So you really want to just leave the system as is?

In your previous post you stated:

The first thing you have to do is reduce the overall cost of delivering that care, up to and including doing away with unnecessary procedures. Why I was in the ER recently and racked up $7000 in charges in 'defensive medicine' just so the facility could say "Well we checked everything, it's not our fault if you die".

Then you say:

The charges I am already billed go towards an overhead that partially allocated to offset uncovered charges. That's one component of why CAT scans cost $5,000, etc. whether or not the service is warranted. And to be fair, one reason 'defensive medicine' IS warranted is precisely to do that - offset the costs of people who don't have a dime.

I think you just highlighted some of the craziness that current system spawns.

And finally when you say:

But realistically the problem is the total costs and not how they are allocated.

I couldn't disagree with you more. Yes the total cost is HUGE, but how it is allocated IS a problem when doctors are doing tests that aren't needed. That is simply not an efficient way to cover costs incurred for treatment of uninsured patients. To manage costs in any sensible fashion will require transparency, not some shell game.

I haven't gotten familiar with this site yet, but this looks like a good place to start for someone who is interested in doing a little citizen advocacy:

http://www.aarp.org/issues/dividedwefail/

OK I will never attempt to engage you in a rational discussion based on issues again, since you are clearly an idiot.

That Frontline documentary was pretty good. Another interesting thing that came up during the look at some of those other systems was that their citizens don't go bankrupt because of medical bills for catastrophic health care. You might think that someone who had already suffered a financial disaster would be kind of interested in a safety net like that.

@Phillip Allen - Did you run across any info on how productive it is once it gets established? It kind of sounds too good to be true if it is able to grow in poor soils in arid places and still be productive. It would seem like the lack of water would make the jojoba always be a slow growing plant, albeit a hardy one that can survive in what other plants would consider a perpetual drought.

@Phillip Allen - I did have a quick look at the link you posted for the jatropha study for the economics of using it as fuel in Tanzania. It looks more study is needed, but for now it looks like it could actually provide some meaningful energy for the small scale needs of Tanzania.

It is funny, it looks like the idea of using these Jatropha plants as a fuel source is being given more careful study before diving in than was given to using corn for ethanol.

@asinine - I think the biggest deviation is when it comes to access to information that allows consumers to compare the competition against each other. If we are talking 2 sandwich shops right next to each other, it is easy, you just pick the one that tastes better (as long as you don't really care about sourcing of the sandwich ingredients). However when you are talking about technical stuff, it can get pretty hard for a consumer to compare the competition. I think medicine is the best example of that. Even if you could find honest unbiased information comparing doctors, hospitals, and procedures, it is probably reported as statistical comparisons. How many people can really understand statistics? Most don't know the difference between median and average, so forget about things like a standard deviation.

Another place where I think the idea of a free market being inferior in magically delivering the best solution is in one-time transactions - how many times will you need to have your appendix out? If it goes badly, how are you going to make a better choice next time?

They don't exist in the real world.

@Skunkeye - Free markets aren't bad, they are models of a marketplace. The idea of a true "free market" is like what scientists do in the lab. They simplify a real world system as far as they can to isolate certain factors to study a model (think biologists culturing bacteria in petri dish and dumping drugs on the bacteria). There is nothing wrong with thinking about and talking about a "free market" to explain some basic concepts, in fact it is incredibly useful. But just like there are no petri dishes of bacteria in the real world, there is no true free market either. The world is far from that simple.