Your point is well taken. The free market isn’t free at an individual level (which bothers me to a great degree) the only people who really get to much about in the market are starting at about the 20million and up corporate level. Its kind of round about to say the union is working for the worker, to get to the right end.
In both of your examples, what makes you think that the socialized system wouldn’t declare them cost prohibitive? That’s the reason Canadians come to the US when they need advance medicine, or the Canadian system has deiced they are past the point of salvation. I look at both your examples, and think what would that system do?
For the first, likely they would try for a little while, then let it go. And under the socialized system you wouldn’t even have the ability to mortgage your home to fight for those extra years. The government would tell you ‘this is what we have, and that’s the end of it’. Again this is a question for people, would I rather be stuck equal with everyone, or do I want the chance to do everything in my power for a loved one? I tend to think that I would rather have the option of bankrupting myself if it meant keeping a loved one alive.
Your second example is a heartbreaker, my sympathies to her and her children. Without knowing the specifics of her medical needs, I cannot say if she would receive ample treatment in a socialized system. I do not have the information I need to make that call. To get that information would be difficult for me, for I do not have access off hand to what medicines are provided for in say, the UK or Canada, or the cost in the US.
As for ranking 37th, that is true in preventable death but how do people die in the US? (
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/FASTATS/lcod.htm)
· Heart disease: 652,091
· Cancer: 559,312
· Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 143,579
· Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 130,933
· Accidents (unintentional injuries): 117,809
· Diabetes: 75,119
· Alzheimer's disease: 71,599
· Influenza/Pneumonia: 63,001
· Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 43,901
· Septicemia: 34,136
Heart Disease, Diabetes, Stroke, all directly linked to weight. Even many cancers can be linked to personal choices, like smoking. The US is fat, way fat, again this is because we have chosen the right to be fat over, enforced participial measures. I believe the UK even has a rule now where medical treatment can be withheld from the over weight? A local may be able to tell me if that’s true or not. Again my point is that the US real health issue isn’t from application of health care.
This is one of those crappy things that gets pushed aside in debates allot. The eating habits and cultural habits of say the Japanese or Norway make them natural healthier person. The eat good foods, they walk to and from destinations. Its very difficult to legislate something like that via socialized healthcare. It reminds me of when I was in China and I watched all the people in the park doing there exercises, that under communism was enforced to keep the population healthier. And I thought to myself, what good that must have done for the countries physical well-being, but would that be possible in a democracy like the US where Individuality is still (though lessening) held up?
And I thought about it for awhile and concluded no it couldn’t without some sort of major outside threat. Like WW2. I ended up writing a paper on mandatory military service as a way have a military and pound a better life style into the population for two years while they are still younger, impressionable and in a situation in which being dictated to do things is expected and expectable. Paper flew like a lead balloon when I president it to my peers, which really only reaffirmed the conclusion I had come too.
As for the free market working in education? Or problem doesn’t seem to be at the college level at all; it seems firmly rooted in the high school and elementary levels, which are public. Fixing the roof when you have no foundation just doesn’t make any sense. There doesn’t appeared to be any lack of college educated people in the market. Physical sciences tend to have an unlimited market since they create markets, but I don’t think your looking for free school in only the physical sciences.
Also the point of tossing money at a problem doesn’t work, was the whole point. Socialism is basically the idea, that we will toss lots of money at problems and it will work. A complete lack of targeting, just dump it everywhere and hope for the best. As you said, tossing money at problems doesn’t work.