single-payer system ... singled out

[Ziggurat]

You still pay VAT on the stuff you buy.

Are you going to claim that this VAT tax is enough to cover your health care costs, or is even as much as one's welfare benefits?

 

[Ziggurat]

I did no such thing. How exactly does UHC create freeloaders?

By paying for them. If nobody else was paying for them, they wouldn't be freeloading. You can't freeload if you aren't getting anything.

Do you honestly think that people become or stay unemployed because they don't want to pay UHC insurance or taxes?

The reasons are irrelevant, and I made no claims about motives. Some people (such as those with severe disabilities) are freeloaders through no choice of their own. Nonetheless, there are freeloaders: those who take from the system without contributing to it.

Or that it is an incentive in the US to get employment, when you lose insurance as soon as you lose the job?

First off, COBRA, and second, yes, it obviously is an incentive, how effective or important an incentive is a separate question. But that issue is a tangent.

You can find lazy and greedy bums everywhere, who find unemployment and it's benefits preferable to work, but that is not an issue specifically pertinent to UHC.

I wasn't making the claim that it was important. Rather, I was making the claim that Rolfe is wrong that the reason for taxes is to prevent freeloading, because that's simply not the case.

Very true. I'll do the research for Germany and you do it for the US, and tomorrow we'll compare the numbers.

Why? Comparative differences between the US and Germany are irrelevant to Rolfe's claim. But perhaps you've forgotten what was most recently under discussion.

Rolfe was talking about the UK, while I was talking about Germany.

Differences between Germany and the UK are likewise irrelevant to the claim Rolfe made that I criticized: taxes are NOT simply to prevent freeloading, and they ARE for the purpose of forcing other people to pay for something. That is true in the UK, in Germany, and in the US.

 

[Rolfe]

Oh, the Rab C. Nesbits of this world. Someone has to be unemployed, so it might as well be me because I'm happy being unemployed.

Even these lowlife aren't exactly freeloading as regards healthcare because they're paying the contributions they're eligible to pay - such as VAT on purchases and so on. They're just choosing to stay on a low level of income due to laziness. Unfortunately if you create a safety net with a small enough mesh that nobody really needy is going to fall through, then some people are going to use it as a hammock.

The USA has exactly the same people, and they get welfare and healthcare provided by the state too. No real difference between the systems there.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Zigguraut, I'll just repeat, as we cross-posted. Social security creates Rab C. Nesbit. You can't really avoid it. The USA is no different from countries with universal healthcare in this respect.

And yes, the purpose of taxes is to prevent freeloading. To prevent people who can afford to contribute from shirking their contributions.

Rolfe.

 

[Eskarina]

Are you going to claim that this VAT tax is enough to cover your health care costs, or is even as much as one's welfare benefits?

I'm not Professor Yaffle, but...

Every UK denizen, otherwise paying taxes or not, is paying VAT, when they buy consumer goods and thus contributing to the NHS. Even I, as a German citizen contribute to it, whenever I buy something in the UK and cannot be bothered to reclaim the VAT.

And I really can't be bothered.

I don't see where Professor Yaffle claimed that the VAT is enough to cover health care costs.

Perhaps someone else could educate Ziggurat about the astonishing diversity of life outside US borders.

 

[Ziggurat]

Social security creates Rab C. Nesbit. You can't really avoid it. The USA is no different from countries with universal healthcare in this respect.

And yes, the purpose of taxes is to prevent freeloading.

So the purpose of taxes is to prevent freeloading, but welfare programs funded by taxes unavoidably create some freeloaders. You've just contradicted yourself.

And you're still wrong. The purpose of taxes is to force people to pay for something. Sometimes this is used to prevent freeloading (but even in such cases, you are doing so by forcing other people to pay for something), but often it is not. As you have not recognized this reality even when you acknowledge that welfare systems create freeloaders, let me give you a more obvious example: "vice" taxes. You force people who engage in some vice to pay money, thereby trying to discourage them from engaging in this vice. You may even use this tax to pay for services the payer cannot ever use (such as cigarette taxes being used to pay for children's health care). How does that prevent freeloading? It doesn't in any way, shape, or form.

 

[Beerina]

Beerina, this particular point on medical private sector funding of healthcare has arisen before and the point was made by others - and well supported, IIRC - that in fact your government, not the private health firms, support pharma research the most. Are you going to try and prove this to be wrong?

I note with some humour that Beerina has been strangely absent since this point was raised.

Assuming it's true, and that government-sponsored research is equally valuable w.r.t. saving and extending lives and increasing the quality thereof, a huge leap not born out by history in any other realm whatsoever, you still haven't covered everything.

"Government covers more" = not all. You also want private money doing this, or else your technology will lag behind, and you'll end up killing more than you save.


This, too, has been pointed out, and ignored, again and again, before. Medical tech isn't like a space shuttle or piece of military hardware, where nobody except for governments really want to buy it. It's like Internet hardware -- only more desired. It's like video games -- only more desired. It's like automobiles -- only more desired. It's like stereo systems -- only more desired.


Does anybody think a government takeover of those domains would lead to better, cheaper stereo systems? Video games? Autos?


Oh, and as a side note, "better" is all we care about here. If "cheaper" leads to slower "better" in any way, shape, or form, it will become cumulatively murderous.


Think about it: The more things to buy, the more the total cost is, everything else being equal.


Hence in a free, capitalist society, increasing costs beyond inflation are to be expected -- indeed, desired.

You aren't buying "health care".

You're buying a heart catheterization. And another with balloon angioplasty. And a quintuple bypass. And a dialysis machine. And an internal, artificial heart. And a titanium knee. And an internal pacemaker, new and improved with built-in defibrillator.



Oh, and one final thing. That the government steps in and funds things does not, necessarily, mean the private sector won't. Especially w.r.t. big "bang for your buck" research. It could, though, hamper private investment. If it weren't for the potential monetary upside, don't you think the private company that sequenced the human genome, finishing only a little bit after the vastly more expensive government cash hemorrhage did, would have given up? Then people like you would be claiming only the government could find the will to do such a thing.

Which, of course, would be false, but there would be no easy way to prove it without a parallel "experiment". Nobody here recognizes this issue in politics, either, though they're all about it in psychics, Big Feet, homeopathy, and so on.

 

[Ziggurat]

I don't see where Professor Yaffle claimed that the VAT is enough to cover health care costs.

Then paying VAT isn't enough to keep one from being a freeloader. So either Yaffle is claiming something I would find rather astounding, or his claim just doesn't change anything about the existence of freeloaders.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Are you going to claim that this VAT tax is enough to cover your health care costs, or is even as much as one's welfare benefits?

Most people with signficant health needs will not pay in enough to cover their costs. My niece with the heart transplant certainly hasn't, and I doubt her parents have if you include their kids in the equation. That's kinda the whole point of the system. And the point of private insurance systems.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

By paying for them. If nobody else was paying for them, they wouldn't be freeloading. You can't freeload if you aren't getting anything.

Mmm, in many cases (my niece and my mother) they would be dead.

 

[Ziggurat]

Most people with signficant health needs will not pay in enough to cover their costs. My niece with the heart transplant certainly hasn't, and I doubt her parents have if you include their kids in the equation. That's kinda the whole point of the system. And the point of private insurance systems.

The idea behind insurance is to pool risk. But UHC's do more than just pool risks. In fact, the primary advantages cited as justification of UHC systems, and the only real distinguishing features compared to private insurance, come precisely from doing more than just pooling risks.

Mmm, in many cases (my niece and my mother) they would be dead.

And that has bearing on how desirable a UHC system is. But it is irrelevant to the question of whether my description of UHC's is correct.

 

[Eskarina]

By paying for them. If nobody else was paying for them, they wouldn't be freeloading. You can't freeload if you aren't getting anything.

And if nobody was paying for them, they might die. Or they might stop being a contributing member of society. Or they might go bonkers and kill their family. Do you want that weighing on your conscience?

The reasons are irrelevant, and I made no claims about motives. Some people (such as those with severe disabilities) are freeloaders through no choice of their own. Nonetheless, there are freeloaders: those who take from the system without contributing to it.

Oh, the humanity of it!!!!111eleventy-one!!! Some people are using the system without ever contributing (or being able to contribute) to it. Some are even abusing it. I still pay less for a system that covers most of Germany's denizens (including myself) than you do for a system that covers a small percentage of the US population (excluding yourself).

First off, COBRA, and second, yes, it obviously is an incentive, how effective or important an incentive is a separate question. But that issue is a tangent.

COBRA is not forever, and as the recent recession has shown, it is not easy, even for qualified people, to get a new job and thus health insurance. And savings won't last forever (well, perhaps if you happen to be Bill Gates, they might).

I wasn't making the claim that it was important. Rather, I was making the claim that Rolfe is wrong that the reason for taxes is to prevent freeloading, because that's simply not the case.

What's the old saying? Two things you cannot avoid: Death and taxes. As far as taxes are concerned, with VAT they've got you coming and going. Taxes are very efficient to prevent freeloading. Not perfect, but nobody claimed that, right?

Why? Comparative differences between the US and Germany are irrelevant to Rolfe's claim. But perhaps you've forgotten what was most recently under discussion.

Seems more to me, that you still aren't aware of the fact that Rolfe and I were talking about about different systems. Both of which still yield better results than the US system.

Differences between Germany and the UK are likewise irrelevant to the claim Rolfe made that I criticized: taxes are NOT simply to prevent freeloading, and they ARE for the purpose of forcing other people to pay for something. That is true in the UK, in Germany, and in the US.

Like your taxes pay for defense and homeland security? Do you pay them voluntarily?

 

[Eskarina]

Then paying VAT isn't enough to keep one from being a freeloader. So either Yaffle is claiming something I would find rather astounding, or his claim just doesn't change anything about the existence of freeloaders.

Her claim is simply that even those, who don't have an income and thus do not pay any form of income tax, still contribute to the NHS by paying VAT. Even if they only spend 50 pounds on groceries each month. Or 30 quid. Or a hundred. Or 20 squidzillions. Or whatever. They contribute.

 

[Ziggurat]

And if nobody was paying for them, they might die.

As I said to Yaffle, that's an argument for the desirability of allowing freeloaders, but it doesn't make them not freeloaders.

Do you want that weighing on your conscience?

And how, pray tell, is a correct description of the system going to place any weight on my conscience?

Oh, the humanity of it!!!!111eleventy-one!!! Some people are using the system without ever contributing (or being able to contribute) to it.

Oh, the strawmanity!!!!111eleventy-one!!!

Taxes are very efficient to prevent freeloading.

In some cases. But the fact that they do this in some cases (which I have never denied, and which it does by forcing other people to pay for something) does not mean that they only do that, as Rolfe suggested. And it does not mean that they do this in the case of UHC, because they don't. Appealing to emotion, as you did above, will not change that reality: in fact, the entire emotional appeal is precisely because they do NOT do that.

Seems more to me, that you still aren't aware of the fact that Rolfe and I were talking about about different systems.

Seems to me you've studiously avoided the actual points I've made in favor of strawmen.

Like your taxes pay for defense and homeland security? Do you pay them voluntarily?

I am forced to pay them. Whether or not I would do so in the absence of compulsion is an entirely academic problem, since that compulsion does in fact exist, and there is no realistic prospect it will be removed. Any answer I give would be meaningless, since there's no way I could demonstrate that it's true, and no way you could ever show it's false.

Furthermore, the fact that some taxes address the free rider problem does not mean that all do. Is that really too difficult a concept to grasp?

 

[Random]

Oh, and as a side note, "better" is all we care about here. If "cheaper" leads to slower "better" in any way, shape, or form, it will become cumulatively murderous.


Think about it: The more things to buy, the more the total cost is, everything else being equal.


Hence in a free, capitalist society, increasing costs beyond inflation are to be expected -- indeed, desired.

You aren't buying "health care".

You're buying a heart catheterization. And another with balloon angioplasty. And a quintuple bypass. And a dialysis machine. And an internal, artificial heart. And a titanium knee. And an internal pacemaker, new and improved with built-in defibrillator.

Again, if your goal is quality of healthcare for everyone, access and affordability have to be addressed. If improvements in medicine can save a hundred thousand lives, that’s good. If lack of access due to cost kills two hundred thousand, that’s bad.

It just seems like you have taken one aspect of the debate, medical research funding, declared that only private enterprise can handle it, and then assigned it a value of infinity.

Oh, and one final thing. That the government steps in and funds things does not, necessarily, mean the private sector won't. Especially w.r.t. big "bang for your buck" research. It could, though, hamper private investment. If it weren't for the potential monetary upside, don't you think the private company that sequenced the human genome, finishing only a little bit after the vastly more expensive government cash hemorrhage did, would have given up? Then people like you would be claiming only the government could find the will to do such a thing.

Which, of course, would be false, but there would be no easy way to prove it without a parallel "experiment". Nobody here recognizes this issue in politics, either, though they're all about it in psychics, Big Feet, homeopathy, and so on.

There are other ways to fund research other than the private market or government grants. I would personally like to see the government get into prize bills for research. (Develop a drug that cures X and the government will buy the formula for it and place it in the public domain for $500 million.) The government would be paying for results, not research, and if private companies wanted to do their own thing, they still could.

 

[Ziggurat]

Her claim is simply that even those, who don't have an income and thus do not pay any form of income tax, still contribute to the NHS by paying VAT.

And if they do so out of welfare payments they get, is that really contributing to the NHS? No, it is not.

Even if they only spend 50 pounds on groceries each month. Or 30 quid. Or a hundred. Or 20 squidzillions. Or whatever. They contribute.

And if they pay even a single pound of VAT, that's enough to not make them freeloaders? No, I don't think so.

 

[Eskarina]

An interesting case of selective perception you display here. Perchance you might want to quote my post in full.

(And to save you time I'll do the "Oh, but the rest of your post wasn't worth quoting, blahdiblahdiblah") part myself.

As I said to Yaffle, that's an argument for the desirability of allowing freeloaders, but it doesn't make them not freeloaders.



And how, pray tell, is a correct description of the system going to place any weight on my conscience?



Oh, the strawmanity!!!!111eleventy-one!!!



In some cases. But the fact that they do this in some cases (which I have never denied, and which it does by forcing other people to pay for something) does not mean that they only do that, as Rolfe suggested. And it does not mean that they do this in the case of UHC, because they don't. Appealing to emotion, as you did above, will not change that reality: in fact, the entire emotional appeal is precisely because they do NOT do that.



Seems to me you've studiously avoided the actual points I've made in favor of strawmen.



I am forced to pay them. Whether or not I would do so in the absence of compulsion is an entirely academic problem, since that compulsion does in fact exist, and there is no realistic prospect it will be removed. Any answer I give would be meaningless, since there's no way I could demonstrate that it's true, and no way you could ever show it's false.

Furthermore, the fact that some taxes address the free rider problem does not mean that all do. Is that really too difficult a concept to grasp?

 

[Eskarina]

And if they do so out of welfare payments they get, is that really contributing to the NHS? No, it is not.



And if they pay even a single pound of VAT, that's enough to not make them freeloaders? No, I don't think so.

So what is your definition of a "freeloader"?

 

[Professor Yaffle]

And if they pay even a single pound of VAT, that's enough to not make them freeloaders? No, I don't think so.

Technically, it makes them cheaploaders.

Anyway, I don't really see the point of the discussion. The US system also pays for "freeloaders" - in fact you are paying as much, just to cover the freeloaders as we are to cover everyone.

If you are happy with the US system the way it is (and think it superior to ours) then you have to consider the fact that you are paying more for the "freeloaders" than we are.

If your response is that you would like to change the US system so that these taxes are not paid and these people are not covered, then you would have to deal with the fact that you would favour poor people dying rather than getting medical care paid for by someone else.

So what exactly is your position on this?

 

[Ziggurat]

An interesting case of selective perception you display here. Perchance you might want to quote my post in full.

Because it's oh so hard for people to look up the page a few posts? What exactly is your point?

Go back and look at what we've been discussing lately. I said that taxes are a way to force other people to pay for something. This is always true. Rolfe responded that it's a way to prevent freeloaders. While that may be true in some cases, it is not true in general, and government-run health care is only one example of an exception to this rule. Since then, I have seen repeated claims regarding the desirability of taxation to pay for services which do not prevent freeloading, usually in emotionally charged language (arguments along the lines of "do you want my mom to die?"). But such arguments miss the point completely: whether or not it's desirable, that doesn't prevent freeloading, as Rolfe claimed, and it's still forcing other people to pay for something.

Now, if you want to go back to some other topic, or introduce a new one, feel free to do so. But if you want to claim that my statement about taxation is wrong, or that Rolfe's statement is right, you need to form an argument which addresses the actual claims. You have not done so yet.