Comment Re:Saw it a few days ago (Score 1) 1088
The keywords are competition and incentive. I won't say private health care is perfect, but it IS a damn lot better than the alternative.
As mentioned earlier you can't compete with "free". If several actors fought for my business they would have incentive become better, or they would be beaten by the competition. The state monopoly has no incentive whatsoever to provide good service because there's no competition and because regulations secures their place as the only health care provider. Think about it, if you had a monopoly by law, why in the nine hells would you want to get better when adequate or just below adequate service would be enough? It's not like you're getting paid for the quality of service you provide. Swedish health care might largely treats everyone equally (providing you're not a politician or a bureaucrat, who gets preferential treatment), but the treatment is generally poor.
If i get mistreaded by the swedish health care system, there's nothing I can do about it, except maybe bitch about it to some buerocrat who will just put another piece of paper on the pile marked "complaints". I can't refuse to pay taxes because men with guns will come and threaten me if I do. On the other hand, if I get mistreated by a private actor, I can easily punish them by taking my money to the competition instead. Competing actors have incentive to become better providers, state mandated monopolies do not.
And, of course, there's the whole mess that comes with anything thats publically funded. Out of the cut of the taxes that alledgedly goes to health-care, how big a chunk of that money ends up in middle-men buerocrats hands who produce nothing do you think? I don't know, but I do know that this would be less of a problem with a private actor because efficency is profit. Profit is not a bad thing, which seems to be concensus here, as it gives the actor resourses to expand and improve. The economics of public health care is quit simply an inefficient mess that grossly mishandles the resourses available. But on the other hand, why would the system handle them efficiently? It's not like there's an incentive...
As mentioned earlier you can't compete with "free". If several actors fought for my business they would have incentive become better, or they would be beaten by the competition. The state monopoly has no incentive whatsoever to provide good service because there's no competition and because regulations secures their place as the only health care provider. Think about it, if you had a monopoly by law, why in the nine hells would you want to get better when adequate or just below adequate service would be enough? It's not like you're getting paid for the quality of service you provide. Swedish health care might largely treats everyone equally (providing you're not a politician or a bureaucrat, who gets preferential treatment), but the treatment is generally poor.
If i get mistreaded by the swedish health care system, there's nothing I can do about it, except maybe bitch about it to some buerocrat who will just put another piece of paper on the pile marked "complaints". I can't refuse to pay taxes because men with guns will come and threaten me if I do. On the other hand, if I get mistreated by a private actor, I can easily punish them by taking my money to the competition instead. Competing actors have incentive to become better providers, state mandated monopolies do not.
And, of course, there's the whole mess that comes with anything thats publically funded. Out of the cut of the taxes that alledgedly goes to health-care, how big a chunk of that money ends up in middle-men buerocrats hands who produce nothing do you think? I don't know, but I do know that this would be less of a problem with a private actor because efficency is profit. Profit is not a bad thing, which seems to be concensus here, as it gives the actor resourses to expand and improve. The economics of public health care is quit simply an inefficient mess that grossly mishandles the resourses available. But on the other hand, why would the system handle them efficiently? It's not like there's an incentive...
