Re: What will be changed forever
From: Brian Bartholomew (bartholomew.brianyahoo.com)
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 11:42:36 -0700 (PDT)
 > In many countries universal health care is the only thing that
> allows surgery to be possible at all.

That isn't how the cause and effect works. Universal health care is
merely a tax policy that redistributes wealth from taxpayers to
employees in the medical industry. Somebody has to produce enough
food, clothing, and shelter surplus beyond subsistence that medical
students can study for a decade instead of producing food, clothing,
and shelter. If the taxpayers don't produce that wealth, then it's
not available to be taxed.

> Even in the United States 50% of people live at an income level that
> doesn't allow them to have anything more than basic access to a
> dentist or doctor.

As with zoning and regulation of building construction, this nasty
outcome is due almost entirely to regulation. 100 years ago in the US
the common way to finance health care for the lower middle class was
the "lodge doctor". The Eagles club, which is still active today,
would hire a doctor to take care of a lodge's members. But the AMA
lobbied against lodge doctors in their journal, to increase scarcity
of medical care and so raise the income of their members.

> For every technological advance, the population that doesn't have it
> increases to such an extent that the same balance is maintained.

You mean, individual parents decide to have larger families, and spend
the wealth they produce feeding their children, instead of having
fewer children and also building ventilators? These family planning
choices are entirely within the control of the parents.

> One country of 11 million people has four ventilators.

Why is that? The export of engineering textbooks is not banned as a
state secret by the first world countries; perfectly good textbooks a
few editions back can be had almost for the price of shipping. In a
country of 11 million human beings, none of them choose to build
ventilators from sprinkler valves using free plans? I'm sad that 11
million human beings made that choice. But they reason people don't
have ventilators is because they are herding cattle for a living
instead of working in a ventilator factory.

Brian  

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