excep the "but it's a right!" mentality will take nothing from it.
Matt
Then you'd prefer the military purchase their own stuff? By Kevin's simplistic video's definition, that would make the military a 2nd party purchaser, concerned only about quality but not price.
I guess the remaining alternative is the taxpayer's could purchase the stuff and form their own military. That would make them a first party purchaser, concerned about quality and price. Any idea how that would work out?
Matt
Matt
An attempt however feeble at getting a good price and an attempt at quality control. And still wind up with $900 hammers from time to time.
1st party makes stupid purchases all the time as well. But the problem and results from a mistake are limited to the 1st party.
Obamacare simply drew arbitrary lines as to costs and quality that were essentially determined by the insurance companies, lawyers and social engineers..... no attempt at either cost nor quality.... just some screwed up sense of spreading equal misery.
Matt
Matt
Picking out a medical insurance plan, it pays 80% of the cost for a medical procedure. Only problem is today the medical procedure now costs 15k, before obamacare the full cost was only 3k. So today under obamacare we're paying $1200 a month for insurance plus the full cost of a medical procedure.
Dad was ill and was covered 100% by his retirement plan, he was 99. In 2009 I'd get bills for 40k to 70k for one of his hospital stays, insurance paid them in full for 4k to 7k. In his final days those same bills from the hospitals were 150k to 225k and again the insurance paid them for 4k To 7k. The hospitals were hoping to file a lean on dad's estate by not submitting the inflated bills to his insurance co. Letter from the lawyer got their attention and they submitted them to his insurance.
Last year for a 4hr emergency room vist my medical bill was $26k. My insurance paid their share of the bill for $1.8k, my co-pay was $1.2k.
What I can't understand is why hospital administrators, pharmicudical company's, and politicians who voted for obamacare are not in federal prison under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act.
I just think it's simple-minded. It states "All government purchases are 3rd party purchases", and concludes "There will always be waste in government spending". Yet, it focuses on health care which represents a measly 9% of the discretionary spending, while the military represents 54%.
The same people who claim the government always screws up anything they stick their nose into never question the military budget, or the waste that goes on within the military. I know suggesting military cuts isn't popular around here, but I don't think the "it is what it is" attitude is appropriate, either.
Matt
Matt
So, the real issue isn't whether or not the government should play a role in health care, but rather to what degree.
Matt
To my knowledge, nobody ever said we should.
To that point, however, your video suggests that "if 300 million people were free to buy their own health insurance", quality would go up and cost would go down. Since that's roughly the entire population of the US, the video implies the government should play no role in health care. I say that's simple-minded unrealistic thinking.
Matt
"To my knowledge, nobody has ever disagreed with that."
That is where the problem begins. Individuals have the obligation to help people in need. As soon as even a small portion of that obligation is pawned off on "the government" we are headed toward a socialism that has been demonstrated time and time again to work against the good of the majority of the citizens.
Put me down as one who disagrees with that and has stated so multiple times on these pages.
The founders never intended the federal government to take from one citizen to give to another. It could be argued that the states were left with the power or option to do so, but never the federal government.
I meant nobody *here* has implied we should go to a single payer system. At least nobody with a brain, which excludes the trolls.
Matt
A viable solution would include local and state 2nd and 3rd party systems for those who can't afford their own health insurance, along with a more general free market solution for the rest of us. But then, you'd still have a large portion of our society who wouldn't buy health insurance even though they can afford it. That's were the 1st party purchaser system breaks down.
Matt
"Government Can't Fix Healthcare" is a fairly simple conclusion for most of us. The solution remains a much more complex matter.
I'm not saying your video wasn't useful. I'm sure it confirmed the beliefs of many. I'd just prefer to see a video that outlines a viable solution.
Matt
That said, I got to thinking more about 2nd and 3rd party purchases and I think a key piece is being left out of the equation. Incentives. I don't believe necessarily that all 3rd part purchases are more inefficient/wasteful than 1st party purchases.
I think about how I spend my company's money. I am probably more efficient with it than I am with my own money quite honestly. I'm incentivized to be. My work performance is judged on how I manage my company's money and it factors into how I am paid (and essentially my ongoing employment). Its important to understand incentives when discussing the nature of purchases/spending. There are also other dimensions when considering 2nd and 3rd party purchases that might make them more optimal, like time and knowledge. We often trust others to make purchases for us because they have the time to do so or expertise in an area that we don't have (and are not willing or able to get).
Also please don't confuse these statements as a vote of confidence in our government's ability to fix things. I just wanted to bring those points up around the nature of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party choices. I think there are benefits to 2nd and 3rd party purchases that are largely ignored in the video.
Matt
When I'm using someone's money (in my case my shareholders) to purchase things I will never personally use (in my case I fund R&D for oil and gas exploration and production in my current role) I am a third party purchaser. The point of the video was that the government can never fix healthcare because it is a third party purchaser and all third party purchases are bad when compared to first party purchases. I think there are plenty of times where 2nd and 3rd party purchases provide much more economic utility than 1st party purchases. Furthermore, you kind of reinforced my point. It's not the nature of purchases but the incentive of the purchaser that matters.
The videos point is that third party purchases do not seek to maximize utility and because of the fact that government purchases are always third party they are inferior to first party purchases.
A more appropriate argument is that it is more important to look at the rationality and incentives of the purchaser, not the nature of the purchase. Plenty of first party purchases are suboptimal from a utility perspective to second and third party purchases. A travel agent, for example, can often get a lot more out of my money than I can when it comes to planning a trip than I can. That's because they have knowledge and connections I don't. I often pay more for certain services because I don't have the time to seek out the most economically optimal solution (I don't care about price or quality...I need something now). The best economic solution from a utility perspective does not rely entirely on the nature of the purchase -- that is what the video suggests. I don't ageee with that point.
I will point out that the videos solution to wasteful government spending is private enterprise spending. Therefore it is also making the same "apples to oranges" comparison.
Matt
And a government official may not get re-elected if his constituents believe he wastes or misappropriates or is in favor of policies that misappropriate tax payer dollars. Or he may get reelected.
What you are saying is that there are no consequences associated with government waste and that's not always the case, just like there are not always consequences associated with waste of third party purchasers in the private sector. Sometimes there are, sometimes there aren't.
There are incentives to deliver economically optimal solutions (yes, even by the government at times) from a price/quality perspective in a second or third party transaction. Sometimes these transactions deliver more economic utility than a first party transaction (yes, even by the government at times) would.
Often times people are incentivized to make suboptimal economic decisions (under any transactional system, be it first party or third, be it private or public enterprise).
Incentives are far more important to me than how a transaction is carried out.
The resistance to "incentivize" is strong in those Obi Wan. Profit in government is not a driving force..... "greed" only exists on an individual or possibly inside group level...... not any performance level. It's become a culture of it's own. Many cases the cuts just need to be made and tell them to make it work. prioritize. Even then the first cuts often are at the floor level and not upstairs. I recall a while back the Maui TSA were told to cut back......so instantly almost all cuts were on the floor and few if any supervisors cut. This slowed the flow at checkpoint to a crawl..... passengers and airlines were up in arms. It was meant to go that way by the supervisors as a "message" to management, clearly stated so. There was soon a big shake up but the main point was that culture that had grown in a relatively short time.
Private sector having the goal and metrics of profit..... the incentives as well as the freedom and culture are much more dynamic I guess you could say. In many ways public sector is always going to have different issues as to efficiency.
But the effort must still be there. Effort at some kind of reform and improvement must be there or things flow downhill incredibly fast. See the VA, IRS, EPA, etc.
Matt
