Re: Krugman: McCain's Voodoo Health Economics - Nonsense on multiple levels

jerry,jerry,jerry,

would you say that the reason olly and poppy can't afford to have their
teeth fixed is
because they didn't get enough education ?

you avoided this question once already,

so if they had gotten more education, and worked hard and smart,
would they not be so poor now that they can't afford $6,000 for a dentist ?

then we have the wal mart warriors here, andy and nixon,and others,


if they had more education would they be able to shop
at macys,gap,neiman marcus,tiffany,marshall fields,gucci, etc. ?

how about stevens, if he had gotten more education, you think the military
might have kept him and promoted him to Colonel and then
through the ranks of Generals, instead of booting his ass out for poor
performance reviews ?


you do know that you only get so many shots at being promoted out of the
death rank of Lt. Colonel, the point where the incompetents
are identified and disposed of, don't you ?

let's see, Lt. Colonel, that's equivalent to running 2 or 3 McDonalds, but
pays less,
a Battalion Commander who couldn't be trusted to
be a division staff officer or handle a brigade,

LMAO, basically another loser, failure, and fuckup, lot's of those low
intellect goobers around, dime a dozen


"Jerry Okamura" <okamuraj005@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:47f65e4b$0$30676$4c368faf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Try to get this guy, who is an economist after all, tell us how you can
effectively control prices when the person who is using the service is not
the one who pays for the service...

"Florida" <demeter547opine@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:0cb869cb-354d-457d-b608-a60c7d21a0fe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/opinion/04krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Op-Ed Columnist
Voodoo Health Economics

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 4, 2008

Elizabeth Edwards has cancer. John McCain has had cancer in the past.
Last weekend, Mrs. Edwards bluntly pointed out that neither of them
would be able to get insurance under Mr. McCain's health care plan.
Skip to next paragraph

Paul Krugman
Go to Columnist Page >> Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal

It's about time someone said that and, more generally, made the case
that Mr. McCain's approach to health care is based on voodoo economics
-- not the supply-side voodoo that claims that cutting taxes increases
revenues (though Mr. McCain says that, too), but the equally foolish
claim, refuted by all available evidence, that the magic of the
marketplace can produce cheap health care for everyone.

As Mrs. Edwards pointed out, the McCain health plan would do nothing
to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to those, like
her and Mr. McCain, who have pre-existing medical conditions.

The McCain campaign's response was condescending and dismissive -- a
statement that Mrs. Edwards doesn't understand the comprehensive
nature of the senator's approach, which would harness "the power of
competition to produce greater coverage for Americans," reducing costs
so that even people with pre-existing conditions could afford care.

This is nonsense on multiple levels.

For one thing, even if you buy the premise that competition would
reduce health care costs, the idea that it could cut costs enough to
make insurance affordable for Americans with a history of cancer or
other major diseases is sheer fantasy.

Beyond that, there's no reason to believe in these alleged cost
reductions. Insurance companies do try to hold down "medical losses" --
the industry's term for what happens when an insurer actually ends up
having to honor its promises by paying a client's medical bills. But
they don't do this by promoting cost-effective medical care.

Instead, they hold down costs by only covering healthy people,
screening out those who need coverage the most -- which was exactly the
point Mrs. Edwards was making. They also deny as many claims as
possible, forcing doctors and hospitals to spend large sums fighting
to get paid.

And the international evidence on health care costs is overwhelming:
the United States has the most privatized system, with the most market
competition -- and it also has by far the highest health care costs in
the world.

Yet the McCain health plan -- actually a set of bullet points on the
campaign's Web site -- is entirely based on blind faith that
competition among private insurers will solve all problems.
[....]



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