I'm not the one lodging the complaint, Kristen was, I and I responded to that by searching for some example we might use as an exemplar to test, and possibly prove, her argument. That argument, as I block-quoted in my question, is:
Medicine is screwed up not because government hasn’t intervened in it enough, but because it has intervened too much. Bureaucracy ruins everything it touches and the medical industry is a prime example.
So the thesis is that government involvement and bureaucracy do only bad things to health care, thus "better" must necessarily mean "less governmental, less bureaucratic."
My question is aimed at testing the validity of this argument.
So. Where is there a medical system with less government involvement, less bureaucracy, than the U.S.? Once we identify such a system, then we can compare and contrast and possibly make judgment about whether the trade-offs between those systems favors the U.S. or [as-yet-unnamed nation]. (I suppose it might not be a nation but some other sort of health care delivery system, but I strongly suspect that in this context we're mainly looking at the national level.) It's at that point we can start wondering what qualitative or quantitative criteria matter more.
But without a comparator, it's very difficult to do more than offer theory, ideology, and conjecture. Those things do not interest me. Galt's Gulch could be as great as the novel depicted it, but when and where has such a thing ever really existed?
Your last sentence leaves me wondering: do you suggest that the UK's NHS is a less bureaucratic system than what we have in the U.S., and therefore less bad than what we have? It's hardly less governmental, but it could be that it's a very efficient governmental system. I honestly don't know. But if so, then perhaps the issue is more "bureaucracy" than "government," and that would provide an important data point as we consider what to do about the issue raised by the OP, specifically rural hospitals closing and leaving communities without any significant health care providers at all.
To be sure! And the inclusion of smaller and larger cities on the list of dangerous cities demonstrates that danger exists in similar proportions in both smaller and larger cities.
My point here is not that Democratic-led cities are free from serious problems. Rather, it's that these serious problems are going to be hard for anyone to solve. They are also ubiquitous.
I'm happy to accept the FBI's stats as at least a single benchmark; the FBI does give us apples-to-apples reporting because they use the same definition of "violent crime" in all jurisdictions (since 2017).
A lot of these are smaller cities. I can't tell if they are run by Republicans or Democrats easily; a lot of cities have nonpartisan elections so it's hard for outsiders to tell if they're Republican-run or Democratic-run. I'd agree that the bigger cities (whether on the "unsafe list" or not) tend to be Democratic-run. I don't know if that holds true for smaller cities.
So many smaller cities on this list dovetails into Chip's point -- big cities aren't the only places where you find violence, homelessness, mental illness, addiction, blight, and questionable medical care. Beaumont, Texas, but it's evidently a much more violent place than, say, Chicago, Illinois, which didn't even make the list.
The "Crime by state" table at the end is interesting too!
Yes. As to regulated markets, it's just a matter of degree of regulation over those markets.
Liberal democracy is getting something of a challenge right now, but to be fair the authoritarian forces are now wearing the masks of the democratic institutions rather than suggesting replacing them outright. (For now, as what we must assume is an intermediate step. Napoleon was First Consul before he was Emperor.)
Medicine is screwed up not because government hasn’t intervened in it enough, but because it has intervened too much. Bureaucracy ruins everything it touches and the medical industry is a prime example.
Are there examples elsewhere in the world that you would point to, examples of a system that works better than what we have in the U.S.?
A quick look at Wikipedia reveals that the largest U.S. cities with Republican mayors are:
Fort Worth, TX (#15 nationally, population 956,709);
Oklahoma City, OK (#23 nationally, population 694,709);
Fresno, CA (#35 nationally, population 545,567);
Mesa, AZ (#37 nationally, population 512, 498);
Omaha, NE (#41 nationally, population 485,153);
Virginia Beach, VA (#43 nationally, population 455,618);
Miami, FL (#45 nationally, population 449,514);
Tulsa, OK (#48 nationally, population 411,865); and
Bakersfield, CA (#49 nationally, population 410,647).
I'm confident that if there was something different about these nine cities vis-a-vis dysfunctional or closing hospitals, drug zombies, homelessness, blight, crime, and/or violence, we'd have heard about it by now.
But maybe I've missed something and some of our more Republican-favorable commenters will point to interesting data suggesting Republican policies are somehow better than Democratic policies at solving these very difficult-to-solve problems, or at least some of them.
Perhaps a silly question: do you think this plays better on a console or on a PC? If there is a lot of fluid combat as in its predecessors Skyrim and Fallout, it feels like it almost has to be on a console.
So perhaps it's good that I have recently dislocated my finger, can't really use a console controller very well right now, and will have to wait for all the rush to die out (and to scrounge up enough spare $$$ to upgrade my console, because I don't see that it's back-compatible with my now-ancient Xbox One ).
Weird how no one is talking about AI replacing pilots. Never mind that autopilot robots can in theory do nearly the entire job. I don't want a robot flying the airplane I'm a passenger on. I don't mind if the crew USES a robot, but I want an experienced, smart, sober, and most of all risk-averse pilot at the controls, ready to take over in an instant at the first sign of trouble. And at landing and takeoff.
The Chicks? Garth Brooks? They are at least critical of certain prominent figures within the GOP, or things the government has done under Republican administrations that Democrats have also criticized.
As a matter of historic fact, and alluded to in the play, Caesar was planning on an expedition to Parthia (modern Iran, Iraq and Georgia) and was to head out within a few weeks of his assassination. He didn't plan on being back in Rome for five years at minimum and probably would have taken at least twice as long (everyone assumed he'd defeat and conquer Parthia; but this was not a foregone conclusion and surely no one knew that better than Caesar himself). He was 55 years old, so probably had 15-20 years of life left, so there was a good chance he'd never have come home.
Why kill Caesar? 1) He might get Rome caught up in a war of conquest it could not win; and 2) if he did win he'd have come back... even more powerful and wealthy than he already was, although he was effectively unstoppable simply with the conquest of Gaul already in the sinus of his toga.
Final thought: Brando's delivery of Antony's eulogy is really first-rate. So much anger. So much sarcasm. A real sense of an orator working the crowd.
The argument that the tissue was discard is a serious one. Discarded property belongs to no one and is subject to right of capture.
But I don't think we can really say she did discard the tissue. To discard something, to abandon property, requires some sort of act indicating abandonment. E.g., when I throw out an aluminum beer can, I put it in a dumpster. That indicates "I don't want this anymore," and the can becomes abandoned property. I've no objection (based in property rights) when someone else fishes that can out and pockets the recycling deposit.
What did Ms. Lacks do that's analogous to putting a can in a dumpster? No one told her what would happen with her body tissue, no one asked her if they could use it. They just took it.
The issue of consent has other facets, too, but I thought exploring it from a property rights angle would resonate with our more libertarian commenters here; that's an argument originating in their home turf.
You offer Donald trump a remarkable generosity of interpretation during his call to the Georgia secretary of state. According to you, he wasn't soliciting the falsification of the results of the election, he was just expressing desperation.
A similar generosity of interpretation does not seem applied to my comment here. Which is okay, I'm not owed any sort of generosity of interpretation. Just curious why Trump, whom you claim not to like, gets treated better than I.
Re: fn3: of course, the prospective juror would have to lie about her opinions and prejudices and survive voir dire and potential challenges during deliberations. But these kinds of things have happened before, in much lower-stakes cases.
This seems a relevant place to post this link. It appears that some wing nut has posted the names and addresses of the Georgia grand jury. I'm sure that all of the people who were very very upset the protesters hung around outside Brad Cavanaugh his house are going to be similarly upset that the people tasked with serving within the justice system are being intimidated thusly.
Pretending that the other side is “breaking the law” when in reality there are legit policy differences is a problem. If you’re allowed to arrest your pollical opponents for that then the system will break.
I agree with this, but we aren't talking about "legit policy differences" vis-a-vis the efforts to overturn the 2020 election. There's no legit interpretation of "You've got to find me another 27,000 votes."
DOJ is on trial, at least as far as the MAGA contingent goes; this may well be why Hunter Biden is getting sicced with a competent and aggressive special prosecutor and not pled out as would have happened with anyone else who wasn't, well, him.
On “The Brand is the Point: Voting Against Your Interests to Stay in Your Tribe”
I'm not the one lodging the complaint, Kristen was, I and I responded to that by searching for some example we might use as an exemplar to test, and possibly prove, her argument. That argument, as I block-quoted in my question, is:
Medicine is screwed up not because government hasn’t intervened in it enough, but because it has intervened too much. Bureaucracy ruins everything it touches and the medical industry is a prime example.
So the thesis is that government involvement and bureaucracy do only bad things to health care, thus "better" must necessarily mean "less governmental, less bureaucratic."
My question is aimed at testing the validity of this argument.
So. Where is there a medical system with less government involvement, less bureaucracy, than the U.S.? Once we identify such a system, then we can compare and contrast and possibly make judgment about whether the trade-offs between those systems favors the U.S. or [as-yet-unnamed nation]. (I suppose it might not be a nation but some other sort of health care delivery system, but I strongly suspect that in this context we're mainly looking at the national level.) It's at that point we can start wondering what qualitative or quantitative criteria matter more.
But without a comparator, it's very difficult to do more than offer theory, ideology, and conjecture. Those things do not interest me. Galt's Gulch could be as great as the novel depicted it, but when and where has such a thing ever really existed?
Your last sentence leaves me wondering: do you suggest that the UK's NHS is a less bureaucratic system than what we have in the U.S., and therefore less bad than what we have? It's hardly less governmental, but it could be that it's a very efficient governmental system. I honestly don't know. But if so, then perhaps the issue is more "bureaucracy" than "government," and that would provide an important data point as we consider what to do about the issue raised by the OP, specifically rural hospitals closing and leaving communities without any significant health care providers at all.
"
You may find the linked articles relevant. They suggest that economics and in particular destination state tax schemes, and not politics (at least as a primary factor), are the dominant reasons California is experiencing net outmigration. It's a fair point to say that a more liberal state government is more likely to adopt a taxation scheme that looks like California's, although perception of the tax burden of living in California may be greater than the reality, which is very similar to that of Iowa, Nebraska or Ohio.
"
None of which answers or even responds to my question:
Where in the world is health care done better (or less badly, if you prefer) than the United States?
Although I originally addressed the question to Kristen, it is of course open to anyone who cares to offer up an example.
On “From Politico: An effort to ban caste discrimination in California has touched a nerve”
This is the way.
On “The Brand is the Point: Voting Against Your Interests to Stay in Your Tribe”
I dunno, Jay. Utopia looks like it has a pretty high crime rate to me.
"
To be sure! And the inclusion of smaller and larger cities on the list of dangerous cities demonstrates that danger exists in similar proportions in both smaller and larger cities.
My point here is not that Democratic-led cities are free from serious problems. Rather, it's that these serious problems are going to be hard for anyone to solve. They are also ubiquitous.
"
I'm happy to accept the FBI's stats as at least a single benchmark; the FBI does give us apples-to-apples reporting because they use the same definition of "violent crime" in all jurisdictions (since 2017).
A lot of these are smaller cities. I can't tell if they are run by Republicans or Democrats easily; a lot of cities have nonpartisan elections so it's hard for outsiders to tell if they're Republican-run or Democratic-run. I'd agree that the bigger cities (whether on the "unsafe list" or not) tend to be Democratic-run. I don't know if that holds true for smaller cities.
So many smaller cities on this list dovetails into Chip's point -- big cities aren't the only places where you find violence, homelessness, mental illness, addiction, blight, and questionable medical care. Beaumont, Texas, but it's evidently a much more violent place than, say, Chicago, Illinois, which didn't even make the list.
The "Crime by state" table at the end is interesting too!
"
Yes. As to regulated markets, it's just a matter of degree of regulation over those markets.
Liberal democracy is getting something of a challenge right now, but to be fair the authoritarian forces are now wearing the masks of the democratic institutions rather than suggesting replacing them outright. (For now, as what we must assume is an intermediate step. Napoleon was First Consul before he was Emperor.)
"
Care to share the link?
"
Are there examples elsewhere in the world that you would point to, examples of a system that works better than what we have in the U.S.?
"
A quick look at Wikipedia reveals that the largest U.S. cities with Republican mayors are:
Fort Worth, TX (#15 nationally, population 956,709);
Oklahoma City, OK (#23 nationally, population 694,709);
Fresno, CA (#35 nationally, population 545,567);
Mesa, AZ (#37 nationally, population 512, 498);
Omaha, NE (#41 nationally, population 485,153);
Virginia Beach, VA (#43 nationally, population 455,618);
Miami, FL (#45 nationally, population 449,514);
Tulsa, OK (#48 nationally, population 411,865); and
Bakersfield, CA (#49 nationally, population 410,647).
I'm confident that if there was something different about these nine cities vis-a-vis dysfunctional or closing hospitals, drug zombies, homelessness, blight, crime, and/or violence, we'd have heard about it by now.
But maybe I've missed something and some of our more Republican-favorable commenters will point to interesting data suggesting Republican policies are somehow better than Democratic policies at solving these very difficult-to-solve problems, or at least some of them.
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: Starfield”
Perhaps a silly question: do you think this plays better on a console or on a PC? If there is a lot of fluid combat as in its predecessors Skyrim and Fallout, it feels like it almost has to be on a console.
So perhaps it's good that I have recently dislocated my finger, can't really use a console controller very well right now, and will have to wait for all the rush to die out (and to scrounge up enough spare $$$ to upgrade my console, because I don't see that it's back-compatible with my now-ancient Xbox One ).
On “A Swing and a Bunch of Near Misses”
Weird how no one is talking about AI replacing pilots. Never mind that autopilot robots can in theory do nearly the entire job. I don't want a robot flying the airplane I'm a passenger on. I don't mind if the crew USES a robot, but I want an experienced, smart, sober, and most of all risk-averse pilot at the controls, ready to take over in an instant at the first sign of trouble. And at landing and takeoff.
On “Open Mic for the week of 8/21/2023”
The Chicks? Garth Brooks? They are at least critical of certain prominent figures within the GOP, or things the government has done under Republican administrations that Democrats have also criticized.
On “Sunday Morning! “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare”
As a matter of historic fact, and alluded to in the play, Caesar was planning on an expedition to Parthia (modern Iran, Iraq and Georgia) and was to head out within a few weeks of his assassination. He didn't plan on being back in Rome for five years at minimum and probably would have taken at least twice as long (everyone assumed he'd defeat and conquer Parthia; but this was not a foregone conclusion and surely no one knew that better than Caesar himself). He was 55 years old, so probably had 15-20 years of life left, so there was a good chance he'd never have come home.
Why kill Caesar? 1) He might get Rome caught up in a war of conquest it could not win; and 2) if he did win he'd have come back... even more powerful and wealthy than he already was, although he was effectively unstoppable simply with the conquest of Gaul already in the sinus of his toga.
Final thought: Brando's delivery of Antony's eulogy is really first-rate. So much anger. So much sarcasm. A real sense of an orator working the crowd.
On “Thursday Throughput: HELA Edition”
The argument that the tissue was discard is a serious one. Discarded property belongs to no one and is subject to right of capture.
But I don't think we can really say she did discard the tissue. To discard something, to abandon property, requires some sort of act indicating abandonment. E.g., when I throw out an aluminum beer can, I put it in a dumpster. That indicates "I don't want this anymore," and the can becomes abandoned property. I've no objection (based in property rights) when someone else fishes that can out and pockets the recycling deposit.
What did Ms. Lacks do that's analogous to putting a can in a dumpster? No one told her what would happen with her body tissue, no one asked her if they could use it. They just took it.
The issue of consent has other facets, too, but I thought exploring it from a property rights angle would resonate with our more libertarian commenters here; that's an argument originating in their home turf.
On “All the President’s Charges: On Donald Trump and Pounding The Table”
Once again, I get interpreted in the worst possible faith where people on the right side of the spectrum, even those to whom you profess to object, get every benefit of the doubt. U.S. Senators like Ted Cruz called for the criminal prosecution of peaceful protestors before Mr. Roske ever showed his actually-criminal face, but I haven't heard much from them about preserving the safety of the Georgia grand jurors.
Maybe you have. Would read any links you care to post.
"
I was making a prediction. I'll admit I did it in a sarcastic way.
"
You offer Donald trump a remarkable generosity of interpretation during his call to the Georgia secretary of state. According to you, he wasn't soliciting the falsification of the results of the election, he was just expressing desperation.
A similar generosity of interpretation does not seem applied to my comment here. Which is okay, I'm not owed any sort of generosity of interpretation. Just curious why Trump, whom you claim not to like, gets treated better than I.
"
Re: fn3: of course, the prospective juror would have to lie about her opinions and prejudices and survive voir dire and potential challenges during deliberations. But these kinds of things have happened before, in much lower-stakes cases.
"
This seems a relevant place to post this link. It appears that some wing nut has posted the names and addresses of the Georgia grand jury. I'm sure that all of the people who were very very upset the protesters hung around outside Brad Cavanaugh his house are going to be similarly upset that the people tasked with serving within the justice system are being intimidated thusly.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/names-addresses-grand-jurors-georgia-trump-indictment-posted-online-rcna100239
On “Trump and 18 Others Indicted By Fulton County Grand Jury: Read It For Yourself”
I agree with this, but we aren't talking about "legit policy differences" vis-a-vis the efforts to overturn the 2020 election. There's no legit interpretation of "You've got to find me another 27,000 votes."
"
DOJ is on trial, at least as far as the MAGA contingent goes; this may well be why Hunter Biden is getting sicced with a competent and aggressive special prosecutor and not pled out as would have happened with anyone else who wasn't, well, him.
On “Is Trump Ineligible For Another Term?”
November 1, 2024, Supreme Court ruling in Paulsen v. Trump, Opinion by Alito, J.:
Sotomayor, J. filed a dissenting opinion, which Kagan, J., and Jackson, J., joined in full (37 pages, omitted here).
On “If This is 1776, John Eastman, You’re On The Other Side”
Hell yeah, brother!