Trump: The First Year

Have you ever tried to get service from Comcast? It’s the only option in this place I moved to and they know it.

Government sponsored monopolies suck to deal with, because they can.

Doctors already take an oath to that degree voluntarily though. I suppose having it codified prevents the jerks of the world from breaking their oath, but you don’t see many doctors outside of things like plastic surgery violating that (on average, exceptions to every rule and all that.)

So it isn’t a matter of force now, nor in the short term even if we were to go to single payer.

That said, what if the set of regulations we put in place (unintentionally, I’m not calling anyone a monster here) depressed the wages and salaries of Doctors and Nurses? Does the 100’s of thousands in student loans, and decades of your life in school suddenly make “saving people’s lives” as attractive when you know you’ll be in debt, and not be able to buy a house until you’re 50?

Does interfering with this market price out low income people from using natural talents in the field to work their way up the latter, because the monetary pay off isn’t there anymore?

But shouldn’t we be wary of any rules that force doctors to do or NOT do certain things? It’s already pretty bad with certain insurance plans and certain doctors. Do we honestly think it will improve if a government agency took over?

These are honest questions, not “got ya’s”.

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Thanks to the government and Jim Crow yes.

Not true. That’s a myth. There’s all kinds of exceptions to the free market, which even some libertarian-ish economists recognize (externalities monopolies and market failures, for example).

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You’d likely still be able to irrelevant. If human nature holds true, there would be “black market” doctors visits.

As well as the doctors who chose to play a part.

There are ways to pool risk and pay the doctors directly. Cut out the middle men of government and ins companies. They’re already doing it.

Which market has government made better?

I take exception to the use of “worse” here. As a blanket statement this is false due to that.

No government will be able to beat the market, the market will always win in the end. However government can (and does) interfere, mitigate, play with, and otherwise mess with the market and not have it catastrophic, and sometimes the outcomes are, on whole, better.

Take for example, disclosure rules as they relate to public offerings. A pretty unfree market, going public is. Having a set standard for disclosure, and a set (and regulated) standard for financial reporting has more positive effects on the market, than the negative unintended consequences.

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Is that applying new conditions to our current setting or the “way socialized HC works?”

Utilities and ISPs aren’t the same thing (yet). I share your hatred of ISPs. Lemme rephrase my original question but specific to water/elec/gas.

Do you believe govt intervention in utilities are the lesser of 2 evils, or the greater?

The govt is an extension of the people. Jim Crow wasn’t created by the govt, it was created by the people. We all share responsibility for the events of govt, imo.

Securities markets.

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If you look at some of the fraud and nonsense that went on in London when public offerings first started I can see where you’re coming from.

But we couldn’t pay a Moodies or Fitch to audit the companies going oublic? The SEC fell asleep for the 2008 bubble. They were busy watching porn.

ha, I just said the same thing essentially. Maybe you’re the one I got that example from?

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Just replied to Beans on same thing. Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac are quasi governme mental entities that allowed garbage securitized mortgages. It was the government that FORCED banks to lend sub prime in the first place.

I get the conceptual side of the argument unfortunately reality does not need to conform to these human creations. We need to accept that we can come up with all sorts of ideals and ideologies but they will never sufficiently address every issue we face. That’s how utopians think. If we can admit that this isn’t a perfect world we should be able to admit that we cannot come up with a perfect ideology (but many don’t admit that).

So my answer is that when it comes to healthcare we should simply be looking for the best way to provide it to everyone rather than look for the best way to provide it while looking through some political filter. If we turned off our filters when we start looking for an answer maybe we would have a better place to start from. Instead of looking for the perfect or best answer under certain conditions we should look for the same without those conditions.

Maybe? It’s one I’m familiar with - but accountants are especially familiar.

You must not know any bankers from that time period. They were all more than happy to lend sub prime. Very very little forcing required.

We pay people like me to audit them, and I make a really solid wage. I have a natural talent for it, and we now have an industry for people like me to succeed in. Positive 1

We have a standard framework set up in conjunction with the private sector and public sector, so that all companies are reporting in the same way. Reducing not only the time it take to review the information, but also the necessary amount of formal knowledge to be a relatively “sophisticated” investor. Positive 2

CPA’s & regulators have worked in conjunction, both sides often listening to each other, to make the system as specific as possible, and ON TASK as possible, not letting political horse shit spill over into the facts and circumstances of the matter Positive 3

The amount of people’s life savings and retirement funds that these measures have saved from what would have been wild boons and busts without proper disclosure rules is unmeasurable, but trillions of dollars wouldn’t be too far off. Positive 4

These rules have put in place a confidence that allows people to earn an RIO with government sponsored & insured programs like 401(k) that otherwise would have been priced out of the market due to education needs, and advisor fees that would HAVE to be insanely high. You’d need an damn phd in accounting just to analyze a dozen financials without these standards, let alone enough to have a balanced portfolio… Positive 5

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When you add in costs of medical equipment and malpractice insurance, among other things, like nurses and technicians (it’s not just the MD who gets paid) some procedures are always going to be expensive. I don’t think the cost of cancer treatment will ever be a dozen eggs, a quart of milk and a Sunday dinner.

I’d be wary of using the 2008 meltdown to prove any points other than “holy shit a perfect storm can happen”.

Yes government played a big role, so did people who signed for the loans, people who sold them, people who bundled them into securities and the people who insured the bundlers.

SOOOOOOO many hands in that cookie jar.