John Stossel - Economic Freedom in Free Fall

John Stossel interviews guests Dr. Kim Holmes (Heritage Foundation) and David Henderson (Hoover Institution) in regard to America's decline in economic freedom. http://www.LibertyPen.com

• Category

  News & Politics

[Kyle P]

Liberals should love this, they always talk about how we should be a lot more like canada. Here is one area where we should follow Canada's example.

[LoklarYsera]

Canada was clever. We elected liberals to do all the cutting so the constituents complained less. Wolf in sheep's clothing. Also our Tea Party (called Reform party, back in the day) knocked our right wing party off the map and took over as opposition.

So the liberals wanted to cut and the opposition wanted to cut. So we cut. It wasn't sunshine and lollipops, but it wasn't horrible. Now things seem really good compared to the US.

[AlaskaFinal]

"you must think health insurance companies are the primary reasons that medical technology advances,"

Technology isn't the only thing that needs to advance, cost allocation also needs to advance.

For years, the Gov't has been using the fee-for-normal cost model, while industry has been moving away from it.

Because Government uses fee-for-normal, it's been estimated 1/3 of Medicare is pure and utter WASTE.

To get more outputs with less inputs, private insurance is necessary.

[Ken Keller]

I see the problem here, you must think health insurance companies are the primary reasons that medical technology advances, when in fact the medical field supplies it's own monies for R+D; not to mention pharmaceutical companies who have the real interest to keep selling people good health. No, the insurance companies themselves are simply elaborate middlemen who take money from people, put a fat chunk of that money into their pockets, and hand whatever's left to doctors, hospitals, and so on.

[kieranjam2]

The profit attracts future investment, which makes things cheaper. If there's no money in it, companies aren't willing to invest, meaning that technological advancements aren't made nor are efficiency improvements made. By ignoring the incentives that Y provides, you are considering the system to be static; the world isn't as simple as X+Y=total cost.

[GeekForce5]

"And Canada, who was just happy to be invited." -John Green Crash Course World History, WWI

I visited Canada, beautiful place but I would hate to live there. You're right, tho, one of the smarter ways to implement liberal policies - rare tho.

[Ken Keller]

You don't get it. I'm saying that whatever we pay insurance companies they pay less to the hospitals/doctors. So if we just paid the doctors straight up then we would save tons of money. The economy we create is the network of insurance agencies whose job it is to pass along some of the money we pay them to doctors and keep the rest for themselves. They are middlemen and are unnecessary. That is the waste. Rich and poor would save money.

[Ken Keller]

Wrong. Whatever the actual value of X is, it is never going to be cheaper to pay X + Y. I'm not suggesting anything is static, simply that if the group decides to pay for healthcare costs whatever they may be we no longer pay the insurance prmiums and therefore save tons of money overall. Some individuals will pay higher taxes, but the overall money spent on healthcare will always be less than it would be than with the insurance companies. If they make a profit then we must be overpaying.

[GeekForce5]

you can go right ahead and care about the poor, I applaud you, honestly, but I would defend myself if you tried to take from me in order to fulfill your agenda - would you not do the same if a capitalist attempted to force you to work for him/her?

[GeekForce5]

and no one is "creating" any economy - the government twists incentives creating inefficiencies, but we certainly don't have a planned econ

[GeekForce5]

this is reasonably well debunked by Lee Dorren's HowTheWorldWorks video: why we don't need socialized medicine (something close to that name)

[kieranjam2]

Profit attracts competition and investment. These two things then make the system of delivery more efficient and cheaper. That's exactly the reasoning behind all of our consumer goods. Your model assumes a static healthcare cost and assumes no variability in provision of care; this isn't the case.