while preventive care is a good thing, there is no evidence that it saves money. In fact, most studies show that it actually costs MORE money. It improves health, but it is expensive.

What the libertarian pinheads here don’t understand is that health is productivity, productivity is GDP, and GDP is wealth. And that a healthy society is a happy one. It is simply too important to entrust to the vagaries and inefficiencies of the free market.

Also missing in the health care debate is WHAT exactly we are spending the money on — what capital purchases are being paid for, what consumable goods like bandages, medicines, etc, and what labor rates, and what insurance costs, administrative overheads, and subsidies that paying patients pay for non-paying patients are being paid.

I spent an hour in the ER and paid $320, which would be a perfectly acceptable charge for the services I consumed — an EKG, chest xray, and bloodtest, maybe an hour of skilled labor in total.

My insurance carrier paid another $5000 for this incident. WTF!

9:51 Will Wilkinson: Diplomas don’t magically confer productivity; skills do. Educational attainment is a proxy for the level of economically useful skills

Part of the problem is artificial scarcity of health providers, and general bullshit levels of this society requiring too many tax accountants, lawyers, real estate agents, and other non-productive rentiers looking for their cut of the action. Very little of the professional class really has “economically useful” skills, these are mostly concentrated in the health and education fields.

I just visited “Toothpaste for Dinner.”

I can’t find the funny…

I think it killed it with a shotgun.

So — you really don’t think Ann Coulter is sexy?

Mocking the quest to improve human health and eradicate disease is a winning strategy. I mean, really, how many people do you who actually have somebody in their family with a serious health problem?

“There is no evidence that X saves money. In fact, most studies show that X actually costs MORE money. X improves Y, but Y is expensive.”

Shit, but that’s a lame-ass argument. Costs more money than what? You can apply it argument to almost any potential expenditure (gov’t, private or otherwise) and still be left with the pivotal decision of whether X is in fact worth the Y you’ll be paying for it. The F-22 Raptor program, for example (probably cheaper to nuke every part of the world that doesn’t have a five digit zip code), or highway maintenance (if everyone was smart enough to own a Hummer they could just off-road all the way from New York to DC).

The devil is in the detail — and in the overarching moral quest to be the most civil society we can be, one that cares about the sick and spends what it takes to heal them. (Needless to say, those last two obviously do not apply to Republicans or Libertarians. Only us socialists.)

A health care system that costs twice as much as UHC and delivers worse outcomes is obviously preferable to anything that a Democrat might dream up.

Hey, all libertarians can’t be assholes! I mean, Jack Shafer is one. Oh, wait.

I love how libertarians claim to be really into freedom and all that, when what they really want winds up devolving into fascism, without any of the nicer features of the “nanny state” that gives them the roads they drive on and the GI Bill they used to go to college etc. etc. etc.

Libertarians are just Republicans who don’t want to sit in the same corner with the snake-handlers, even though their politics are damned near identical.

Libertarians are just Republicans who don’t want to sit in the same corner with the snake-handlers, even though their politics are damned near identical.

Bingo. Any time someone tells me they are a libertarian, their tone has this “yeah, I’m really cool, see, I’m a libertarian, I’m above it all!”. When pushed on specifics their philosophy comes down too this.

I believe in all the reactionary bullshit the republicans shovel, but that guy in the corner with cross and the diapers on is freaking me out, and I’ll never get laid if I have to hang out with him.

Libertarians are like someone sitting in the passenger seat who complains about your use of the gas pedal when it would clearly be better to turn into a tachyon.

“But that’s only theoretical– we’re not really able to turn ourselves into a tachyon right now.”

“Don’t you understand a tachyon goes FASTER THAN LIGHT. God, you’re stupid.”

what they really want winds up devolving into fascism, without any of the nicer features of the “nanny state” that gives them the roads they drive on and the GI Bill they used to go to college etc. etc. etc.

and a lot of them seem to live in the desert Southwest, a place that would be uninhabitable/unreachable w/o taxpayer dollars. Just another case of someone pulling up the ladder after themselves?

Scalzi’s little diatribe has to be one of the most trite “a plague on all your houses” rants I’ve ever seen. Was it supposed to be witty?

Why does Cato have tax exempt status?

When I lived in the Settle area I worked with some “libertarians” who continuously railed against the evils of “the nanny state” and “big government” and similar chestnuts of libertarian cant.

I once asked if they used electricity. “Of course”, they replied, “why”?

At whiich point I pointed out that the cheap electricity they were consuming came from the Bonneville Power Administration, operator of the Grand Coulee Dam (and other Columbia River hydro) which is one of the largest public works projects every undertaken. That shut them up, but not for long.

Likewise the libetarian desert rats whose water and power come from Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams – huge public works projects that make life in Phoenix, Las Vegas, LA and the surrounding areas possible.

To be a libertarian you have to be born with a broken irony detector…

I think it might have been Bill Maher or someone else who said that “…Libertarians are just Republicans who smoke dope…”

True that…

TBogg slumming at CATO. Hmmmm.

ANybody else sick of hearing goopers say they don’t want government to get in the way of the relationship between the patient and their doctor??? hahahaha. You mean, take the place of the insurance companies doing that for them and choosing what operation and medicine you really need?

so conservatives can claim that they are more charitable than liberals when they make donations.

I loved Stephen Colbert’s smackdown of Grover Norquist a number of months ago. He said he refuses to drive on roads paid for by taxes, so he ends up driving in circles in his backyard. Grover didn’t laugh.

Was Grover on the set when Colbert said that?

I had a run in with a Cato Institute “scheme” decades ago. Seems like a couple of them were opening a alternative college in DC, turns out they were a couple of ex-CIA types. I think they were trying to scam the govt for bucks. Have never trusted Cato since.

Conservatives consider their failures to be your fault for trusting what they say, instead of learning from their entire history of what they did.

Did anyone see Cal Thomas on C-span complaining about national heath care. He then tells of his wife getting great care for her affliction because we have such great healthcare as it is in this Country. What he didn’t get is someone else with the same affliction as his wife who through no fault of their own that doesn’t have great health insurance or doesn’t make what Cal Thomas does would get no care for the same affiction. They only look at themselves and their position and don’t care what other have to indure. They have a million reasons why we shouldn’t have national but there are at least 40 million people that don’t have care. That 40 to one reasons we should have national healthcare.
The Cato insitute is the best example of why college and degree’s don’t mean much. If these people are the example to higher education and smarts we lost the toss.

Yeah, the correct translation of the conservative “national healthcare would result in rationing” is “national healthcare might mean that rationing would apply to me, and not just to non-rich people.”

folks in Louisiana learned the hard way that depending on Uncle Sam is a bad idea.

In other words, Bush was just practicing compassionate conservatism.

No, just totally delusional and brain dead.

Scalzi’s assessment is nearly 7 years out of date.

But whatever, whatever I do what I want!

Most of the blog was fairly inane until you got to the end. Then it stung you when he commented that “you probably agreed with two of the three evaluations. Think about what that means.”

I didn’t agree with any of the evaluations. They are a compilation of trite clichés. 46% liberal, 46% conservative, and the rest libertarian. Where does that leave our friend? Above the fray, dear reader, looking down on us all wallowing in the muck. The technical term for this is “wanker”.

Decidely not.

However, Sarah Silverman most certainly is. Sure, not entirely OT, but it just needs to be said every once in a while.

Woops. Boy, that seems random here. I was trying to reply to the Ann Coulter comment above…doesn’t seem to be working tonight…(maybe it’s my brain, to which I refeer!!)

It [ health care ] is simply too important to entrust to the vagaries and inefficiencies of the free market.

If there were true competition in the health care industry then a market (of some kind) could exist. Time and time again in the debate of reform I come back to that and wonder how we can create a system which really works.

Of course, the image of a bloodied broken unconscious person being dragged from a car accident and then asked which ER they want to go to …

Love that Scalzi column. Written in 2002, one comment in 2005, & it really picks up when Balloon Juice links to it. In 2009.

What the hell?