🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1586@nazgul.UUCP> bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright) writes:

:In article <1993Jan18.194858.21798@ssc.com> fyl@ssc.com (Phil Hughes) writes:
:/Walter Bright (bright@nazgul.UUCP) wrote:
:/: You cannot have the socialist policies *and* have prosperity.
:/: It would be wonderful if you could have both, but TANSTAAFL.
:/Once again this doesn't address reality.  Unless we are willing to treat
:/health care as a luxury, whether taxes, employers or individuals pay for
:/health care, the costs are still there.  And, in the US, about 25% of the
:/cost is in unnecessary overhead.  In Canada the overhead is around 5%.

:You speak as if you believe that health care costs an irreducible value.
:In a free market system, costs are steadilly driven down. Note that the
:American health care system is *not* much of a free market system, for
:many reasons which I outlined in a previous post. (And one of those suggestions
:was how to make insurance companies more responsive to their customers.)

Unfortunately the free market doesn't really apply to health care
in the U.S. where ``health insurance'' is really a bill paying
function where we pay the insurance companies instead of paying
for routine health car ourselves.  The insurance companies don't
have any incentive to reduce health care costs since they make a
percentage on all the dollars that pass through their hands.

:Free market systems are full of examples of incredibly creative ways that
:people have cut costs (which has resulted in the high standard of living
:we enjoy today versus pre-industrial revolution America). Government systems
:are full of examples of incredible cost overruns and lots of whining about
:spiralling costs.

May government cost overruns are on CPFF (Cost Plus Fixed Fee)
contracts.  The contractors don't have any incentive to reduce
costs since they make a percentage on all costs incurred.  I was
a data processing managaer for 12 years for a ``Beltway Bandit''
outside of Washington, D.C. and always tried to operate my
department as efficiently as possible -- not realizing that this
wasn't really what the company wanted.  I would have been more
successful to build an empire of systems programmers and staff
instead of supporting the entire company with two computer
professionals (we ran Burroughs mainframes, not IBM).

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:  bill@Celestial.COM   Bill Campbell; Celestial Software
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SPEED COSTS MONEY -- HOW FAST DO YOU WANT TO GO?