Deinonychus antirrhopus

I'm starting to come around to Kerry's health care plan
Ya, me too, health care with the efficiency and human kindness of the DMV.

I shouldn't poke fun at the host, I'll lose my Moderate Ron tag.

Seriously, you've posted before that out-of-pocket medical expenses are not rising, while overall costs are. That indicates to me that the true costs are being masked, which interferes with the market and therefore the market cannot control costs (you can correct me if this is wrong). How will a layer of gov't "help" be a benefit?

Well, both Brad DeLong and Arnold Kling have posted on this. Two rather disparate sources, IMO. Both think it will help address the problem of adverse selection that insurance companies face and help drive up the insurance costs. I find the argument persuasive and it doesn't interfere in the market so much as to destroy the efficiency of the market. It will lower premiums, but there will still have an incentive to shop around.

And while the program isn't perfect it does, IMO, point in a potentially good direction. The bottom line is people seem to want to have the government involved in this. So in a sense this is to me a rear-guard action. The forces of a pure unfettered market have lost this battle. It is over, and all that remains is to try and salvage what you can.

So...Kerry's plan has some value there. Throw in forcing everybody to buy health insurance (i.e., it is illegal not to have it unless you have a pre-existing condition), and make changing the amount that is covered by the gov't re-insurance very difficult (say a super majority of 75% or something), and I think it would look pretty good.

Samething with Social Security reform. You will have to force everybody to participate. Fail to participate and both the employer and the employee should be hammered (i.e., fines, jail time, etc.).

This is what people want. They want to be forced to do what is "best for them".

The bottom line is people seem to want to have the government involved in this.
Probably the saddest commentary I can think of. I hadn't ever been to DeLong's site and I see he has no search. But Kling was kind enough to link to several of his TechStation articles which greatly expanded my knowledge.

If gov't is supposed to be a re-insurer for hard cases in medicine, why not auto insurance too? (rhetorical question)
I still don't buy it, but variety is the spice of life. And besides, it would hurt my feelings if we agreed on everything :-)

Honestly, and I'm not trying to criticize you, I think you are digging too deep rhetorically. There's not world of difference between the idea expressed in two sentences, and chances are, Edwards was speaking with prepared ideas but no set speech in mind.

Or it could just be the reporter.

Ron,

As Steve said, Brad DeLong has posted about this. Go over and take a look at his blog. He's posted more than a few times about how the free market probably works least well when it comes to health care.

You seem to be worried about costs getting out of control. Well, for starters, the government doesn't pick up the entire tab. It picks up 75%, so there is an incentive for people not to throw thriftiness to the wind and to actually try to hold down costs.

Is there a transcript of the speech? Perhaps the flub is on Edward's part?

Ron,

Of course he has a search. His Berkeley page links to his blog, and you can find the search there, but I will give you it right here: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/search.html

Brian,

If I said "my plan would provied everybody with X," and then a little bit later said it would "my plan would offer everybody X," you wouldn't see a difference? None at all? The two sentences are not at all the same and imply very different outcomes.

Well, okay, you can quibble about the difference between the words, but "available" means ready for use, while "provide" means make available for use. Hell, even if we use your choice of "offer," that too means "make available."

If we are going to split hairs about everything, then we won't get anywhere.

Brian
Thanks for the link to DeLong's search. I found Kling more persuasive on Kerry's plan, and he didn't persuade me.

Maybe I just have a bad attitude...

Ron,

We're all a little bitter. It's okay. :]

Which post of DeLong's did you read?

Brian,

When I see provide, I don't see "avialable" in the context of that article. I see it as "giving", "supplying", etc. As in "I (and my wife) provide food and shelter for my son". We give it to him, we don't make it available for his use (i.e., he can't go sleep at the local hotel). I see a distinct difference between the implications between the two words. Sure it is subtle, but still there is a difference. Provide and available are not synonyms.

Ron,

Well I'm Kerry's plan is not what I consider the best alternative. Part of the problem is that if you gave people the equivalent cash value of the insurance they were getting under Kerry's plan they'd problably spend it on something other than insurance.

Dean
I don't remember, I searched on Kerry health care and read the top 7 to 9 hits, somewhere around in there.

My biggest problem is the expansion of government at all, or, as so succinctly put by PJ O'Roarke: The mystery of government is not how Washington works, but how to make it stop.

Steve
As long as it's not your favorite :-) As for the rest of your comment, I wonder how much of our tax money is spent in the way we would spend it?

Steve,

They may not be direct synonyms, but if we look at what Edwards said, his tone was pretty consistant, based on the words. There doesn't appear to be anything hidden in his speech.

"Well, both Brad DeLong and Arnold Kling have posted on this. Two rather disparate sources, IMO. Both think it will help address the problem of adverse selection that insurance companies face and help drive up the insurance costs."

And the adverse selection problem comes from the fact that lots of our insurance isn't priced according to risk, for political reasons. If it were, a catastrophic health plan for a healthy person would be dirt cheap, and healthy people would buy one without any arm-twisting.

"And while the program isn't perfect it does, IMO, point in a potentially good direction. The bottom line is people seem to want to have the government involved in this. So in a sense this is to me a rear-guard action. The forces of a pure unfettered market have lost this battle. It is over, and all that remains is to try and salvage what you can."

The forces of a pure unfettered market haven't been seen anywhere near the health care industry since WWII. People "seem to want to have the government involved in this" mainly because they've really never seen what a pure unfettered market can do with health care. We've seen what it can do with the computer industry (dirt cheap computers that run rings around the top-of-the-line stuff from 10 years ago), but a lot of people seem to think health care is different. Some of it's more valuable to most people, but it still follows the same laws of economics as everything else.

"Samething with Social Security reform. You will have to force everybody to participate."

You have to force everybody to participate in the system we have now. Switch to an investment based system, and the system will still work no matter how many or how few participate.

"This is what people want. They want to be forced to do what is "best for them". "

No, they want everyone else to be forced to do what is "best for them", because they don't want to have to look at the people that failed. I don't know about you, but I don't remember hearing that listed among our inalienable rights. What the people "want" and what will actually work are two very different things, and if we want a system that works well, we need to advocate one and try to sell it.

They may not be direct synonyms, but if we look at what Edwards said, his tone was pretty consistant, based on the words. There doesn't appear to be anything hidden in his speech.

I'm not referring to Edward's speech as I have not seen a transcript. I am talking about the reporter who had time to reflect on the speech and choose here words appropriately. Either A)she wasn't thinking and chose badly, or B) she knowingly used a misleading word in the second paragraph.

Is it subtle? Yeah, but to pretend there is no distinction is silly.

Ken,

You maybe right on health care and your computer analogy, but somehow the campaign slogan of "you'll die without a regulated personal computer market" doesn't have the same oomph as when applied to the health care market.

You have to force everybody to participate in the system we have now. Switch to an investment based system, and the system will still work no matter how many or how few participate.

Uhhhh no. I'm afraid I don't buy this one.

The problem runs deeper here than simply this market or that. The problem is with an activist government that intervenes when things turn out less well than people hoped. For this we can blame FDR and the progressives who wanted such a government.

"You maybe right on health care and your computer analogy, but somehow the campaign slogan of "you'll die without a regulated personal computer market" doesn't have the same oomph as when applied to the health care market."

How about this:

You are doomed to a slow, painful death in less than 80 years. Let health care technology advance like the lightly regulated computer industry, and somebody might come up with a way to save you. Keep throwing more controls on it, and you don't have a chance in Hell.

Yeah, but that wont stop the opposition for demonizing you for letting people die today.

I, too, think you've read too much into the precise diction.

Remember, in the totalitarian state, everything not forbidden is compulsory.

If it's available, you are required to use it.

Not sure this imprecision amounts to much of an objection to the reporting.

Social Security is considered a universal old age income support program, yet it may not provide a given senior any support, if they had no officially reported and FICA-withheld wages for the past 30 quarters (or whatever the time frame used to calculate benefit levels).

Yet few would quibble at the original description of SS I gave above, that it is indeed a universally available program, even though there are some requirements to be met for it to kick in.