Re: Samuelson: "It's More Than Social Security"

From: The Trucker (mikcob_at_verizon.net)
Date: 01/17/05 

Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 17:55:43 -0800

Kent Paul Dolan wrote:

> Rob Duncan wrote:
>
>> Taking inflation into account, medical costs have
>> ALWAYS gone down.
>
> Well, no, that's an absolute falsehood, presented as
> emphatic "truth", in your usual style of discourse.
>
>> Care to provide an example to the contrary?
>
> Happily:
>
> "Since the end of World War II, the provision of
> medical care in the United States and other advanced
> countries has displayed three major features: first,
> rapid advance in the science of medicine; second,
> large increases in spending, both in terms of
> inflation-adjusted dollars per person and the
> fraction of national income spent on medical care;
> and third, rising dissatisfaction with the delivery
> of medical care, on the part of both consumers of
> medical care and physicians and other suppliers of
> medical care."
>
> http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_2001_Wntr/ai_69411626
>
> and more, from:
>
>
>
http://www.google.com/search?q=medical+spending+fraction+gdp+compare+inflation
>
> Perhaps you could bother learning the truth rather
> than pulling "facts" from your "orifice of agenda"
> in the future, Rob Duncan?
>
> Not that you have any reputation left to save, of
> course, but merely as an intellectual exercise to
> see if you are even _capable_ of honest discussion.
>
> xanthian.

A word of caution: Medical costs seem to have no ceiling in that human
life is so highly valued. Add to this the absolute insistence of
people on being "served" by the medical practitioners on a very personal
level. It is not possible to "automate" health care the way we would
"automate" manufacturing or even fast food. As such, the labor costs
in health care will continue in force and effect while all other
areas of the economy become less labor intensive. Thus, the cost of
health care will remain somewhat constant or rise while everything else
(other than land) gets cheaper. If we "automate" everything then
health care will be the only profession left and we will still have
a shortage of medical professionals because our desire for health care
is insatiable. At present it isn't that health care is sucking up
more of the GDP so much as there is little else going on in the USA.
Everything else has been automated or exported, and therefore health
care is taking more of the shrinking pie. 

-- 
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but
the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough
to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy
is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by
education." - Thomas Jefferson.  http://GreaterVoice.org