re: #577 karmic_inquisitor

Hey - you want an example of a complete screw up where the government gives away a vital resource for almost free? Do you want to see the distortions it produces and the problems it lets accumulated for future generations?

Great!

Look at the Metropolitan Water District of southern California.

A huge infrastructure of aqueducts and storage facilities is built and brings an abundance of water to parched Southern California.

Great!

What do people do with this water? Why, they plant big, lush gardens and elaborate landscaping. Golf Courses and swimming pools. Big lush lawns under the California skies.

So more people move to this lush and idyllic place.

And more houses are built and more plants are planted.

lo and behold they are “out” of water. Oh dear - what can they do?

Do they remove their golf courses? Swimming Pools? Houses? Do they move away?

No - they get rationing notices and bitch about it. And they bitch about water rates going up. And they bitch about how more dams aren’t built.

They just bitch.

In that little story you have the future of American Health Care. None will be contented. Just as they aren’t now. But we will open the floodgates for a little while (until reality imposes itself) until we realize that doctors and nurses and administrators and researchers expect to be paid for their services and don’t give discounts because the payer is “the public option”.

Check the combines profits of all health insurance companies - a drop in the bucket compared to what the whole system takes in.

So you’re saying healthcare is a luxury that some people just need to learn to live (or die) without?