First of all, NOTHING has gotten cheaper over the years. With the exception of perhaps some electronics, who get cheaper when a new model comes about, everything else has gotten more expensive. I’m sure that you have noticed that just by going to the corner grocery store

Here ya go, The premise is wrong.
Damn near everything has gotten cheaper over the years,
there is just more to buy. Think about it.......
Has health care cost gone up? Yes.
Would it have gone up if the only prescribed treatment were leaches? mmm No.
Therefore the costs have risen due the availability of options.
The availability of options has risen due to capatalism.

Has milk gotten cheaper, mmm maybe not
How many kinds of milk are demanded by consumers today as oppossed to 30 or forty years ago?

Every time a new diagnostic tool comes out it costs more to pay for the development etc.. people have to be trained,hospitals have to be remodeled— utilities alone are more expensive.
the free market will regulate it’s self by the choices their customers make--
again the customers choices will regulate that-- if I have no health problems I shouldn’t be expected to pay as much as someone who does--if I need an Insurance policy to cover my high expenses I should be the one to pay the premiums. 
When there are more Insurance companies competing the costs won’t be as high
Maybe a trip to a big medical center would help a person understand the massive undertaking health care and Insurance is and what the gov. is trying to take over and how impossible that would be added to the massive expense of Medicare/caid.
What’s wrong with making a profit?  I wouldn’t want to deal with any company that didn’t work hard to make a profit.

“Nothing has gotten cheaper"-Which health care costs, nominal or real?  If you say nominal, then of course everything gets more expensive because you have not factored out inflation.  If you say real health costs, you have to be talking about the cost of the services and treatments for health care ONLY and not the benefits to society from increased longevity, lower infant mortality, etc. 

Additionally, the costs of health care include some portion for defensive medicine and malpractice-i.e. the costs of litigation in our society.  If you want to see cuts in health care costs, follow Shakespeare’s advice-"kill all the lawyers.”

On top of that, as treatments become more efficacious and efficient, more people will want treatments and the issue becomes one of increased demand with a controlled supply, or higher costs until a free market recognizes the demand and compensates, bringing the real costs back down.

If you want to lower costs in the U.S., remove the artificial barriers which prevent health insurers from offering their products across state lines.  That will increase competition and drive down costs.

The correct response to “everybody knows” is “says you.”

But you might phrase it more diplomatically when addressing a pal.

There are many flaws with that first point.

1) You usually can’t compare the prices of goods in two time periods, because the goods change.  Car prices have gone up, but cars are all far more advanced than even 10 years ago.  You can’t even buy a new car that’s comparable to one that’s 10 years old.  So the idea that we’re worse off just because prices have risen is often false.

2) A lot of prices have risen because incomes have risen.  When your income increases, each dollar is worth less to you, and you are willing to spend more of it to get the same thing.  If everyone’s (or nearly everyone’s) income rises, everyone is willing to pay more and prices are bid up.  So higher prices can actually be a sign of prosperity.  Prices often fall during recessions and depressions.

3) Looking at absolute prices is not very useful.  It would be more useful to look at prices as a proportion of income.  If prices double, but your income also doubles, you can afford just as much as you could before.

--deregulation of the free market is what got us into this mess, to advocate more deregulation is ludicrous

I’ll take a stab at this one, what deregulation? Like the ban on buying insurance from out of state co.? or the mountain of paperwork required just to get insurance? Or rules on the type of test a doctor can perform and when or why they can do such test? Or the lowballing of Medicare payment that make doctors pass the true cost to other patients?
Sounds like deregulation to me

This is an excerpt from my own health care reform proposal:

“Every plan to address health care reform so far has been aimed at making health care insurance more widely available. Many of these proposals include nationalization or some variety of a public option. This will make things worse, not better because the government will have to use the same strategies as the private sector insurers to stretch systemic costs across the risk pool in order to keep the system solvent. This will continue to drive the cost of care upward.

In a sense, what is happening with health care insurance has become a self-perpetuating problem. The more our insurance costs, the more we expect it to do. The more it does, the more it costs. In essence, health care insurance itself has become a driver of increasing health care costs.

The problem is that what we are now asking insurance to do exceeds its design parameters. An automobile is a perfectly serviceable mode of transportation, but it is not an airplane. If you need to fly, you simply cannot reasonably expect your car to meet that need. You can floor the accelerator and go a little faster, but in the end the most you will accomplish is to use a lot more gas. It will cost you more and still not do what you want.”

If you want, I’d be happy to send you the whole concept paper.

The pre-existing health problem is one of my favorites. You not go out and buy auto insurance after you get into an accident, the insurance company that would allow that would go out of business in a very short while. If you know someone who has Mark Levin’s book Liberty and Tyranny most of what you need is in there.

Government has never deregulated anything. What government has done is change regulations.
Take the mortgage crisis; the regulations concerning loans were changed to stop the practice of “redlining” by lenders, so people, or areas that lenders backed away from were then able to obtain loans.
This is a change not a deregulation.
Every bill or law passed by government is a regulation in some way and passing bills and laws are are the only thing government does.

Claire: I believe what you’re describing is an “Appeal to Anonymous Authority”, one of a whole slew of fallacious arguments that can be found here…

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#weasel

Thanks for the linky, HogW!
Been looking for sumpin’ like that for a while!

Everytime government passes a regulation that is one additional activity a
business can’t perform for itself it must do to satisfy a government requirement.

Because of fulfiling a regulatory requirement, that is one less activity a business must do that it can’t to add to its own productivity.  Because less is produced, necessarily prices must rise.

Therefore less government equals more productivity.

Rick, this may be just a semantic quibble, but IIRC lending agencies were required to start lending to people/areas that were either not qualified (or just not likely) to repay by legislative action during the Clinton administration—with Fannie and Freddie promising to back the notes.

Claire,
Ask your friend if she (assuming it’s a she) would like to get her next pap smear at the D.M.V.? Because that’s what we will be getting.

Claire, if you email me your address I’ll send you my Louisville slugger… when you get it, write “clue” in big letters up the bat, and smack your friend until the argument stops.

Precisely, Pat R, the government did not deregulate, the government changed regulations and helped cause the mortgage forecloursure crisis.

Let’s take care of that first one, m’kay?  Let’s see..  Steel is a great example.  The free market kept the price of steel low. That kept car prices down, washer prices down, building prices down, etc.  Then, to give a gift to the unions, Geroge W. Bush adds a GOVERNMENT CONTROL and puts a steel tarriff to imports.  Now the price of steel goes up.  The prices of cars, washers, etc go up too.  So there’s your best example.  Remember gas was going up before the 9/11 attacks too because of government enviromental regulations.  If we were to tell the enviro’s to go fuck themselves and drill, we’d be back down to a buck a gallon.  Government involvement is everywhere.  You can’t even buy a house without regulations covering everything from the kind of toilet you can have to the makeup of the concrete.  And make no mistake about it, government involvement NEVER brings a price down.  It goes down for some special interests but the rest of us subsidize it by paying more than the market would normally bare.

The fact is we no longer have a free market capitalistic economy.  The government regulations and interference add costs to the subparts of everything made which in turn drives up the costs. 

In the health care area, capping the punitive damages and having loser pays would drop the prices fast.  The FDA being scaled back would help a bit as they tend to say no a lot more than is needed.  If you remove the government burdens and allow the free market to be free, you’ll have proper pricing.  Reagan understood that with the airlines.  It will work everywhere else too.

^^LOL^^
I would say that would be quite effective.

Tort reform which the dims do not believe in, because so many of them are ambulance chasing lawyers, would help in lowering the cost of medicine.
Getting rid of the FREELOADERS who are counter-productive to our society and those who are not citizens, would help even more.

The second one is fucked on it’s face.  There never has been a deregulation of healthcare.  Just the opposite.  Not sure what your friend is smoking but the next time s/he goes back to the crystal castle to smoke with the ponies make sure they bring some back to the rest of us.

The third one was hit by Mr. Happy pretty good, I’ll just add that insurance coverage is a risk assumed by the company.  It has every right and is ethically required to properly assess that risk based on the current state of health of the individual.  Pre-existing conditions are guarantees of costing money they have a duty to their shareholders to incorporate those costs into the “income” pool. 

An example you can use is this:  You have a house to rent.  You can rent it to an elderly couple with no kids and no pets or you can rent it to a single mom with 5 kids and a couple dogs.  Are you really going to charge the same rent knowing that the mom and kids will tear the crap out of that house?  Of course not.  Same with the insurance company.  They have to price the person applying.  Plain and simple.

Finally, you nailed the last one, but no one cares about facts like that.  It’s all about the numbers.  100 bln.  Don’t matter what the % is and no one will convince your friend otherwise.

Just Dayum!!  Youze Guyz RAWK!!
Been busily writing for half an hour!

Thanks Steve H in AZ—I would be interested.  my email is in the sidebar

I Lurves This Porch!
[PS don’t stop]
; >

Government regulation is an added expense.  Every new or changed regulation requires expenditure of capital to comply.  And we all know expenses get passed to the consumer.

Re: The comments of Mr. Skullduggery and raz0r..

Case in point.. that ‘72 Olds Cutlass I used to have (and wish to hell I never sold) cost about $4200, brand new.
If we adjust for inflation, that would come about 25 Grand.
But.... given modern manufacturing methods, if that car were made, just as it was, today (I know, a political and regulatory impossibility) the price would probably come to around half of that.

>> NOTHING has gotten cheaper over the years.

Lasik surgery.  Not covered by medical insurance or government mandate.

That is, this once incredibly expensive, is now an easily available, routine, and cheap procedure due to increased competition.

This might not be much help, but the pre-existing condition yjosng is a favorite of mine too.

I was wondering, what would keep me from wandering around,uninsured and signing up right before my scheduled open heart surgery?