We Would Be Healthier and Happier If There Were No Vote

This Sunday on NoAgenda, Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak talked about the healthcare bill versus what apparently are lies about it on television.

Listening to the clips they had made me really hate our system of pseudo-democracy. And listening to people talk about healthcare in the real world is similar.

Dvorak has been advocating for single payer. I don't think it is because he is against the free market, but because he doesn't see it as politically possible to change.

I don't like single payer, but I can see how the government- if it were actually being serious about it- could start forcing prices back down to something reasonable by throwing it's weight around.

But the real solution is to dissconnect this product from your job, and have the people who are seeking care be the ones paying for care. To insist on real prices, maybe even force any hospital that negotiates a price with an insurance company to give the same price to an individual. Ideally, I don't want to have to do that, but maybe we have to until the medical industry gets fully de-socialized.

But the people, or many people, are going to be massively afraid of any change. I suspect we could see some very beneficial changes in under two years, possibly even faster. If we could buy everything over the counter, order our own diagnostic tests, etc... definitely faster. It would be very likely that many of these massive medical corporations would fall because they are ridiculously dependent on government force for their position in the market. But it would be inevitable that many new businesses would spring up. Many already are, because we aren't really arguing about healthcare. This system is a broken system in which we are paying ever more for poorer quality care. The standard care of care is, in many cases, crap, but anyone with medical liability insurance keeps treating in accordance with it in order to avoid being sued or having their insurer cancel on them.

This is highly similar to the bankers- and in the insurance company's case, they are basically bankers, certainly from the same class. The hospital cartel is a little different; certainly the constant construction many of these large corporations engage in in indicative of a slightly different scam.

But above it all, there's the government, creating these conditions in which these pathetic practices can be done, yet people keep imagining there's this huge difference between Republicans and Democrats. If this thing passes, it might be mildly better for Republican voters- i.e. middle class who had healthcare before might be charged less, and some could opt out. But the quality of medical care will continue to decline, and this system will continue to be a black hole into which taxpayer's money gets thrown.

So, there is nothing intrinsic to this argument. It shouldn't even be had, except that it is part of the Democrat scheme to get themselves elected.

The real problem, obviously, is voters for whom this nonsense works.