Only one move ahead

Sometimes it boggles my mind just how stupid some people can be and still be able to write complete sentences and breathe–and apparently at the same time. Case in point:

Free marketers don’t care much for bank bailouts so long as they’ve gotten their money out the bank before it fails.

But when it’s health care? I think you will find that teabaggers everywhere will have a very different perspective when they find themselves out there alone with no way to pay for their family’s medical costs.

Who will need the save the day when this happens? The government will – and that means a single-payer system.

Whether the result fits your ideology or not, the numbers would seem to make clear that it is only a matter of time before private health insurance prices itself out of the market, leaving only the government with the capability to insure the nation’s health.

“Leaving only the government with the capability”? And just where does he think the government will get the money that private health insurance companies and individuals couldn’t?

When I used to play chess a lot (high school and college) it was very rare that someone couldn’t see pretty clearly two and usually three moves in advance. And the better players would have a pretty fair view out six or seven moves on some critical branches. But this guy apparently can’t see even one move in advance. What would you call someone like this? In my chess playing days we would call those people losers.

Update: He makes an “interesting” comment in response to another commenter to his article:

I rarely watch CNBC and, anyone who reads this post knows I wouldn’t be caught dead watching Fox.

He admits he studiously ignores data considered to be fair and accurate by millions of people? This isn’t someone concerned with knowing the truth. This is someone who has a deep and profound commitment to some sort of cult.

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5 thoughts on “Only one move ahead

  1. It’s a real shame, but people like this really can’t be changed outside of some sort of blinding emotional revelation. Better to debate them in public to impress and win over the reasonable and the fence-sitters (which is what happened to me).

  2. Never mind the fact that medical insurance does not insure your health. No one can insure your health. To say otherwise is to say that fire insurance protects your house from burning. You give him too much credit, Joe. I say he can’t form a sentence– certainly not a coherent one.

    Anyone ever known of an industry, a whole industry, that has priced itself out of the market? This fellow you quote can only hope that government intrusion is going to make medical insurance more and more expensive. They’ve been working on that for long time, after all.

  3. “Anyone ever known of an industry, a whole industry, that has priced itself out of the market?”

    This is an interesting thought. I suppose it depends on what you are considering to be “an industry.” There are a lot of products that have been replaced by cheaper similar things (like vinyl records and 8-track tapes). There are a lot of other industries that have been mostly offshored due to costs (like phone rooms and aircraft mechanics).

    It’s kind of interesting to look at some of the “Florida Naturals” food products to see that their boxes have “Made in China” on them. Of course, most of our manufacturing is done somewhere else, but could this be considered “priced itself out of the market”?

    As far as the original comment goes, medical insurance is going to continue to go up in cost because the cost of hospitals, doctors and drugs continue to rise between 10% and 20% every year.

  4. ubu52; You’re making my case. Where there is a demand (and a free market) there will always be a myriad of interests seeking to provide a supply. Innovation resulting in better products doesn’t “price anything out of the market”. Rather it diminishes the demand in the old product in favor of something better. 8-track didn’t get more and more expensive until people were unable to afford them. Just the opposite, really. Instead, the cassette came out, which was much better, and people decided they’d rather have those. Meanwhile, as cassette machines got better and cheaper, some smart asses were working on the optical disk, which did to cassettes what cassettes did to 8-track. Now optical disks are technically obsolete, not because they got more and more expensive (remember? they got cheaper and cheaper as production methods were improved) but because computer processing, memory, disk capacity, and flash media got super cheap. Better, cheaper, better, cheaper, better, cheaper. Now you can put your entire, life-long music collection on a single 100-dollar hard drive with room to spare. See a trend here? That’s something approaching a free market at work. It’s what people do.

    The medical industry is so hamstrung with government interference, including jackpot justice lawsuits, that it has been causing the prices to rise for several decades. It is not a free market that has caused prices to rise unrealistically. It is government meddling, including subsidies. My point is that these sorts of things do not happen all of their own, without government interference. A free market in medicine would do the same that a free market does to music, video and computing products– ever better performance at ever better prices. That’s what people do. They innovate, improve, and compete, innovate, improve, compete….and the customer’s every whim becomes the law. Companies spend huge amounts of resources just trying to find out what we want. It’s called market research. It’s when some shithead politicians get in the way that things get screwed up. It’s none of their business. Their job is to protect our freedom, not control the way we interact with one another. That’s our business.

    Will medical insurance (also heavily restricted and controlled by legislators who can barely wipe their asses) continue to rise in cost? That question is answered with another question; Will government meddling continue in the insurance and medical industries? If “Yes” then the price will go up while innovation takes place at a slower rate. If “No” then prices will begin to drop and performance will improve.

  5. Addendum
    ub52; All that improvement in music reproduction and computing? We started our discussion with the 8-track, but it really started with Edison’s phonograph, went to the 78 rpm disk, the electrically amplified 78 rpm phonograph, the magnetic wire, the magnetic tape, the 33.33 rpm LP, and then 8-track. It didn’t happen because of government imposed recording and computing standards. Rather it happened because (for the most part) there weren’t any. Ain’t freedom great?

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