From Paul Krugman today:
bq. The fact is that the mainly private U.S. health care system spends far more than the mainly public health care systems of other advanced countries, but gets worse results. In 2001, we spent $4,887 on health care per capita, compared with $2,792 in Canada and $2,561 in France. Yet the U.S. does worse than either country by any measure of health care success you care to name – life expectancy, infant mortality, whatever. (At its best, U.S. health care is the best in the world. But the ranks of Americans who can’t afford the best, and may have no insurance at all, are large and growing.)
So the reason everyone fears socialized medicine is because it produces such bad results? What was that again?
Hell, socialized medicine works for the US Military, right, or are we screwing our service-women and -men in yet another way?
Markets work when you have honest, ethical actors. When everyone’s trying to game the market, using tricks to squeeze more blood from the turnip, it’s no wonder you get shitty results.
Markets with honest, ethical actors only happen in Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein novels.
