Commentary: "Coronavirus shows again why 'Medicare for all' is a bad idea"

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Balto1:

Nah, it’s the profit motive, treating health care like a consumer good is disgusting. Paying people to sit around all day playing video games and occasionally strangle someone is as effective a use of money as paying them to deny insurance claims.

Why, then, is it NOT equally “disgusting” to treat food as a consumer good? Everyone needs food everyday, and in substantive quantity.

Yet it is the very fact that food is a consumer good that enables the quantity and variety of foods available in free market economies. The competition and consistent market ensures supply, demand and competition.

Again, we could point to the socialization of BOTH food and health care in Venezuela — which at one time, before socialism ravaged the country, was the wealthiest nation in South America — as a pointed example of what happens when a small group of political ideologues control access and supply.

The competition is in large part self-manufactured, given how many food companies are ultimately owned by a handful of multinationals.

The competition in relation to food is also in large part possible because a lot of people are capable of growing or making a lot of foods themselves and so removing themselves from the market altogether. Therefore cheap prices are the only thing keeping them buying ready made food from the stores. This is not something that is true of healthcare.

So people are free to grow or acquire food where they wish. They are not compelled by the State to buy and sell in completely controlled markets. Nothing is forcing them not to buy from the multinationals, but they can purchase locally or grow their own? Nice to have that option in a free market economy.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Were all those traditional Venezuelan foods developed under the control of a socialist regime, or within a culture free to develop from the grassroots, so to speak?

getting into bizarre territory lol

I was thinking the same thing when you were going on about how nutritious and delicious the current food situation is in Venezuela.

Venezuela’s Food Crisis Reaches a Breaking Point | The New Yorker

 

[Balto1]

Yeah, sanctions destroy economies and kill poor people. Thanks Obama and Trump! But the situation has much improved now that the Venezuelan right and U.S. have at least for now stopped trying to depose the democratically-elected government.

 

[LilyM]

LilyM:

HarryStotle:

Balto1:

Nah, it’s the profit motive, treating health care like a consumer good is disgusting. Paying people to sit around all day playing video games and occasionally strangle someone is as effective a use of money as paying them to deny insurance claims.

Why, then, is it NOT equally “disgusting” to treat food as a consumer good? Everyone needs food everyday, and in substantive quantity.

Yet it is the very fact that food is a consumer good that enables the quantity and variety of foods available in free market economies. The competition and consistent market ensures supply, demand and competition.

Again, we could point to the socialization of BOTH food and health care in Venezuela — which at one time, before socialism ravaged the country, was the wealthiest nation in South America — as a pointed example of what happens when a small group of political ideologues control access and supply.

The competition is in large part self-manufactured, given how many food companies are ultimately owned by a handful of multinationals.

The competition in relation to food is also in large part possible because a lot of people are capable of growing or making a lot of foods themselves and so removing themselves from the market altogether. Therefore cheap prices are the only thing keeping them buying ready made food from the stores. This is not something that is true of healthcare.

So people are free to grow or acquire food where they wish. They are not compelled by the State to buy and sell in completely controlled markets. Nothing is forcing them not to buy from the multinationals, but they can purchase locally or grow their own? Nice to have that option in a free market economy.

It is an option wherever people have access to land that they can use to grow food on. Or for that matter a balcony or courtyard and a planter. My own family hails from formerly communist Eastern Europe, and even under the worst excesses of repression there was never any restriction on folks growing or making their own food.

 

[HarryStotle]

It is an option wherever people have access to land that they can use to grow food on. Or for that matter a balcony or courtyard and a planter. My own family hails from formerly communist Eastern Europe, and even under the worst excesses of repression there was never any restriction on folks growing or making their own food.

But there were restrictions on growing food to sell to others locally?

 

[HarryStotle]

Yeah, sanctions destroy economies and kill poor people. Thanks Obama and Trump! But the situation has much improved now that the Venezuelan right and U.S. have at least for now stopped trying to depose the democratically-elected government.

Yeah, sanctions destroy economies and kill poor people. Thanks Obama and Trump! But the situation has much improved now that the Venezuelan right and U.S. have at least for now stopped trying to depose the democratically-elected government.

So the socialist policies in Venezuela did no harm, it was all the fault of sanctions?

The situation has "improved’ from what exactly? Eating zoo animals?

Yeah, no. You have to stretch your ideological commitments to the extreme to defend the regime in Venezuela.

The problem with the left is that it is always someone else’s fault, never the limitations or shortcomings of the policies of the controlling elite.

All that is necessary for socialists to remain in power is find a suitable scapegoat, a la the National Socialists, for example.

 

[WomanOfHeb11.1]

I’m just going to leave it here.
Article today, 3/25/20 from UK (socialist health care)
London woman dies of suspected Covid-19 after being told she was 'not priority' | Coronavirus | The Guardian?

I lived 4 years in UK as expat, needed an operation. I returned to US and still was not my turn in line, nor could I choose the hospital or surgeon. When my 4 years old had an emergency and was profusely bleeding from a cut on her forehead, no ambulance came. We drove for 4 hours with her wrapped in a towel, and went to 3 clinics before a surgeon could be found (was at a party and did stitches on his tuxedo). Worked for a very good company, great pay, yet NHS assigned for each expat, we could opt for private care.

 

[LilyM]

LilyM:

It is an option wherever people have access to land that they can use to grow food on. Or for that matter a balcony or courtyard and a planter. My own family hails from formerly communist Eastern Europe, and even under the worst excesses of repression there was never any restriction on folks growing or making their own food.

But there were restrictions on growing food to sell to others locally?

If there were, they were routinely ignored.

 

[Maximus1]

Taiwan has been a model of success.

 

[jeannetherese]

Thought you might find this page of interest.

Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) - Our World in Data