Self-hating Indian wrote, referencing this post:
For one, the US ranks higher in your table than even Netherlands (which I regard as a very successful country with high social net and economic competitiveness) and much higher than France and Spain (struggling with unemployment problems) or even model countries like Austria, Belgium and Liechtenstein.
Australia is surprisingly similar to the US when it comes to running their economy: private corporations run the show and laissez faire capitalism is the order of the day. While Australia has medicare (the same as the UK’s NHS), it’s mostly availed for emergency situations and if you’re seeking treatment for something non-urgent, you’re screwed as they’ll make you wait longer. Most Australians go for private medical insurance the same as the US. I for one am a strong advocate of buying health insurance privately as it really gives me FIRST CLASS medical care; even in a country like India, government hospitals offer free or highly subsidized treatment and the doctors are competent enough. It might be OK if you have cold, fever, cough, ulcers or require dental filling but for more serious care like say, kidney stones removal or heart operations, I would trust a private doctor. Having a good medical insurance avails you of BEST QUALITY treatment and not just BEST AVAILABLE treatment.
Some of the private hospitals in India have such a nice reputation that more than 850,000 westerners come here every year for low-priced surgeries and treatment – there’s a whole wikipedia article that shows medical tourism in India is now a 2 billion dollar industry and it’s not just costs, it’s also the high quality of treatment available which accounts for these extraordinary figures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism_in_India) The most popular treatments sought in India by medical tourists are alternative medicine, bone-marrow transplant, cardiac bypass, eye surgery and hip replacement. India is known in particular for heart surgery, hip resurfacing and other areas of advanced medicine.
I’ve covered only one aspect of how governments can ruin people’s life: viz. medical care and some of the best things should be left to private corporations as they have a much better handle at things. Again, who could argue that private schools do not give the same quality of education as public schools: to give my own example, I did my own schooling (age 11-17 years) in highly subsidized government-run schools and I always used to envy private school students: they had better uniforms, guaranteed bus transportation, better facilities like swimming pools and tennis courts. Surely there parents loved them more than mine did so spent more money. And yes, when I look back, all of them are way more successful than me today in their careers. Private schools have an incentive to run things in a more organized manner: in government schools here, I see time and again the same problems: the teachers don’t like to stay long, many classes have no teachers at all, the books are not fresh and there’s hardly any computer education even in 2014 as they can’t afford PCs; teachers have no incentive to teach as they don’t get paid enough and students have no incentive to learn as they’re getting shitty facilities and a broken environment to spend their lives. Again the education industry should be left in private hands and free from government control.
My response:
No way.
Australia is not a laissez faire, neoliberal, neoclassical Libertarian society along US lines. In fact, it is an extremely socialist country compared to the United Snakes and it has been for a very long time. Most of that time it has been run by the Labor Party, which is an openly socialist party, and I believe it is even a member of the Socialist International. To state that Australia is a radical capitalist neoliberal country like the United Snakes is a horrific lie, and I will not let you make it. Private corporations do not run the show in Australia, not by a long shot. Australia has been a functioning social democracy for a very long time now and has been far to the left of the US for decades.
I know nothing about Australia, but I do know about the UK. Yes, you can buy private insurance in the UK to supplement the NHS, but it is very expensive, and almost nobody buys it. Only rich people buy it, and everyone else blows it off. I believe it is the same in much of Europe, private insurance is available but very expensive, and almost no one buys it; instead everyone just uses public health care which is very good in Europe.
You say that public health care in Australia “makes you wait.” In other words, health care is rationed. Guess what happens when medical care is privatized? Medical care is rationed! Only the rich can afford to get sick and pay cash for insurance or the hospital. Everyone who can’t afford hospital bills or insurance gets no medical care whatsoever. That is called rationing, you fool. You either wait in line (social medicine) or you get denied care altogether (capitalist medicine). Under capitalist medicine, for ordinary, non-rich people The illness or injury just runs its course and you get better, stabilize or you die.
There have been countless studies done on public health care vs private for-profit health care and public health care always wins every time and private for-profit medicine always fails all the time.
Do you know medical insurance criminals make money? By treating you less. The less the treat you, the more money they make. The more they deny care, the more money they make. The more care they give you, the less money they make. That is exactly the way it is here in the US, where lack of or inadequate health care kills 250,000 Americans a year.
Everyone should buy private insurance from capitalist criminals? Why is that? Do you realize that in most of the world, only the rich and upper middle class can even afford this overpriced crap?
There is no reason to do any more studies on national health care vs private garbage health care because we have studied it to death. The conclusion: capitalism is bad for your health.
One example: Nicaragua. Nicaragua had horrible health figures on a par with the rest of the clusterfucked US colonies called “Central America.” 12 years after the Sandinistas took power and put in public health care and started spending a lot of health care, Nicaragua had was beating most of the other countries in the region (the exception being Costa Rica, which has long been a socialist country since social democracy was instituted in 1947 after 5,000 Communists were murdered).
Cuba beats almost every country in Latin America on health statistics. They live almost as long as we Americans do, and their infant mortality rate is lower than ours. In other words, 3rd world Cuba is kicking the United Snakes’ ass on infant mortality.
You have an extremely bizarre method of analysis of that chart I posted. The overwhelming majorty of high ranking countries on that list are socialist countries (over 80%). A few nations on there are capitalist (less than 20%) Neoliberal capitalism basically fails on human development everywhere on Earth. For some odd reason, it has worked in a few places, but those are clearly outliers. You point out these weird outliers as if they prove that capitalism provides better human development than socialism! You make your conclusion based on the exceptions and not the majority. Clearly your mind does not work properly.
Yes, public health care is quite bad in India. That is because the upper castes who run India do not want to spend one nickel on public health care because they don’t use it. The upper castes all use private hospitals and private insurance because only they can afford it. Probably 80% of India’s population cannot afford private hospitals or insurance, so what good are these things to them?
The debate about public education versus private education ended long ago. The truth is, in one sentence, private education is 100% shit and public education is very good. Private education fails all over the world, even here in the US. There is not one decent private educational institution on the planet. They are all just ripoff schemes run by capitalist criminals.
I agree that nonprofit institutions can compete very well with public education, but they are both pretty much doing the same thing. Public education is nonprofit, and private nonprofit universities are also not for profit. All nonprofit organizations are objectively socialist or anti-capitalist because capitalist liars lie that once you remove the profit motive, you have “socialism” and everything falls apart. Obviously that’s a lie. Stanford, Harvard, Yale and USC are nonprofits. Get it?
There are certain things that the state must do: it must run public health care and it must run public education. Both should be cheap to free.
Further, the US profit medicine model makes no sense. Other nations with public health care spend much less money on health care and have the same or better figures than the US. The US spends vastly more than other nations but has worse figures to show for it. It makes no sense at all.
Governments do not “ruin people’s lives via medical care.” Compare India and China. China went the socialist path, and India chose capitalism and fake socialism. There were 200 million excess deaths from 1949-1979 in India compared to China due to India not pursuing the Chinese model. The truth is that socialist medicine saves lives and capitalism continues to kill.
Sure, you go to the front of the line with overpriced private health insurance that makes their profit by denying you as much care as possible. So what? In the UK, most folks think it’s a waste of money and don’t buy it. Only a few rich people can afford it and buy it. If it’s so great, why do 95% of the British blow it off?
Do you realize that there is a huge medical tourism industry in Cuba? Those hospitals are run by the state, and wealthy elite oligarchs from all over Latin America fly there every year to have specialized operations that are not available in their capitalist paradises.
People are going to India for operations because it’s cheap, not because the care is any good. They go to Thailand for the same reason. Furthermore, only rich Americans can even go there in the first place. Those operations typically cost $5-10,000. You know how many Americans have $5-10,000 lying around? Basically almost none. Only rich people have that kind of cash on hand. Everyone else lives paycheck to paycheck. So Indian private health care is cool because rich Americans avail themselves of it. So what? Who cares about the US rich? Since when is what’s good for them good for the rest of us?
If Indian health care is so boss, then why does preventable disease and starvation kill 14 million people a year, mostly in South Asia (read: India). Indian health care isn’t a good system – it’s a killer system.
Do you know how those for-profit hospitals make money? By treating you less. The less they treat you, the more they make. The more they treat you, the less they make. Here in the US, they routinely discharge very sick elderly folks and pregnant women far before they are well enough to get out of the hospital. Reason: bottom line, increased profits. They discharged my father when he was sick with pneumonia so they could make an extra buck. Within 3 weeks, he was dead.
The upper castes who run India also do not want to spend one nickel on public education because they do not use it. They all send their kids to private schools, which I suspect in many cases are nonprofits anyway. Those schools run by religious orders in India are almost certainly nonprofits, I assure you of that.
Private schools have no incentive whatsoever to teach people better, in fact, the incentive is to teach people worse. The private school my father taught at would not update schoolbooks, and teachers had to supply all of their own materials like chalk, erasers and paper. The capitalist scum who ran the place ripped off the teachers on their crap salaries, provided zero benefits, and shafted the kids with crappy materials or no materials. Not only that but they were fraudulent. They passed along all the kids whether they were passing or not. Everyone got A’s and B’s, including those who should have gotten D’s and F’s. This is typical of private education. The classes are a joke and everyone passes with a great grade? You know why? You are paying a lot of money for your education, so they reward you with an A or B in return for all that cash you gave them. It is nothing more than the buying and selling of grades. They don’t give bad grades because they want to keep their customers happy. They don’t fail or flunk out anyone because then they lose all that money you gave them. See?
Why did the people at my Dad’s private school sell grades, pass everyone and scrimp on everything important? So the capitalist worms who ran the school could fly around in a Lear Jet!
Private schools: The less you pay teachers, the fewer benefits you give them, the less you spend on books and supplies, in other words, the worse the quality of education, the more money you make. In private schools, if you pay teachers well, buy new books and pay for all supplies, you make less money. Which option do you think they choose?
You compare a shit 3rd World country that doesn’t spend a nickel on public health care and education and then claim that “socialism fails” and health care and education “are best run by the private sector,” a lie that has been disproven in more studies than I can count.
