I’ve corresponded with Dr. Drew Foy on this, and he’s researching causal factors that point to Medicare triggering the advent of government mandates in health care (like HMOs). If there’s any statistically significant variation by health care costs from the CPI mean prior to 1974 or 5, the first thing to look at is the effect of Medicare, begun in 1965 and now effectively insolvent and bankrupt (or would be, if it were a private enterprise). It’s the best example in existence of why single-payer is not feasible.

Here’s the thing. HMOs were a statutory entitlement for health care. They failed to live up to the government’s expectations, so an alternate plan was pursued: giving employers tax breaks for providing (increasingly) comprehensive plans.

The failed HMO model has been resurrected in a slightly different form in Massachusetts, where employers are now once again required to provide health insurance benefits – and anyone not insured through their employer is fined if they don’t get a private policy when the State decides they can afford one.

This was the test case for “Obamacare”, and it transformed health benefits into an entitlement. That program has failed too. Not only have the costs of the program overall been much higher than predicted, but the increase in health care insurance cost in Mass. – which Romney promised would go down – has actually increased at a significantly higher rate than in other states during the same time.

This is of course exactly what one would expect. When the consumer is forced to purchase a product, artificially increasing the demand for that product, the price of the product (in this case, health insurance) is artificially increased as well.

Ultimately, this entire issue is a market problem, not a governance problem. State and federal government needs to break up the insurance companies’ proxy monopoly, get OUT Of the way and let the free market handle it.

do you notice how posters like jharp disappear after they’re exposed as only posting on a single issue?

Do you ever STOP projecting your lack of knowledge and desperation on this topic onto others?

Do yourself a favor. Just take in the entire graph all at once first.

See that gargantuan difference way off on the right there? That’s what we’re dealing with now, not the little, tiny, if-I-squint-and-look-sideways-through-a-shot-glass difference that’s barely detectable between 1960 and about 1975 – which is nothing more than health care’s variation from the mean.

The point where the lines diverge coincides precisely with the effects one would expect from the HMO act in 1973. The government mandated group policies (in the form of HMOs) and soon after, price increases were the result. That got worse as the policies morphed into increasingly comprehensive plans AND the group sizes got larger. Pretending NOT to see that requires a conscious, willful blindness on your part. No other factor of the market explains it.

BTW, ever done any actual data, signal or spectrum analysis BC? Separating out ANY ONE specific component / sector price from an average like this would show some minimal variation from the mean down in that noise. That’s why it’s called a mean – it’s a composite of numerous data which are all changing at very slightly different rates. When you separate one part out, like the author of the chart did, you see it as a separate component of the average. You don’t see health care really break away from the mean until about the mid-70s – exactly where my assessment predicts it would.

God, do they teach people ANYTHING in high school anymore???

How many ‘free’ market advocates live in gated communities where regulations could strangle a moose.

In my neighborhood the cars parked on the lawn with grass covering the top of the wheels and debris lying around with the soffits hanging and the paint chipped all had Ron Paul stickers on them. Funny.

Totally free markets only work when all parties are honest brokers and don’t ration their integrity depending upon the situation. They also honor their neighbors freedom to live without being damaged by their neglect and their ‘freedom’.

No, it’s not. The basic purpose of the Federal Govt is the protection of certain individual rights. A need does not alone create a right.

To coerce Dr. Paul to pay for Peter Cottontail’s health care is immoral, and your feeling sorry for (and trying to make us feel sorry for) Peter Cottontail, does not change that elementary principle.

Childhood leukemia is not a choice.
Perfect example. Childhood leukemia is not known to be a communicable disease, Zippy. Therefore, it is not something that falls under the rubric of public health outside of funding for research to treat it. It is an individual affliction that has to be treated on an individual basis.

Here’s the inconvenient truth you socialist trolls keep ignoring: there is no “individual welfare clause in the Constitution that gives government the authority to legislate collective funding for individual treatment.

There’s an American Cancer Society and similar organizations for a reason. Someday, when you manage to pull your head out of the sophomoric Borg socialist mindset you’ve stuck it in, you’ll recognize this and go apply your efforts at a charitable institution to do some good instead of constantly crying out for help here with your bottomless pit of tired talking points, groundless assertions and easily debunked bullsh!t.

- I call this the ‘public option’.
Then you prove yourself to be as stupid about business as you are ignorant of the Constitution. Breaking up a monopoly doesn’t require a ‘public option’. A ‘public option’ will only transfer the monopoly control of all health care, currently enjoyed by these insurance companies, over to the government. Willfully choosing to hand control of one’s life over to a government as ineffectual, unaccountable, corrupt and systemically broken as the one we have now requires an astounding level of either ignorance or stupidity.

- American exceptionalism?
You’re being intentionally obtuse, as always. American exceptionalism has been driven by the free market. Put health care in a free market and you’ll see how that exceptionalism functions.

- That solves nothing. Consumers who can’t afford insurance can’t afford care at retail.
And just exactly how many Americans can’t afford routine health care NOW? You forgot to provide any hard numbers on that, as usual. Not insurance – basic, routine health care. You’ll never find this data. Know why? Because the health care market is completely distorted by a proxy monopoly of insurance companies who completely control the price of health care. Providers bill $X and they pay $X-Y. It’s never the same and it’s as opaque as possible, because the LAST thing the insurance company wants their customers to know is whether or not they could afford routine care without the product that brings them their profit.

The insurance monopoly and the moronic manner in which we pay for routine care have all encouraged prices to skyrocket at rates in excess of 400% of inflation, Zippy. President Bush – a former oil guy who knew what to do – resolved the oil price bubble by popping it last year on July 14 with one deft action. The health care price bubble, while slightly (and only slightly) more complex than the oil market, can be dealt with using the same basic strategy: opening up the market.

Do we nationalize utilities because “some” people can’t afford heat? No.
Do we nationalize food production because “some” people can’t afford food? No.
The list goes on and on, and it’s one you can’t dispute so you pretend that health care is somehow more critical than food (!) and the ability to NOT freeze to death (!!). Your ‘argument’ is as vapid as it is stupid.

- Single payer also works well, and costs less.
Maybe in your fantasy world, but not in this reality. This would be one of the reasons why Medicare is bankrupt.

- Most Americans die from non critical causes.
Wrong, Zippy. Most Americans die from heart disease – a critical health condition requiring immediate, critical care either in the form of surgery or medication. No person entering a medical facility with a life-threatening heart problem can be turned away for lack of ability to pay, per federal statute. Read a book.

- All of us have roughly predictable and equal needs for the commodities you list. Health care aside, of course.
Wrong. And as always, you provide not the slightest evidence that routine health care is any different from any other routine cost of living. See above.

All of us have roughly the same statistical likelihood of needing routine health care during our lifetime. It’s catastrophic illness or injury that are the exceptions. Find an actuary and have them explain this to you. Insurance – a tool for managing UNLIKELY events that pose a financial RISK – makes no sense in that context. Pooling resources is the most idiotic way to pay for any routine cost of living that is not consumed uniformly per unit of time – it’s simple economics.

Prices will rise to the level the market will bear. In a corrupted, broken market – like the one controlled by the insurance company monopolies – this dynamic becomes distorted. If the price of medical services for 500 people (e.g., per year) is allowed to expand into the space defined by 1000 people in a group, guess what – the price will increase to the point where no single individual can afford it. And guess what else – that’s precisely what we’ve seen ever since comprehensive health insurance came to be more widely adopted. As group sizes have grown, costs have skyrocketed at rates approaching the exponential. All of this is verifiable by a third grader with a web browser. Not to recognize it requires willful blindness.

- 40M is a conservative estimate
Repeating this lie over and over and over won’t make it any more valid than Gore’s fake climate crisis religion, Zippy.

- Supported by the evidence of all of human history.
Again, no evidence you’ve actually produced, as usual.

- Except one who understands that it’s better than nothing.
That’s the whole problem with your insipid False Choice fallacy. There are alternatives. The government blocks the use of those alternatives through extortion. You are actively supporting that extortion because you have a socially suicidal, collectivist agenda, Zippy. That makes you an accessory.

- We the People are the government, …
Not as far as this administration is concerned. The majority oppose the snake oil legislation you’re hawking; the majority disapproves of BHO’s actions as president to date; the majority rejects the behavior of Congress and would fire the lot of them if given the choice. Yet this government still persist in their efforts to seize control over the health care market. You’re a naive and sad little troll, Zippy.

I am really not judging these systems here, but I am always surprised that this aspect is almost never discussed by either proponents or opponents of european-style systems.

That’s only true if you don’t count folks who lack insurance. Fuzzy math. More than 75% of Americans support a public option.

But go ahead and soil yourself…

Coprophilic much?

Public health is a public good.

A rare point of accord.

Individual health is a personal decision

Hardly. Childhood leukemia is not a choice. There is more to health care than the market can address.

- The current system is not desirable, …
Agreed. Break the insurance companies’ proxy monopoly that controls the price, all transactions and access to most health care.

I call this the ‘public option’.

Government-controlled, socialized medicine will never do those things without more onerous legislation. Neither will rationing.

American exceptionalism? It works everywhere it has been tried. Why not here?

- For-profit insurance is a poor substitute for true health care.
I completely agree, and have been telling people this for years.

Consumers should be paying for health care directly.

That solves nothing. Consumers who can’t afford insurance can’t afford care at retail.

Insurance is a tool for mitigating risk. The only rational way to use insurance in the context of health care is to insure against catastrophic illness or injury with a low-premium/high-deductible policy.

Single payer also works well, and costs less.

- Critical care does not equal health care.
Maybe in your Bizarro World. In the real world, however, critical care is the very most important kind of health care – the kind that saves people’s lives.

Most Americans die from non critical causes. It is the same world you live in, where most bankruptcies are due to medical bills, and the poor cannot obtain basic care.

Routine health care, on the other hand, is a personal responsibility – just like other routine costs of living like transportation, food, water, clothing, housing, etc.

All of us have roughly predictable and equal needs for the commodities you list. Health care aside, of course. That’s why pooling resources makes sense.

Your hyperbole and fantasies about 40M people aren’t believable, much less persuasive.

I guess accuracy is not a factor in your calculus. 40M is a conservative estimate, whether you accept it or not. There is not any dispute.

- If the market did not face government regulation, the situation would be even worse.
That’s your opinion.

Supported by the evidence of all of human history.

- Medicare will never be bankrupt. Deficit spending is not bankruptcy.
There is no practical difference between endless, increasing deficit spending and functional bankruptcy.

Health care reform is clearly the only solution. But there is a difference.

Eventually, the 90-100M Americans who are paying income tax on behalf of the entire U.S. population will simply get tired of having their wealth confiscated.

Confiscated? That’s a laugh.

No sane person would “like” Medicare.

Except one who understands that it’s better than nothing.

When you get an Amendment passed that gives Congress the authority to legislate individual health care for every citizen in the U.S., let’s talk.

Let me know how your constitutional challenge to Medicare turns out…

- It is time to make this right.
Stop looking to the government to solve all your problems, like a six-year-old looking for the protection of Mommy.

We the People are the government, in case you forgot. Coming together to address our collective needs is the basic purpose of our government.

Stop letting other people hand you your opinions. Grow up.

Take your own advice, then we can talk.

Peace.

DS