Economist: civilization may not survive "death spiral"

[Kasz216]

richardhutnik said:

SamuelRSmith said:
The unfunded liabilities with Medicare and Medicaid (of which the bulk of the liabilities come from, particularly Medicare) can be dealt with pretty easily, if the cost of healthcare is dealt with.

If we can enact policies that reverse the trajectory of health care costs, we could solve many of the issues facing the United States in the future.

Of course, we have to ask, how are we going to reverse the trajectory? Simply, we need to end crony capitalism in the health care industry. Obamacare is crony capitalism. Romneycare is crony capitalism. Medicare part D was crony capitalism. Nixon's HMOs were crony capitalism.

Due to the money in politics, and the fact that Big X industry will end up hiring retired government officials, and right legistlation to favor themselves, it is really impossible to avoid crony Capitalism.  When Obama first proposed creating a government run insurance company to compete in the market, it got shot down by the insurance industry, and other partisans jumping on.  After this came a proposal for non-profit insurance companies chartered by the government to step in and compete, and that got shot down.  So Obama rolls out the Heritage Foundation Romneycare with mandates, and a bunch more regulations to hold the entire thing together, and let the insurance companies get funds in exchange for more regulations.  And it passed, with the GOP jumping on board to oppose, because they need to politically oppose Obama.

Ending Crony Capitalism isn't just going to happen, particularly in a political climate where anything remotely Occupy related gets spun into "Lazy bums want free stuff!" rather than an attempt to depower the crony side by weakening their ability to buy politicians.

Nonprofit government healthcare wouldn't work anyway.

Hell nonprofit non-goverment healthcare doesn't really work.

There are tons of nonprofit healthcare companies and they don't cost less then private plans.

Largely becasue well, there is almost no profit margin in healthcare.  It's a really low profit margin buisness.

Hence why any insurance focused healthcare plan amounts to nothing but a hill of beans when it comes to controlling costs.