From: andy@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman)
Subject: Re: Sick to death
Organization: Computer Science Department,  Stanford University.
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 23:56:58 GMT

In article <1992Sep3.210155.5765@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> lafave@ial4.jsc.nasa.gov (Dr. Norman J. LaFave) writes:
>As a scientist, I am particularly bothered by this kind of arguement because
>it amounts to one huge speculation. During the depression Roosevelt admitted
>that he had doubts about many of the programs he started to help the
>situation. However, he felt that the only way to decide whether they would
>work was to try them out. That is what I call proof by experiment.

As a scientist, I know that some experiments aren't going to tell me
anything useful, while others may.  As a good scientist, I pick my
experiments appropriately.

>Example: A national health care plan will be a failure because of the
>government bureaucracy.
>
>a.) How will it be any worse than the huge, uncoordinated bureacracy we have
>already?  A bureaucracy being run by greed and corruption.

Wowsers!  Things can't get worse!  Wrong - they can get worse.
>Despite statements to the contrary, there is little market competition in
>health care.

Fine.  If one thinks competition would help, then advocating LESS competition
is a strange move.

>Insurance companies charge outrageous premiums for malpractice insurance

If a moral person really believes that said insurance companies are
either wasteful or making too much money, said moral has an OBLIGATION
to start a malpractice insurance company that does things right and
charges less.  Not only will said moral person get rich (allowing
other good deeds), but health care costs will go down AND the evil
insurance companies will be driven out of biz.

Either there aren't any moral people who believe that the insurance
companies are "wrong" OR "moral" people aren't willing to risk their
money on their beliefs.

>while ambulance-chasing lawyers bring ridiculous charges of
>malpractice to our already over-burdened legal system. How much is this
>costing us?

Everyone who's willing to give up/limit their right to sue an MD,
raise your hand.  What?  No one wants to?  Oops.

>Our high infant mortality rate is an attrocity. Studies have shown the
>major cause of this to be due to low birth weight. Most doctors I have
>talked to say that this could be circumvented by access to prenatal
>care for all women.

An interesting experiment has been tried - access barriers (like cost)
to pre-natal care were removed.  Surprising result - infant mortality
rates didn't change much.  Explanation - the relevant population
didn't want the care.  What should we try next?  Forcing them to go?
Bribing them?  Both?

>Why not choose a state and try NHC out, fine tune it over a few years, expand
>it to a whole region, fine tune it again, get the Canadians to consult.
>Let's start it up and see why it don't run.

Go for it - that doesn't require the federal govt (and is being done).
BTW - If it works in a given state, why expand it?  Why not just
DUPLICATE it in other states.  Less overhead that way and further
experiments can be tried.

>Do we really want police protection to be free-market? If this happened,
>rich areas would be heavily policed and poor areas would become war zones.

Interestingly enough, that's already happened, but there's one
additional factor.  The folks in the rich areas control the police in
the poor ones.  Said police are more interested in keeping the poor
out of the rich areas than in doing much else.  If the people in the
poor areas controlled their police, they wouldn't do that.

However, money has strings, so as long as we insist on giving the
appearance that police for poor areas are paid for by people in rich
areas, people in poor areas won't control their police.  Since there
actually isn't much cross-subsidy, perhaps we should abandon the
illusion and give them that control.

>Dr. Norman J. LaFave
>
>Dr. Norman J. LaFave

Not only MUST he give his title, but he MUST give it twice.

Lockheed sure has strange policies.

-andy



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