service quality to be quite reasonable. Now, many of these countries (notably Japan) constantly struggle with a health sector that under-performs financially, with much lower average salaries in all areas of the industry, and many hospitals constantly in the red-- but from the perspective of the average consumer, the system is delivering much better support at a fraction of the cost to consumer.
While the ACA is a really terrible model-- it's hobbled by design, because Republicans and the insurance industry fought to prevent competition from a government run option. Cruz fought really hard in this debate to skate around the fact that collective bargaining power of a highly bought into, state-run insurance plan would also succeed (and succeed to a much greater degree than a state-blind market) in reducing prices for many goods and services. The nonexistence of that bargaining power in both Obama care plans and the Medicare is part of what makes both of them obsolete compared to foreign models, and is the primary cause of ACA's high prices.
Anyway, there was a lot of substance to this debate-- I have a lot of other thoughts on the smaller points-- the places where the two agreed and about some of Cruz's ideas that come off as being liberal philosophy in disguise... but these are my thought on the core piece of the debate. I hope it gets a watch by many, and any who saw it please weigh in below!
http://digg.com/2017/sanders-cruz-obamacare-debate-cnn-full-video
An oasis of intelligence and candor, a reprieve from the shit fest of idiocy that otherwise is the news. You couldn't help but think-- wow, what could have been.
Now, I'm no fan of Cruz... I think his arguments are either disingenuous or misguided (probably the former), either way fundamentally wrong about how to fix health care-- but that said, the level of candor and honest discussion of this debate makes it a far better one in my book than any even Obama and Romney had four years ago.
Sure, it's easy to chock it up to Cruz and Sanders being off the campaign trail, not fighting over an immediately relevant election, and the depth of discussion was obviously enhanced in terms of substance by staying on just 1 topic, and not the whole of everything like a typical presidential debate would-- either way, it was not only watchable (depressingly so compared to Trump vs. Hillary), but engaging and thought provoking. I actually gained a bit of respect for Cruz, but because of his sharpness and input, Bernie burned brighter than any speech or debate on the campaign trail, and the brilliance and urgency of his message was underscored to greater affect. Please, please, PLEASE CNN have the follow-up you promised off-handedly here to have them back to debate tax reform.
Anyway, free market is the best model for development and distribution of goods and services in most industries, but any economist will admit that there is a limited number of markets where public/semi-public models do it better. This usually has to do with the nature of the good/service-- and healthcare is one of those things. The Republican stance ignores not only the global reality of healthcare, but the fundamental economics surrounding it.
The key economic piece here is that a) Health care itself has a very inelastic demand b) The repercussions for "not servicing" individuals is extremely heavy-- they will literally die. Inelastic demand means demand changes little despite changes to price-- a sick person has to pay anything for treatment, or suffer/die. When you have inelastic demand, the balancing price point for a "free market" model sets very high prices-- which is where b) kicks in because high prices mean that some in the market will go without service, but in this case the repercussion for that is extremely heavy (letting many people die). While there are plenty of people (especially under Obama care) who are willing to not buy insurance, an effective model of insurance where everyone invests into the system is needed to provide widespread distribution of health care, where of its nature as a necessity would naturally set very high prices in a government vacuum.
The global reality of health care is that other systems simply do it better-- in that the universal models in other developed countries deliver better health statistics by any measure; from life expectancy, infant mortality, etc. Countries like Japan and Taiwan actually do it with shorter wait times than the United States, and most Republican voters would be surprised to find that even the UK, which has created a competitive model that shuts down under-performing hospitals, has driven down its waiting times and improved its service quality to be quite reasonable. Now, many of these countries (notably Japan) constantly struggle with a health sector that under-performs financially, with much lower average salaries in all areas of the industry, and many hospitals constantly in the red-- but from the perspective of the average consumer, the system is delivering much better support at a fraction of the cost to consumer.
While the ACA is a really terrible model-- it's hobbled by design, because Republicans and the insurance industry fought to prevent competition from a government run option. Cruz fought really hard in this debate to skate around the fact that collective bargaining power of a highly bought into, state-run insurance plan would also succeed (and succeed to a much greater degree than a state-blind market) in reducing prices for many goods and services. The nonexistence of that bargaining power in both Obama care plans and the Medicare is part of what makes both of them obsolete compared to foreign models, and is the primary cause of ACA's high prices.
Anyway, there was a lot of substance to this debate-- I have a lot of other thoughts on the smaller points-- the places where the two agreed and about some of Cruz's ideas that come off as being liberal philosophy in disguise... but these are my thought on the core piece of the debate. I hope it gets a watch by many, and any who saw it please weigh in below!
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