I wasn't going to jump in here fully because usually these healthcare threads suck dog turds. But there are just TOO DAMN MANY people on here forgetting that there is an Evil to socialized medicine (any medicine payed for by taxation in any way) that you guys are totally neglecting to factor into your conclusions.
If you do appreciate socialized medicine at all, please watch this very short film right now:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGMQZEIXBMs]George Ought to Help - YouTube[/ame]
Now explain to us here please, why oh why, George must pay for someone else's healthcare. That's just Evil.
Of course the US makes George do this as well, all countries save Somalia do... Smart Americans know that their country is far more socialized than most of Europe; our overall taxes are similar.
A lot Canadians do go abroad for healthcare, but it's for minor surgery/cosmetic that can wait. But am sure more Americans go abroad for healthcare then canadians anway;
an estimated 750,000 Americans seek treatment abroad in 2007. It was also estimated that a million and a half Americans sought healthcare outside the US in 2008.
Now if you factor in the fact that less than 15% of americans even have a damn passport, you can put those numbers in its' true perspective.
I like my system, you like yours.
Correction: we HATE our crony-corporatism-ruled system... We just want it to go in the other direction from yours, not closer!
I see you've never hired a builder.
I have. I know the frustration that you speak of. I've often dreamed about going back and slaying those foot-dragging, money-gouging bastards with a machete... But that's NOT the free market at work!
Hiring one of someone, even after legthy interviews and choosing the best candidate, is NOT the free market... It is just ONE. How can you have competition with one?
In a free market you will have many building teams working on parallel projects and they all know if they're not the most efficient then they might not get hired next time. That kind of constant threat stops that foot-dragging shit COLD.
The magical market frowns on your insistence of a respectable standard of living. Sometimes dying sick and alone is a sacrifice that the island I mean the market demands.
Err wait hangon. If we just let the market work then prices would match demand and currency would would be strong, like he-man, and everyone would be employed and have money for their penises, and charities would cover when necessary, and the market gods would carry you aloft on a privately chartered hospital bed to a center of medical marketeering, curing your bladder and letting the urine flow from your fountainhead once again.
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I know it's hard to imagine a full picture of the free market at work, because we've never really seen one before. I get it.
But you have to get that the only reason we haven't seen one before is because we've come down from the trees with tribal leaders that pushed some form of socialism leadership on us. -We just weren't able to mentally grasp a real free market as a species until lately, and now that we can we've got these huge, killer governments in standing firmly in the way.
Once one is toppled or better yet new land is manufactured (seastead) or reached (moonbase) then finally we can have a real, true free market that will do exactly all of those things you said. And more.