Health care is a public good

[eridani]

Morally, it's a right, of course. But when you are getting into the details of policy, you want to put health care in the category of other public goods like education, transportation infrastructure, fire protection, etc.

A heart attack is like a house fire, not like an iPod. No reason why we can't just pay what we are paying now to professional sociopaths (in business to deny health care as often as possible) for actual CARE.

[RC]

1. Health Care being a public good, there is not reason why to not have government administered it

the same as other Public goods such as Water & sewer, Law Enforcement, Education, Fire Protection, Transportation Infrastructure, etc.
Make hospitals non-profit. Get the insurance companies out of the decision making process. People lives should not translate into hundreds of thousands of dollar in bonuses for execs being paid several millions of dollars a year.
Regulate the drug companies. Pharmacies need to be owned and controlled by Pharmacists, not big drug companies.

And on a related subject, Corporations need to lose their "Person-hood". What other country gives person-hood to businesses? None that I know of.

[applegrove]

2. Fact is that per capita, universal health care is less expensive that what the US has now.

I think it health care costs $9000 US in the USA per year. In Canada it costs $3000 per person per year. There are efficiencies in public health care that just don't exist in private health care. Like regular appointments help people avoid chronic illness like diabetes and such. Also the administration and profit taking in the private health care field makes it cost more.

It is the right thing to do for equality. It is the right thing to do for efficiency. That is why all the other western countries have public health care. It just works much better.

[canetoad]

3. It certainly is

and that is why the US must fight to attain it. No subsequent government will ever be brave enough to take it away.

[Cleita]

4. I've been preaching this for twenty five years.

A healthy population with access to health care don't spread diseases for one like tuberculosis or aids. Also, we would have a chance to screen out mental diseases in the early stages so that they would get the medication and therapy they need to function and not be a danger to society at large. When I was up in Canada last year, I was struck about how healthy the people we passed in the streets, and who waited on us in the shops, looked.

[TahitiNut]

5. I would include a greatly expanded Public Health Service ...

... in a Universal National Service program. :shrug:

[wildflower]

6. "like a house fire, not like an iPod"

Very well put.

[eridani]

11. It shuts conservatives right up. You know, the kind who always say

"Gee whiz, if the government is supposed to give us free health care, why not free computers too?"

[L0oniX]

7. Professional sociopaths ...jeeze that is exactly what they are too.

[infidel dog]

8. Health care

I think most people consider health care a human right(republi-cons excepted). The fact that the citizens of the wealthiest and most powerful nation on this suffering planet never voiced this belief aggressively to their political poobahs is a real mind-blower. Yet another aspect of life in the States that will have future history students shaking their heads in disbelief when studying the corroded pot metal underlying the second American Gilded Age.

[eridani]

12. Yes, but is transportation infrastructure a right?

No, but it is a public good. Saying health care is a right is a good thing to say if you are making a moral argument. When discussing specific policies, you have to get people to do a category shift--out of the iPod column and into the fire department and school column.

[libertypirate]

9. Does anything facilitate life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness more

then health?

[LWolf]

10. Yes.

The U.S. is more interested in competition, the free market, and the corporate good than she is the public good.

[MazeRat7]

13. Ture that. We have "illness management" in the west... not "health care"...

There is a lot more money to be made treating disease than preventing it.

Peace,
MZr7

[pinqy]

14. What definition of "public good" are you using?

In Economics, a public good is one where one multiple people can use it without anyone getting less (non-rivalry) and that is also non-exclusive (you can't prevent anyone from using it). While there probably isn't any pure public good in reality, most infrastructure and many services such as military and police fit the definition close enough. Once a street lamp is in place, for example, my use of it doesn't make it less available to anyone else. Likewise my use of the road (though only to a point), or the benefit I receive from police patrols. And once a streetlamp is in place you can't stop someone from using the light, regardless of whether or not they paid for it. Likewise most roads, police presence etc.

But since health care is a rival good in that if I'm seeing a doctor, no one else can get any benefit from her at that time, and since it is excludable in that you can stop someone from receiving care, I would avoid the term "public good," unless prefaced by "for the..."

[eridani]

15. I think that schools are public goods

Even though if there are 30 kids in a classroom, that's only one set of them at a time.