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To: Cboldt

The simple statistic is that the cost of health care has gone north of 1/6th of GDP. Not only is that not sustainable, but further growth is impossible. It can only come at the cost of other sectors of the economy, like housing or public infrastructure or transportation or food or the IT we are now using to bring down GOPe.


90 posted on 02/27/2016 8:28:58 AM PST by AndyJackson
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To: AndyJackson
-- The simple statistic is that the cost of health care has gone north of 1/6th of GDP. Not only is that not sustainable, but further growth is impossible. --

I don't know, technology and other changes affect the share that any human activity gets, in the pool of all human activity. It's not really zero sum, over the long haul.

In my view, it is critical to account for human nature, which finds expression in thousands of stories and fables from the Ant and the Grasshopper, to the fist year in the Jamestown Colony, to life under communism and managed economies, to Venezuela, to just plain what thinking people know is right.

All industries have issues with greed, too. Figure out something that is cheap to make, hype it up into "public need," and overcharge your way to riches. See Bill Gates and a host of followup billionaires, Bezos, the facebook kid, and many others.

There is no cure, some fraction of the public will always be stupid, lazy, dishonest, and some combination of those. How to motivate them out of that is one of life's mysteries. But detaching their wallets from their own personal responsibility is not good for the public as a whole. Not only does it undercut whatever pressure ought to exist to fight our human nature, it also creates a pool of cash that is tempting to the truly dishonest and corrupt.

141 posted on 02/27/2016 8:52:11 AM PST by Cboldt
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