Enrique Diaz-Alvarez wrote:
> Mathew Forstater wrote:
> >
> > Public sector activity should not be judged by the same criteria as private sector activity.
>
> Of course not. Nobody is saying it should. But the fact is that
> resources _are_ limited, even for the public sector. All universal
> health care systems, for example, have to make tough allocation
> decisions, which means that some people who need operations get them
> right away, others have to wait for years, and others will never get
> them. An efficient system, as I see it, does this in a way that
> maximizes the general health and well being of the population for a
> given amount of expenditure.
>
Consider that the rich can buy however much health care they want in any of these countries so to argue that people who are in a univeral system have to settle for less is accepting the vast maldistribution(inequality) of wealth that exists today.Consider also that the reason universal health care is rationed is because the capitalists still control the means of production for health care. In the U.S. HMOs still make profits from Medicare and Medicaid enrollees ( I think HMOS pocket more money in percentage than even private health insurers, though don't quote me). And consider that less money is available for health care because private insurance still exists and more health care would be possible if the corporate middle man was not getting a cut.
I think that it is dangerous to start making health care judgements based on quality of life - that is what you are really talking about when you talk about rationing. Who decides? Who loses in such a Social Darwinist set up? The poor, the disabled, that's who.
> I think that allowing free marketeers to define and hold uncontested the
> concept of efficiency is a very terrible mistake.
>
I think that measuring human life in terms of "efficiency' is a terrible mistake.
Marta Russell