Should the Government Compete with the Private Sector?

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Well, essentially there is a way of having the government fill out your taxes already. You wait until they're sorely overdue and you get a 'ghost return' where they calculate their best estimate and assess a fine.

The question I guess is whether you'd rather pay $50 to go see someone locally or whether you'd rather pay $200 but have it hidden from sight and even have all kinds of sloppy mistakes made with your credits and deductions because they have someone in there who's a) utterly disconnected from you and b) might not have any idea what their doing. Government doesn't really fire for poor performance the way private does either.

Better alternative to that; let people get palliation, hospice care, even technically assisted suicide who want it. It seems like the last few years of life are that window where a person racks up several times more in the way of expenses than they have in their entire lives. If they're lucid and are in a position of sound judgement and without coercion they should absolutely be allowed to choose how much dignity they leave their lives with.


Unless they become that company, which is typically what happens. Trust-busting and laws that promote smaller businesses at the expense of larger ones would be wiser way to go.

Can you trust a government company to not keep using the government as a prop for money?

If you can't then government companies aren't fair.

Whatever works. The 'invisible hand' doesn't work when consumers are uninformed (ie, products aren't labeled) or when there's no competition. One issue is that insurance companies (sort of like banks) cannot survive if they're small; they need to be big enough to have a wide pool of customers and enough cash to cover the large individual losses that occur.

A rather emotionally inspired rant. You stated a number of times that healthcare providers won't lower costs in the absence of regulation, but you failed to explain why they won't lower costs.

You also did not answer my question, which was "in your opinion, why is healthcare so expensive in the USA?"

For example, if the government guarantees that I, as a healthcare provider, will be paid $X for a given service (such as through Medicare), will that not distort market prices? Will that not make it more expensive for someone trying to buy the service without government assistance?

Medicare currently reimburses doctors and hospitals at less than the cost of taking care of the patient. If the patient can't pay the remainder, the hospital *loses* money by caring for them. It might not 'drive up costs' for medicare patients, exactly, but it does drive up costs for other people as the hospital jacks up everyone elses' charges in an attempt to break even.

They should be allowed to compete just so we can see who survives.

Two things:
One: Since you didn't copy what auntblabby said I can't verify if your vitriol was even relevant.
Two: I doubt auntblabby didn't cover this.

I don't they should compete with each other. I think the government should be used specifically in areas where competition causes problems and inconveniences. At one time, fire fighters were private firms, and they wouldn't put out fires at houses that didn't buy their services depending on their policies. There were even instances where fire fighters from different companies would get in fist fights over who the customer was a client of as the house burned down.

Some very basic services, like electricity, should probably be publicly run or at least well regulated. Back in the late 90's, Enron cut power supplies in California till people accepted higher and higher rates. I don't believe laissez-fare profit motivation makes everything efficient. Its good for consumer goods but not meeting the very basic of necessities that society needs to operate, like the military, infrastructure, policing, firefighting, education, water, sanitation, electricity, etc etc.

I'm not even necessarily talking about a tax-preparation service here. I'm talking about the government sending taxpayers tax forms with most fields already filled out, and they merely need to make corrections. The government already has most information that the average taxpayer would use from employers, banks, etc. If I remember correctly, Intuit even went as far as to create a "grassroots" effort to protest any such changes.

This way, the government would finance itself with only sales tax, tarifs and profits from state monopolies and paragovernmental societies? All ways of taxation which are, in effect, regressive?

Cunning.

I used to rent a flat above a glass shop that used enormous kilns to properly cool its poured glass. Early on in the Enron crisis, a rolling blackout came through and shut off the power to the kilns, causing the glass to cool too slowly and shatter. The shop's owner told me that he'd lost tens of thousands of dollars overnight.
Regulation isn't just to make things convenient for 'the little people,' it's necessary for businesses too.

Are those who are unable to pay for healthcare then supposed to just go without?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer