So now, every person in the state is required to have an ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet style health plan where the incentive is to consume as much as you can. Cost, and price, be damned!

Is it any wonder the emergency rooms are over-flowing with patients in MA? But the problem with crowded ER’s was supposed to be a lack of health insurance? I guess our wise leaders on Beacon Hill missed Econ 101, and this is the same crowd currently at work on Capital Hill. And apparently, in FL too.

I know for a fact that a student who told a teacher to F.O. would stand a decent chance of getting the crap knocked out of him and would certainly have been expelled (with no refund of tuition).

That would have happened where I went to school (public) in the 80s (sans the refund part).

Also, Neptune, you’re on my wavelength when it comes to gummint schools. The problem is that teachers aren’t allowed to control their classrooms; they’re under the thumb of dumbass lawyers, cowardly administrators, and derelict parents. Given the terrible conditions, a lot of good teachers (and people who would be good teachers) decide it’s not just worth the trouble.

I went to a Catholic high-school. I know for a fact that a student who told a teacher to F.O. would stand a decent chance of getting the crap knocked out of him and would certainly have been expelled (with no refund of tuition).

The postal service is incredibly good at what it does. But it can’t compete financially because of it’s federal requirements. If it were on the open market, it would be bankrupt. To Livewire’s point, it doesn’t really compete, not completely.

I have to add that I think the public schools argument is a bit of a red herring, although I understand it. I think that if parents had vouchers, private schools would end up being just as bad as public. Although the teacher’s unions wield far too much power, there are also far, far too many parents who expect the schools to parent their kids, and who take no responsibility for discipline or results. Those same parents would send their kids to a private school on a voucher, the kid gets expelled because the private school doesn’t have to keep pains-in-the-a$$ enrolled, and then those kids end up in other schools or back in public. The solution to the school problem is to get parents to take some damn responsibility. (But perhaps I’m biased because I watched one of my parents have to deal with kids telling her to f**k off in the high school where she worked. )

Some parts of mail delivery, namely package delivery, can be done at a profit. That’s worked out well for the private companies and pushed the USPS to offer similar service. Everyone benefits there.

Is anyone ignorant enough to think that mail delivery from Guam to Maine can be accomplished at a profit, at prices people are willing to pay? Cherry-picking profitable parts of the system is one thing, providing comprehensive and uniform service is another.

The only question is whether we need a postal system today with electronic communication so common. While it will probably be scaled back, we still need it, and the Constitution requires it.

Now, as for health care … the government is bound and determined to destroy one of the great success stories in the history of civilization. Competition will improve it, the government will destroy it.

But in a generation or two, we’ll all come to love our HealthAmerica. It will be an institution that, like little school children, we’ll look up to with a tingly patriotic feeling. We’ll never know anything different, never expect anything better. But for most of us, we’ll think of it as an entitlement, something we get for ‘free.’

The drugs that were never developed, the advances never made, costs never reduced, the pie that’s never expanded … we’ll never know. The proponents of HealthAmerica will always have their heart-warming, though irrelevant, anecdotes. ‘HealthAmerica saved my mother’s life!’ In a nation of economic (or complete) illiterates, anecdotes carry the day. As former US Rep. Joe Kennedy once said, ‘anecdotal evidence is all the evidence I need.’ (paraphrased)

Oh Lord, we get the government we deserve!

the goal of the market should be to produce efficient outcomes

…and competition, or more accurately the *threat* of competition, is how markets do it. (You can have a so-called “monopoly” company that has no privileges or regulatory barriers created by the government, it simply does a terrific job and fends off all competitors. Low “barriers to entry”, i.e., low barriers to the possibility of new competition coming into existence and stealing your lunch, is the key. The company need not have competitors this minute, but if it got lazy, then it might have several, in this example. The threat is what prompts the efficiency and innovation.)

a good case can be made that insurance market, as it exists today, produces inefficient outcomes

…and, not by coincidence, insurance is one of the MOST competitively restricted industries. In some cases, government bans competition outright, e.g. States who forbid interstate competition. But in most cases, government strangles competition through mountains of regulation that make it very costly to innovate or for a new competitor to come into existence – aka, barriers to entry.

Public universities compete with private ones… These all work to varying degrees…

And I challenge that as well. Look at university education costs – they’re a crime. More because of subsidies than anything, but also because – again – the bloated, inefficient public institution never can go out of business. Which cripples the operation of market forces in the market as a whole.

Look at public schools, as V pointed out. In CA, they’re awful. Private schools “compete” with them – but just barely. The public schools can never go out of business, the competition from private schools is therefore limited and barely tolerated, and as a result, market forces are crippled and the entire industry is crippled with it: filled with bloated, inefficient institutions that do generally an awful job.

I don’t want health care run like that. To some extent it is already, because of the government interference we already have in the health care sector. Going further in that direction is nucking futs.

the notion that public entities cannot compete with private ones is silly.

Of course public entities are capable of competing with private ones! Public entities are backed by taxpayer money – and often by government-licensed monopoly in certain area. So it doesn’t matter how bad public entities are, they can still always compete.

The real question is, can private entities compete with public ones? As just explained in the previous comment: Just barely. ONLY to the extent that the bloated, inefficient, but taxpayer- and government-backed public entity is willing to tolerate the competition.

It has a monopoly on one service (mail) and ‘competes’ with others, but it is hemoraging money.

As per universities, their costs do increase well above the rate of inflation.

And look how Obama *eliminated* competition to the DC Public Option Schools.

-john