Shay wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
> Anyone who's followed this thread should know how I would answer these 
> questions. But, "what the Hell?".
> 
>>
>> What if the slaves are in the majority?
> 
> A voting majority?

Is that relevant?

> Might sound cruel, but we've got to accept that there is only so much 
> money to go around 

Are you sure? What do you mean by "money" here?

> Doesn't matter how you mix it, organize it, whatever.

Of course it does.

>> No amount of rules will make the enforcers of those rules obey the rules.
> True, but they do still require the complicity of the voters.

Not really.

>> In any case, you seem to be alternating between "don't take my money 
>> to fund this" and "it'll hurt people because it's uncompetitive", 
>> unless I'm misremembering. I've been trying to get your take on a 
>> "public option" that's neither required nor funded by those not taking 
>> advantage of it, but I didn't actually get an answer.
> 
> A bad idea for the reason mentioned above. There would be nothing to 
> stop the government (Remember that the stated goal of our President is 
> single-payer) from engaging in illegal business practices to destroy the 
> competition. The government might, for instance, operate at a loss until 
> the free market alternatives were destroyed. 

It has already happened.

> This is illegal for a reason. 

No it isn't. Not for the government, at least.

> The voters *could* stop it in the same way consumers *could* 
> stop a private entity from using similar means to destroy the market, 
> but they wouldn't. The voters would only see *temporarily* lower prices.

True, it's unlikely to stop things that are working.

> Going from a private to public system only changes the people at the 
> top. Executives would be replaced by equally fallible and much more 
> powerful people.

First, no, it would change more than that, because we're talking about 
something that becomes *more* "fair" and *more* valuable the bigger it gets. 
And two, people who are already participating in the government-run 
processes (both here and all over the world) of this type express much 
greater contentment than those participating in private American insurance. 
And three, most people have little or no choice about what insurance they 
buy, since it's usually through the employer. Not only is the insurance 
company making for-profit decisions for the insured, but so is the insured's 
employer - and any time you get a whole chain of people making choices like 
this for someone other than the beneficiary, you get inefficiency and 
generally bad results.

Sure, possibly over time it will get bad, at which point private industry 
can come back into play.

But look at it this way: there's no profit motive for the government to 
overcharge you premiums. The government can already take all the money they 
want from you. There's no need to overcharge your premiums to get more money 
to fund the government.

However, I'm guessing from both your tone and your earlier posts that you're 
completely closed to considering the situation on its own, so...

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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