Audio of Obama lamenting lack of socialism in U.S.

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Well, baseline actually meant some relative statement, and the matter of competition really didn't have to do with the current competitive scheme but rather free competition, and how competition should actually work.


Ok. Who said anything about perfection.


No, not BS at all. The issue is *NOT* normative, but rather *POSITIVE*, if insurance differs from the economic function that an insurance agency is supposed to fulfill, it will not lead to efficient economic functionings but rather be problematic. I know about the contract, I never said anything about the contract, and I even was explicit about that in the first comment "This is to say nothing about the contracts, only that it does not fall under the function of insurance." If anesthesiology for wisdom teeth is an expected cost, then it would not fall under insurance, and also if elements of the operation go beyond the bare minimum requirements then I do not see how insurance should necessarily have to cover it, in any case, if the lines of proper insurance and improper insurance are more blurred, then I think the emergence of problems is likely across the entire system as denying claims can be useful.


Those pictures all suck.

Not what you were looking for eh...

And how "should" it actually work? I smell normative analysis.


My point was that neither governments nor private corporations are universally a pleasure to do business with. Some things are easier to deal with government for, some things easier to deal with private corporations for.


"Supposed to" sounds pretty normative to me. What then "should" insurance be doing?


All 242,000 of them?

You are right, I am not using the terms I should be for positive analysis, however, part of the issue is that insurance is a sick market, and Arnold Kling, an economist whose done some research on this blames part of it on the governmental interventions, which he argues to decrease the actual competition by tying insurance to corporate decisions, and argues to worsen our medical situation by insulating people from the real costs of premium health care services(as American healthcare usually has a number of unnecessary expenditures to achieve the same goals as other countries have)


What the title says it does. Insurance insures. Performing another function is just inefficient. Now, you are right, my terms used are questionable, however, the actual analysis I was trying to get at is not that questionable. Insurance, by not just insuring, just leads to greater inefficiencies throughout the entire medical system, and government by promoting this system leads to greater inefficiencies as well.


If the first few pages aren't good, then the rest is likely total crap.

Doesn't seem to be much left to argue about.

Regardless, insurance companies are private organizations that sell a good, and they suck at customer service. Part of the blame may lie with bad governmental decisions, but I doubt all of the problems can be pinned to that cause.

American healthcare has inefficiencies, but it gets pretty good results- on a variety of measures it outperforms most other systems. And other countries aren't a good example for you to argue from anyways, since they generally have more government intervention.

How'd we end up arguing about insurance?

Ergo I win!


A significant part of it is related to governmental actions, and these can cause customer service to be less important. You are right, it is ridiculous to say that every negative thing about reality is because of governmental actions, but governmental actions do impact the system to a significant extent, and this involvement cannot be ignored.


I didn't argue from other country's medical systems, I merely argued that American medicine uses a lot of resources to achieve it's goals, and to be honest, there have been calculations on the matter showing that a lot of resources used are wasted, some studies saying at least half.

I think you brought it up to some extent.

Not just yet.


Maybe. Anyways, I'm bored of insurance. What were we talking about before?

Something involving markets. You were trying to present insurance as an example of market failure, I consider it to be outside of the market.

How can you get outside markets?

Now that is the question we are all trying to answer, Comrade Orwell!! Btw, Orwell was a socialist, so to respect him you should be exactly like he was.

Of course. And I should be an atheist as well, and buy into every paranoid conspiracy theory that gets posted to wrongplanet.

As far as how we can escape the market...
"Our task is not to study economics but to change it. We are bound by no laws." -Shumilin (Stalin's economist)