dagblog - Comments for "Back to Obamacare"

Flavius... Thanks for the

oldenGoldenDecoy — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:47:31 +0000

In reply to So ok , ok OGD, I've started

Flavius...

Thanks for the reply.

I agree. Arrows work is a tough read. As I said, I've read it until my eyes bleed. In so doing. it has become more relevent in today's state of affairs in relationship to the free market attitudes in health coverage and health care services.

As Jacob Hacker wrote in his book, Shared Responsibility, Shared Risk:
Government, Markets and Social Policy in the Twenty-First Century...

Some years ago the Nobel economist Kenneth Arrow explained that missing and incomplete markets for risk represented one of capitalism's greatest failings. "Perhaps one of the strongest criticisms of a system of freely competitive markets," he (Arrow) wrote in a 1970 article with Robert Lind, "is that the inherent difficulty in establishing certain markets for insurance brings about a suboptimal allocation of resources." Elsewhere Arrow suggested that it was up to the government to take up the slack, to "undertake insurance in those cases where [a private market for insurance], for whatever reason, has failed to emerge.

Anyhoo... I look forward to your future posts on Arrow's work.

~OGD~

So ok , ok OGD, I've started

Flavius — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:00:30 +0000

In reply to Here ya go ... For those

So ok , ok OGD, I've started to read the damn thing. You may find Arrow's an incredible piece of work, I find it hard sledding. But I'm doing this and will waste some more space here in a day or two with my maunderings.

But in the interim, it doesn't take even me too long to grasp the fact that whatever its virtues the GOME doesn't work when the commodity being priced is the avoidance of death. In Arrow's words "Health care isn't marketable" by which he means, its distribution can't be left up to the market place.

A friend always deprecates the concept of a National Health System because there's an unsatisfiable demand for the product, and society can't afford to finance that. Equally Arrow would say that society can't afford to pay what the medical profession . if it were left up to it, would charge its patients ,and therefore society , as they inevitably try and satisfy that, for them, individually , unsatisfiable demand.

To which , Margaret Thatcher would respond "There's no such thing as Society".

To which Flavius would say: she would say that wouldn't she.

Seems to me it's equally arguable that there's no more appropriate activity for a Government than to obtain for its citizens something that is obtainable but not for them individually: protection against avoidable premature death and ill health.

Here ya go ... For those

oldenGoldenDecoy — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 04:43:46 +0000

In reply to Back to Obamacare

Here ya go ...

For those who wish to wade through Kenneth Arrow's paper from December 1963. It is an incredible piece of work

http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/82/2/PHCBP.pdf

Also: An additional author to read on the subject of the Public Option is Jacob S. Hacker who authored The Case for Public Plan Choice in National Health Reform in Dec 2008.

http://institute.ourfuture.org/files/Jacob_Hacker_Public_Plan_Choice.pdf

I have read all of these papers and more until my eyes bleed.

Until there is a government backed option included within the planned exchanges of the current ACA the work cannot be considered finished. And beyond that, until there is a Medicare style system for all, then our "Greatest Nation on Earth" will remain the laughing stock of those nations throughout the world who provide national health care and thereby morally favor there citizenary as their most important assets..

~OGD~

OM? !

Flavius — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:36:36 +0000

In reply to OK, I'll take it a step

OM? !

Or we'll sell you one. Help

Flavius — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:34:33 +0000

In reply to And my own board?

Or we'll sell you one.

Help us meet Panetta's target.

The happiest man I've ever met was the supply officer in my battalion.He'd crashed a plane in the closing weeks of WW2 and in a fit of economic discipline the Army convicted of him of negligence and forced him to sign a " Statement of Charges" for $247,000.

Since he didn't have $247,000 he was required to stay in the Army ,which he loved , until it was paid it off. Which was going to be never.

We called him Pappy and he wore nonregulation slippers in the supply office. May still be there.