A US healthcare safety net already exists.  It doesn't involve Vegas junkets and plasma TV's (yet) but nobody goes 'without' healthcare unless they simply choose to.

We aren't debating universal health 'care' - we're debating universal (government) health 'insurance.'

You forget that africans (in africa) do not VOTE in the USA. So the typical democrat has no interest in helping them... s/he wants to take from others to give to themselves. They will vote to whomever promises them more "free stuff" and by free I mean "stolen by the government from other people" 

It is neither sad nor unreasonably... Rich countries are rich because of a successful culture. Bringing everyone over will bring about their collapse. And nothing is stopping people from improving their own countries. Except many cultures do not show the respect to technology, industry, education and innovation needed to be successful.

This is part of the problem, the american PEOPLE no longer have respect towards capitalism, entrepreneurship, and industry. All three have become "evil" in their mind and must be shunned. That is the real cause of the problem, we have a majority party that honestly represents the majority in its wish to destroy industry to save the planet, destroy money because money is the root of all evil, destroy capitalism because capitalism is evil exploitative greed...

Lets follow through how government provided insurance works then. Firstly, what kind of insurance is provided? Well the government could give really nice insurance to one person that covers every imaginable need, and realy poor insurance to someone else. That would be unlikely to go down very well with most people, hence it's most likely they'll either provide the same insurance package to people (funded by taxes based on income) or they'll go for a more progressive system where the insurance provided by the government reduces according to your income.

Taking the first option, what is that insurance? It's basically the government paying for your healthcare for various items covered in the insurance, and doing the same for everyone else as well. So, it's a form of universal healthcare.

Let's take the US's current healthcare system - it still has a form of universal healthcare, because everyone is entitled to receive emergancy care regardless of their ability to pay. It's an incredibly low level of universal healthcare compared to other countries, but is still a form of UHC.

Therefore mention of UHC to me seems quite on-topic in a thread about government controlled health care.

Let's see, person A lives in the US, person B in Africa. They both can do the same job equally effective. Person B wants to come to the US and is happy to do it for $2 an hour, person A wants to keep doing it for $10 an hour. In a truely capitalist economy you should let both of them compete for the job. The wage rate will fall as a result, so companies hire more workers, and they both end up being employed at say $6 an hour, while the economy also benefits from the increased production.

Disagree? Ok, let's change the scenario. Person A is in a trade union, person B isn't.

No, it isn't.

Healthcare is the provision of services, insurance is a means of paying for them.

Health insurance does NOT increase supplies. In fact public health insurance creates a monopsony and monopsonies lower prices. And lower prices lead to less supply.

Government _can_ provide "universal healthcare", but this is NOT what this bill is even trying to do.

That's unlikely.

Most African countries do not have education systems remotely comparable even with American play schools. Most Africans do not have the equivalent of an American high school diploma, many cannot read at all. It is unlikely that there are many jobs for which an African is as qualified as a random American.

For this to work we'd first have to improve the education systems in Africa.

The African who managed to become as qualified as an American will likely not work for $2 an hour. He will realise that he can earn $10.

Yes.

Wages will fall, as will prices.

When more people can be hired for less, we will have an over-supply, hence prices will fall.

Money will be more valuable and inflation will be counteracted.

Trade unions are trusts that attempt to monopolise a market by fixing prices (for labour). Anti-trust law has specific exemptions for trade unions (and, unrelated to the subject here, airlines) because liberals do not believe that something is also bad when done by their voters.

Many people, despite not living in caves, believe that the economy is a zero-sum game. But it's not true.

Nope. Health insurance of this nature DOES increase supplies. If you offer a group of people a service for $100, fewer people are likely to take it up than if you offer it for free. So if the government provides insurance to everyone for certain healthcare problems, that means if those people suffer those problems they can claim on their government insurance and get the government to provide them with that healthcare. How does the government do that? They have to pay the healthcare providers to provide the service to the people. That means they pay the level they need to to ensure that the helahtcare providers supply enough to meet the demand. What you seem to be suggesting would happen is that they'd refuse to pay the healthcare providers the market rate, and as a result would only provide healthcare insurance to some people, not everyone.

There are plenty of jobs that don't require a highly educated person. If you really believed what you said though, what's your problem with having an open borders policy (and restricting benefits)? If they are so poorly educated that they couldn't get a job, then they wouldn't want to come.

No, the simple law of supply and demand means that the wage rate will be driven down, not remain constant - there aren't an infinite number of jobs available (as evidenced by unemployment rates well above the level suggested by frictional unemployment). Worker B is prepared to work for less than A, which means that he [B] will get the job, and A will only get it if he will work for less, up to the point where the amount they're offering to work is low enough to allow a company to offer another job for them. Easier then for A to just seek to ban B from working so they can enjoy their higher wages. You even mention this [wages being driven down] later in your response so I'm a bit puzzled with what you're trying to disagree with.

And how do they do that? It's by insisting the company hires a small group of them at a high price rather than getting in more people for a lower amount (usually via blackmail/strikes). Heavily unionised industries will usually have plenty of people wanting to do a particular job, but who can't because of the trade union. Just the same as a country which bans people from coming into it and working so that the people already in the country can enjoy their higher wages. Both are selfish attitudes that also run contrary to the principles of capitalism.

A truely capitalist economy wouldn't have trade unions, and would allow people to come into it and work if they wanted to (i.e. an open borders policy). Meanwhile the existence of a welfare system coupled with an immigration policy means that country is saying the lives of people born in it/living in it are more valuable than those of people from other countries.

No. I am suggesting that they will pay the market rate but the market rate will go down.

And that will impact supply.

Hence there might not be enough supply for the demand.

Prices should go up at this point, but they won't if there is a monopsony.

You and I are talking about different levels of education.

The problem is not that Africa doesn't have enough "highly educated people". I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it does.

The problem is that the base level of education in most African is much much lower than even in America.

Even for the dumbest jobs you need someone who can at least distinguish different letters and who doesn't believe that handicapped customers are people who were punished by G-d.

Who said I would have a problem with that?

Of course it would. And it would have trusts, too.

If they pay the market rate, and there's an increase in demand, that means the market rate will go up, not down. It's simple supply and demand again - an increase in demand causes prices to increase which causes supply to increase until the market is back in equilibrium. If the government tries to drive prices down to the point where supply decreases, there will be insufficient supply to meet the insurance they've promised everyone, so they'll have to pay more to get that insurance back again. The governments only real power will be to ensure they get a competitive rate - that is, they can force suppliers margins down where possible because they'll be a big buyer, but ultimately they can't do this to the point where it's no longer worthwhile for the supplier to supply their service because the government needs it to satisfy their insurance holders.

This is of course if you assume that the government will provide the insurance to everyone, not just some people. The alternative is they drive the prices down, and as a result have insufficient supply to provide people, hence meaning they only provide to some not everyone (most likely using a waiting list system).

Why do you need the latter? (I can see how it would be helpful for a customer service orientated role, but what about manual labor somewhere where you'd never come into contact with a customer that you'd offend with such views?)

As far as I can tell you haven't specifically said if you do or don't have a problem at the moment, although I'm leaning towards the first slightly since that's been the focus of some of the key points from the last few posts of mine which you've been disagreeing with. Are you in favour of an open borders policy?

Where do you get that increase in demand? People do not get sicker just because there is health insurance.

Universal health insurance creates a monopsony and monopsonies make prices go down, not up.

It's a bogus argument against universal health insurance that it will make medical care more expensive. It won't. It will make it cheaper.

If they provide it only to some people it will still have monopsony power, and more so the more people it insures.

Those examples were not exclusive. There are a lot of details that are part of a normal bad western education that are simply not taught in many African countries.

In general, yes.

But specifically I still want immigrants to be registered and to pay taxes. I also favour assimilation programmes and prefer immigrants that are willing to assimilate over those who bring their own violent culture with them.

So you're seriously saying that if receiving treatment/care for something previously cost $10,000 and now costs $0, that there would be no change in the number of people wanting the treatment?!! Afterall if the government provides insurance for you that covers certain healthcare and you have need for that healthcare, you can now just claim on your government insurance  (which is paid for via taxes) to receive that healthcare.

That is the very definition of increasing DEMAND.

It does not in any way shape or form increase SUPPLY. In fact, since you are forcing the price to be lower than it should be then you are decreasing supply.

again,

The increase in demand directly leads to the increase in supply, on the assumption that the government makes sure the people are provided with the healthcare they're insured for (to do that, the government pays the rate required to get supply to increase to the point that it meets the increased demand).

Supply and demand simply doesn't work like that. If you want an increase in the supply, it means increasing the price, not decreasing it.

And how exactly do we make the service cost $0???

I don't know how much of the US' current supply of healthcare is currently wasting away with nobody buying it, but I can imagine that if it were a lot, prices would go down.

You seem to be thinking that there is a lot of healthcare available which is not currently sold but which will be sold once prices go down. Can you please apply that logic to other products and see if it still makes sense to you?

Do you think chicken farmers hold back half the eggs while waiting for prices to go down?

Do you think that many people will want to become chicken farmers once you have found a method to lower egg prices?

Do you think egg quality will be better once each egg costs only half as much as it does today?

I assume you believe that demand for eggs will go up once everybody can afford them via the egg insurance system. But unless chicken farmers are currently holding back eggs which they will start selling once prices have fallen, I don't see where supplies can meet that extra demand.

Nor do I believe that this demand is really there. There will be demand for the egg insurance, but whether that translates into demand for eggs is really up to the insurance.

I thought the universal health insurance was also meant to keep prices down? If this is just a way to pay more horrendous fees, I would assume all the healthcare providers are in favour of it. Are they?

I'm not sure what you are on about.

You _quoted_ a statement that said that lower prices decrease supply. Then you say that that is wrong and that increasing the price would lead to increased supply. So what was wrong about it?

A universal health insurance will lower prices, hence supply will decrease.

If you somehow manage to use a universal health insurance system to increase prices (which it will have to do because current supplies are apparently not covering enough people), you will end up with a healthcare provider monopoly (i.e. all healthcare providers represented by the one health insurance system they all want to work for exlusively because it pays more than the open market).

You want it in terms of eggs/chicken farmers? Here it is then:

If the price of eggs falls, people will want more of them. If the price of eggs rises, farmers will want more chickens (to produce more eggs).

If the government buys eggs off the farmers and makes them available to people for free (funded via taxes), then people will want more eggs. More eggs will need to be supplied, meaning the market price for eggs will rise.

Because the price will increase so people will supply more. In the case of eggs, it'll be farmers wanting more chickens (so they breed more). In the case of healthcare it'll be a greater demand for doctors+nurses causing wages to increase causing more people to want to study to become one causing an increase in supply.

Maybe you're not following what I'm saying because you're equating the price the consumer pays as being equal to the price charged by the supplier? In a normal market that would be a reasonable assumption, but in this case it isn't, since the suppliers charge one price to the government which charges a different price to the consumer.

Not necessarily, depending on how (in)effectively the scheme would be implimented. It would certainly be a reason for them to support it though.

The price (that is relevant for suppliers) would be expected to increase not decrease. That was what was wrong about it.

Why would the health insurance pay more than the open market? The market rate will have gone up, not remained constant.

This is precisely the point of the so-called reform to get the freeloaders to at least pay something, in lieu of flooding Emergemcy.

If it doesn't, supplies will remain at current levels.

Again,

Except, the government in this case decides to "buy" (aka, take against the farmer's will while giving him a few bucks for it) it off the farmers for LESS MONEY than people have previously paid for it; and in fact, the government is "buying" it for such a low price that the farmer is LOSING MONEY per sale...

Look at current systems like medicare and medicaid. Doctors get paid a fraction of the price, to the point that they actually take a LOSS.

If they do that then they won't be able to get enough eggs to meet people's demand, hence they won't (if they're looking to ensure no shortage of supply).

I feel like I'm having to repeat myself about 10 times here to get the point across - this is basic economics, so I'd suggest if you still don't understand, google concepts such as supply and demand and equilibrium and read a brief overview of the topics which ought to help cover the underlying mechanisms here.

Essentially it's decreased (consumer) price-> increased demand

Increased demand -> increased (supplier) price

increased (supplier) price -> Increased supply

Until supply = demand (which is equilibrium).

If they were SMART they wouldn't, but they ARE doing exactly that.

I understand, you just pretend that I don't to attack strawman arguments.

All true (if I am interpreting what you are saying correctly), so are their inverses...

For example, you make that point that : increased price -> Increased supply

But its inverse is also true: decreased price -> decreased supply

Oh look, the bill decreases price. therefore DEMAND goes up (as you said), and SUPPLY goes down... what a novel idea...

Nice try to switch the topic - if you look up I was referring to government provided health insurance in general. The reason I deliberately kept it general rather than focusing on one specific bill was because I don't have the time to go through the entirity of it and determining whether it will or won't increase prices and all the other effects, especially since long term it is mostly irrelevant (and even if I do spend ages scouring a bill to highlight an error in your argument, it'd just get ignored so I see no point) - even if what you say is true though and the government would force healthcare providers to offer healthcare below the market rate, the supply will fall and the government will need to decide whether it wants to continue with not providing healthcare to everyone that is insured (i.e. having an insurance system that also features a waiting list as a way of restricting demand) or whether it will make sure everyone insured will get supplied, in which case it will pay the market rate.

Now if you read the earlier posts you'll see I've already gone over this, and am working on the basis that the government wasn't restricting supply from the people it was providing insurance to. See post 107 by Leuki:

We're already working on the basis that the government is paying the market rate, NOT forcing suppliers to receive a below-market rate. In that context, your insistence that the supply will decrease is wrong. Similarly, if working on the basis that the government is providing the healthcare insurance to everyone rather than restricting it, they can't force a below market rate, because then demand will exceed supply.

There is no such thing as a 'market rate' when there is no market.  UHC replaces a market with a monopsony, as Leauki has explained.  This monopsony will have no 'market rate' it will need to match when paying suppliers.  Medicare has been paying below 'market' for years, and it's going bankrupt despite that.  It would already be bankrupt & in the red if it paid 'market rates.'

When the government controls and artificially suppresses the price of a service (as compared to its 'market value'), consumer demand will go up, but the ability of those providing the service to make a 'market living' will go down.  The government will force suppliers to accept 'below-market' rates - they already do, and there's no other way to control costs.  They'll simply decree that 'below-market' is the new 'market.'  There will be no market mechanism enabling prices & supply to adjust to demand.  'Market rate' becomes a meaningless phrase when the government controls the funding of all aspects of a segment of the economy.

You may think that's all well & good, but it will lead to a shortage of qualified providers of that service unless you're ready to involuntarily indenture people.  Since we would all hope that those making life & death decisions about our personal health were well-educated, highly-trained individuals strongly motivated to make those decisions in our best interest, attracting smart young folks to those professions should be a priority.  If you think those smart young folks, when contemplating their career choices, aren't going to notice what's going on, you're not thinking things through.  Significant numbers of them will look elsewhere, because they have their own futures to consider, their own hopes & dreams for themselves and their families.  As much as some would wish, you can't expect other humans to sacrifice themselves voluntarily for your benefit, which is what UHC will demand.  You can squeeze the balloon in one place, but it will expand elsewhere, unless you have the power to squeeze the entire balloon.  That's been tried before, and didn't work out too well, unless you really liked the old Soviet Union.

If UHC is enacted, not only will our grandchildren & their children suffer a dramatic decline in their standard of living, something they're already destined for thanks to our existing debt, they'll end up with crappy health care.  But it will be 'fair' (except for those in control, as always).

You seem to be arguing that the price for the insurance (free?) translates into the price for the service. It doesn't work that way.

The supplier doesn't care whether he is paid by an insurance company acting for the consumer or the consumer himself. The fact that a universal health insurance will lower prices for medical services does not translate into increased demand.

What will happen is that more people will compete for the same services. The insurance will need some way to distribute available medical care.

You are again running into the insurance company. Increased demand for insurance payments for services received does not translate into increased demand for actual services.

I don't think you can make a difference between supplier price and consumer price.

So you want to lower prices to increase demand to increase prices to increase supply?

In fact, Congress just tried to avoid pushing Medicare physician reimbursement even further below 'market rates' and failed for political reasons, with an ironic reversal of roles - the Dem leadership tried to help (some would say 'pay off') physicians, while Republicans & more conservative Democrats (who normally support physicians) opposed it because of the $247bn price tag.

This is a small example of the kind of whim to which 'prices' will be subject when all decisions in healthcare are made in the political arena rather than in the market.  Fannie & Freddie crashed for the same reason - the disconnect between policy & market reality.

I'm arguing that 1) people want more of something when it's cheaper and 2) Suppliers want to supply more of something when it's price rises

The alternative of no distinction means that the price the consumer pays is the same as the price the supplier receives. This clearly isn't the case with insurance, where the entire point of insurance is to avoid you paying the same price the supplier receives.

More or less, yes. Your apparant refusal to accept that the price the consumer pays isn't the same as the price the suppliers receive is likely the cause of your implied confusion here.

There is still a market, and as a result there is a market rate. You have 1 buyer, and many sellers; 1 demand curve and 1 supply curve; a price at which the supply will equal the demand; etc.

If the government forces too low a price it won't have enough supply, meaning it'll need to raise prices to the market rate to ensure enough supply. If it forces too high a rate there'll be too much of a supply, and the competing suppliers will then cause prices to be driven down by undercutting each other until they reach the market rate.