2007-05-18
Imagine If We Treated Hookers Like Doctors
This article helps explain why socialized medicine (by any name!) cannot work as well as people paying for their own health care. The author imagines a system by which all Americans could have the government pay for the services of prostitutes, vs. the current system by which customers purchase their own hookers.
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4 comments:
The whole premise of this article is flawed from jump.
If you really believe healthcare providers are the same as sex workers, then that's a great explanation for your female problems.
"I'll be a little late tonight, honey. I've got my monthly check up with Trixy."
Well, change "hookers" then to "musicians", and then reread: club owners, concert goers, and record buys find it distasteful to pay money directly to performers and the merchants who sell their wares. Instead they develop a preference for their employers to compensate them partially with unlimited vouchers for all their musical needs: stereos, content, posters, concert tickets, etc.
Again, you're comparing apples to hand grenades. Musicians, club owners, record stores, and hookers all charge considerably less for their services than do doctors. No one has gone bankrupt because of their inability to pay a hooker or a musician.
If you don't pay the hooker, you don't get the service. But guess what? You'll live.
So, as the commodity increases in cost and importance, the laws of supply and demand collapse, and that which provides the best TVs, moon pies, and cigarettes to the most poor people cannot do as effective a job with the really important stuff.
It seems clear to me that dismantling the system that produces the best of everything else will necessarily produce an increasingly mediocre product. Do the nations that supposedly have wondrous socialized health systems (Canada, France, Cuba) ever produce any new technologies and drugs, or do they merely implement advances produced by the USA's "unfair" health market? And if this market socializes, what then?
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