Cartoonist Ruben Bolling captures well the absurdity of the idea that health care should be left to the so-called ‘free market’ (in reality a monopoly or quasi-monopoly market) and that each of us should shop around to find the best possible health insurance for our families. Health care is vastly more complicated than pretty much anything else in our lives. Access to basic health care should be universal and free and paid for by the government out of our taxes. It is just that simple.
Tom the Dancing Bug 1343 chagrin falls 20 – free market health care
Ever considered mowing across the lake?
The news often has stories about how insurance companies re leaving states because providing health insurance under the ACA is not sufficiently profitable. It seems to me that that makes it an excellent candidate for nationalizing the service. But Republican ideology is that if you can’t bake money at it, it’s not worth doing.
It seems to me that that makes it an excellent candidate for nationalizing the service.
The only service worth nationalizing, to the US, is the military. No budget there is too big. Our masters continue to spend like drunken sailors on spy satellites, fancy aircraft, mediocre boats, and wars everywhere. But no health. $14 trillion in international wars in the last 30 years, but that’s “that’s what government is for”
” mowing”
Err that should be “moving”
@ Marcus
Does not the US military supply excellent single payer medical care? A friend’s daughter, married to an American soldier, received excellent care during a difficult pregnancy.
jrkrideau@#4:
Does not the US military supply excellent single payer medical care?
It’s OK. I never used it. I understand that it’s spotty -- some veterans get great service and others don’t. Sazz got pretty good care up ’till the end but that was probably because he could be really really scary when he gave that dead-eyed sniper stare.
Retired officers get good care. Surprised?
some veterans get great service and others don’t.
I only know about serving members and family and that only tangentially but the service seemed good. I’ll have to talk to a couple of medics I know and see what they know about US military care.
Unfortunately, our veterans get some poor care but basic health care is standard.
Retired officers get good care.
Good to hear it. A cousin of mine retired a few years ago.
Surprised? Not at all.
The problem is not that free-market health care doesn’t provide an acceptable level of healthcare to the greatest number of people. It does.
The problem is two fold.
First, free-market health care provides an acceptable level of healthcare to the greatest number of people at the maximum profit to the provider.
Second, the greatest number of people is not all people.
Profit is an additional cost and profit has no place in the equation for healthcare in a nation that can fire a gaggle of cruise missiles at $1.4 million each just to give the president a public relations bump and that same nation must not accept a single person not included in the healthcare system.
Jeff Hess
Have Coffee Will Write