Quote Originally Posted by rong View Post
Go ask the poor homeless fuck on the streets of new York, find one who fell through the cracks, and ask him how his private health care compares to my state provided health care.
City homeless exists because of government policies. Their skills are far below the demand needed in a city, they live on government property, and they are disincentivized to use their skills in the first place. Homelessness begins to disappear as you get more rural for these reasons.

Poking holes in the system does nothing because each element is built many layers deep on the foundation of dysfunction.

Morally? Really? Morality doesn't side with the capitalists.
Please reconsider what I said. Socialism does not have the moral high ground here. According to the moralism that socialists claim is their high ground, the right thing would be for you to let others decide what to do with the resources you have or acquire.

Sociably, no. Economically yes. You could possibly make it cheaper and more efficient, I give you that. But more expensive and given to everyone can be sociably better than cheaper and more efficient.
This has been tried. It produced horrible results. Society is dependent on its economy in order to function. Additionally, sacrificing efficiency for distribution is stagnation. The further in the future we get, the more harm sacrificing efficiency does. Treating things like public goods helps us right now and a couple years in the future, but because it ends innovation, it makes things further in the future worse. If we sacrificed efficiency for the public good back in the 80s, there would probably be no personal computers, no smart phones, no internet, and no forum debates.

It needs to be abundantly clear that the backbone of communism is sacrificing efficiency for distribution of a "public good". Russia became a hellhole after it adopted this.

Funny, but health care over here is pretty good yet people don't pay for what they use. Which demonstrates my point perfectly. There is no reason not to have a mixture of both.
Actuaries don't agree. Everybody on Medicare thinks it works very well, but the actuary profession at large says it does not. Economists are less specific on healthcare than actuaries, but they mostly also say it is not nearly as effective and resilient as current recipients claim.

I don't know much specifically about UK healthcare, but I do know that it doesn't hold a candle to what an economically sound approach does. The country closest to this approach is Singapore. Its healthcare is several times cheaper yet just as effective.

It should also be noted that socialist healthcare systems rely on the capitalist ones for much of their technological advancements.

That is bullshit! Some people do things for other reasons than profit. And anyway, this is irrelevant. You can still have some things given to everyone for free and have plenty of innovation across the board. A little bit of free at point of use and paid for via tax doesn't destroy everything.
That's not me talking, that's consensus among economists.