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HappySqurriel said: Education is a very different situation from most forms of government social programs ... There is a point where rapid diminishing returns follow with education (which moves over time), and there are certain types of education that provide little benefit, but a well educated workforce leads to a stronger and more advanced economy which benefits everyone. The money spent on giving a child a quality education from kindergarden through highschool is easily made up over their career because they're able to do more work of higher value. The combination of globalization and the continued ability of man to automate jobs ensures that every generation will need a better education than the previous generation to maintain or improve their standard of living; and this will probably be true for the next several generations. Healthcare is a different beast than education ... The vast majority of healthcare costs are associated with preventable illness and bureaucracy (regardless of who provides the service), and the growth in costs over the past 60 years have motsly been related to the cost of delivering better healthcare to people (better diagnosis, treatment and an ability to treat more diseases). Until our mindset on health changes, and we can control the costs, we're on a path where healthcare will be unaffordable or unavialable to people regardless of who provides the services. |
Education has been considered a right by our country (United States) for some time. However, I believe that they are behind the times in that a high school education is no longer sufficient for a trained workforce. I agree that there is a prime level of economic efficiency between absolutely free education and no education that we should strive for, though I would probably argue for more because I see more values in some subjects than others.
A huge problem with America's healthcare system is that doctors are in a constant fear of being sued, and even if a law suit has no medical basis it stills brings bad press that hurts hospitals and companies. Doctors routinely do useless tests just because they want to legally protect themself, for example many doctors send a pregnant patient to a OBGYN for tests on the baby just to document the baby's health for unrelated treatments that have absolutely no effect on the baby. Its a lot easier to say that the baby was unhealthy before you administered a certain drug than it is to go to court and try to explain the complexities of bio-chemistry to a layman jury.
