I disagree. How much does it cost to have a baby at the local hospital? $5,000? How many kids are born each year. That is $5 billion for every 1 million kids born each year.

This goes back to the efficiency argument. The average baby whose parents up at the ER ready to pop incurs a potentially far higher cost (orders of magnitude higher) than they would had they been fully covered (prenatal visits and the like). Not covering childbirth seems like low-hanging fruit to single guys and/or ideologues, but it's simply not practical in _any_ health care system.

I'll give you bonus points for using elasticity, but you are mistaken. It isn't supply that is affected by the subsidy, but demand, hence your comment is way off. That is a subsidy shifts the demand curve, that is demand increases at all prices. Unless supply is perfectly elastic, there will be an increase in total output and an increase in prices.

As above there are a lot of success stories for government paid helath care. There are zero success stories for private insurer paid health care.

Really? Aside from France's pseudo-government run health care what else is there? Surely not someting from Cuba or North Korea I hope. Since M1EK has mentioned Germany, I've been trying to dig stuff up via google. Haven't found much yet, but the means of financing its system strikes me as being highly regressive--a payroll tax. Physician's fees have been capped since 1986...hmmm I haven't seen anything indicating this yet, but the first thing that popped into my mind was what about a potential shortage of doctors as people looked to more lucrative career options. And I haven't found anything about the rate of increase in health care costs, but if it is anything higher than the growth rate of GDP then that system is basically f*cked as ours, it just might take them longer to realize it.

Seriously, I don't see what all the furry is about. In the post of mine I linked too I favored mandantory isurance for everybody (like with Clinton Care--i.e. everybody is covered), that there is some subsidies for lower incomes at least, but that we break the supply constraints on health care suppliers--i.e. doctors. End the asymetrical treatment of employer provided health benefits vs. health benefits purchased by the individual.

Or is it simply that those who thing government provided health care really does mean it is free and that everybody gets a pony too?

ER overuse

Me (after reading triage sheet and rolling my eyes): Hi, I'm Dr.____. I'm the doctor in charge of the EMERGENCY Department tonight. I see that you came by AMBULANCE. What was so bad that you had to call 9-1-1 at 3 AM to be rushed to the EMERGENCY ROOM by AMBULANCE? What is your MEDICAL EMERGENCY? What is your LIFE OR LIMB THREATENING problem??

Patient (clueless to the sarcasm): Oh, I think I'm pregnant again.

Me: You must be in a lot of pain or bleeding severely to come in by ambulance, huh?

Patient: No. I just didn't have a ride.

The link above shows that When you subsidize something you get more of it absolutely applies to medicine.

Me (after reading triage sheet and rolling my eyes): Hi, I'm Dr.____. I'm the doctor in charge of the EMERGENCY Department tonight. I see that you came by AMBULANCE. What was so bad that you had to call 9-1-1 at 3 AM to be rushed to the EMERGENCY ROOM by AMBULANCE? What is your MEDICAL EMERGENCY? What is your LIFE OR LIMB THREATENING problem??

Patient (clueless to the sarcasm): Oh, I think I'm pregnant again.

Me (thinking that this clueless girl still don't get it): You must be in a lot of pain or bleeding severely to come in by ambulance, huh?

Patient: No. I just didn't have a ride.

The first of those people was Murray Barr, and Johns and O'Bryan realized that if you totted up all his hospital bills for the ten years that he had been on the streets—as well as substance-abuse-treatment costs, doctors' fees, and other expenses—Murray Barr probably ran up a medical bill as large as anyone in the state of Nevada.

"It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murray," O'Bryan said.

And

It turns out, furthermore, that this group costs the health-care and social-services systems far more than anyone had ever anticipated. Culhane estimates that in New York at least sixty-two million dollars was being spent annually to shelter just those twenty-five hundred hard-core homeless.

When you subsidize something you get more of it.

You know better than that. A change in supply does not have to correspond to a change in demand, it depends entirely on how elastic the market is for that particular item.

Health care (like gasoline) is an example of a product that shows very little change in demand for a given change in supply/cost. People do not suddenly need an appendectomy just because you cut the price. They needed one or they didn't.

Let's use your birth cost example: do you really believe the cost of birthing a child will even in the slightest affect the rates of pregnancy? It won't. People will go right on have unprotected sex regardless and babies will continue to be concieved. And those babies will have to come out regardless of how much it costs.

Health care is not a field that reacts like the curves they show in Econ 101.

Simply moving to univerals health care, no matter what the details, could be worse than sticking with what we currently have (which is indeed a mess).

Worse? Not bloody likely.
As bad? Possibly.

As above there are a lot of success stories for government paid helath care. There are zero success stories for private insurer paid health care.

some>0

Do the math.

God I hope not. Our VA experience to date can hardly rank up there with excellent healthcare.

I haven't read much about Germany's health care, but I have read about France's and it requires a fair amount of out-of-pocket expenses. As such, it isn't comparable to things like the Canadian system or England's NHS. And I'd suggest that part of the reason it is working better than most is that out-of-pocket expenses, something that many here in the U.S. seem to oppose.

Ken,

When you subsidize something you get more of it.

M1EK,

Problem is that discretionary health consumption like that is a drop in the tinest bucket in the ocean compared to end-of-life spending and preemies. And such unnecessary health expenditures are overwhelmed by health expenditures which SHOULD be made but aren't (on sensible preventative care, for instance, or seeing a primary care doctor instead of the ER) because of the way we finance.

I disagree. How much does it cost to have a baby at the local hospital? $5,000? How many kids are born each year. That is $5 billion for every 1 million kids born each year. If there are 4 million born each year, then that is $20 billion each year. That works out to quite a bit of money and that certainly isn't something that should be covered under health insurance as it is a voluntary activity.

So the tiniest drop in the biggest of buckets is probably a bit of an over-statement. Add on other things like what Steve Plunk is talking aobut and maybe we get to 2% of total spending. Sure not a huge amount, but it is still about $40 billion dollars. Not exactly chump change.

ken,

Looking at it closely what you really are saying is: 'people should just suffer their illnesses and die'.

No, but maybe we shouldn't be spending huge amounts of money at the end of life sometimes. We don't have to let them suffer, but at the same time trying to extend the life for the 88 year old man on a breathing vent for 3 more months...may not be in his best interest or ours.

Incidentally, where did you come down on the Terri Schaivo case?

This is not true. We have seen the libertarian preferred free market fail to match the health result of what can be provided through government sponsored programs throughout most of human history and throughout the entire world.

Really, got anything to back that up? Prior to WWII life expectancy was rising, health care was getting better, and so forth. Yet we are to believe it was an abject failure save for the way to get around wage controls during WWII? Sure, I believe that.

Medicare did not drive out the free market, it filled a need that remained unmet for over 200 years in this country.

Actually, it was a welfare program to the largest block of voters out there and has cost far more than anybody thought at the time...kind of like Bush's elderly prescription drug program.

I expect the reason we haven't seen a good libertarian health care system is modern medicine as we know it came after the WWII inspired health insurance boom. We haven't seen a failure of libertarian health care either.

This is not true. We have seen the libertarian preferred free market fail to match the health result of what can be provided through government sponsored programs throughout most of human history and throughout the entire world.

Medicare did not drive out the free market, it filled a need that remained unmet for over 200 years in this country.

You are confusing things like eye care with things like i-pods. There is a difference.

Not recognizing that difference leads people like you to say things like 'we are the most over prescribed over medicated nation on the planet'. As if you are in any position to know.

Looking at it closely what you really are saying is: 'people should just suffer their illnesses and die'.

But suffering and death are not things that are subject to your economic analysis. They are, like life itself, independent of whatever economic system is in place at the time. There is no demand curve for life and health that fits into the acedemic models people like you and Steve like to use.

You may one day realise this.

Maybe not the cataract patient but what about the mom who takes the kids to the doctor every time they have a sniffle?

Problem is that discretionary health consumption like that is a drop in the tinest bucket in the ocean compared to end-of-life spending and preemies. And such unnecessary health expenditures are overwhelmed by health expenditures which SHOULD be made but aren't (on sensible preventative care, for instance, or seeing a primary care doctor instead of the ER) because of the way we finance.

I expect the reason we haven't seen a good libertarian health care system is modern medicine as we know it came after the WWII inspired health insurance boom. We haven't seen a failure of libertarian health care either.