| Kasz216 said:
While the Health insurance lobby has been slipping since the other 3 have turned on them. In reality, we need to find a way to keep the profit motivators their for bio-tech but find a way to make it and drugs cheaper. We're a gigantic part of the worlds research spending (84%) and we make way more improvements then the rest of the world... we gotta find a way to maintain that... or everyones health will pay.
We probably need "second tier" hospitals that people can go too for cheaper with the more expensive hospitals handling the tough cases... it works for everything else. Strong hard to abuse saftey nets would be good though. Like Welfare where you have to work for the government so often out of the year. And instead of food stamps... how about just sending people food? Not only does that lower abuse, it makes sure people get health food instead of whatever crap they have to buy because there are no supermarkets or markets near them. |
Oh yeah, I totally agree that the government we have now is essentially just a tool for corporations, which I find upsetting. Without a government willing to stand up to corporate america there are no checks or balances on corporate power, no means to prevent them from being blatantly corrupt, and harmful to everything but their own bottom line. Which is a puzzle I haven't hashed out yet. Even if we could regulate them, globalizations renders that ineffective anyway. Location on the planet is largely just a matter of convenience, and if it ceases to be lucrative to do business in America they can easily pick up and move to india, china or where ever they can buy a more favorable legal environment to operate. We don't produce anything near what we used to because it's cheaper and easier to put production facilities in other countries.
The idealistic version of free market is that we will vote with our dollars and that is the check and balance on corporate power, but who are we kidding? That's not going to work. We're too apathetic, and uneducated on how these corporations work and they are too large and complex. BP doesn't give a rats ass if I get gas from their gas station or a different one. So I don't really know what the solution is to prevent the planet from being bought by corporate overlords, it kind of seems inevitable.
I agree that we do need to keep medical research going, and profit is a powerful incentive for doing that, but I fear for our healthcare system as a whole. It really just seems to be a quagmire of interests and bad ideas, and I really hope people more educated than myself on the topic are trying really damn hard to find a viable solution. Maybe yours would work, I dunno. I claim ignorance on the finer points of the topic.
Your point on welfare seems like such a common sense one, I don't know why we aren't employing it. We need all sorts of work done on our infrastructure, and have all sorts of community programs in each city and state, they want to collect checks from the government. Why not trade? Not a full time position obviously, because then you're just getting cheap government labor, but like you said, some number of hours of a kind of service should be required. I don't know how many jackasses I've known that were gaming the system to get money because so little is required to get a check.
Also, what's up Kasz! Missed you man, I've been gone for a while. I always enjoy reading and participating in discussions with you, I always find out something interesting. Are you in some way involved in economics, or is it just a hobby learning about it? You seem to participate in economic discussions more than others. Just curious.
You can find me on facebook as Markus Van Rijn, if you friend me just mention you're from VGchartz and who you are here.
