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Communism never has worked and never will work. We should just set legal minimum standards for patient care quality. Hospitals can then do whatever they need to comply with those standards, including setting nurse wages at whatever the market dictates.


Thanks Ayn Rand, a more astute reader might see the meme phrase, the scare quotes, the smiley, and see the obvious humorous intention :)

But I'll go ahead and explain the joke. There is a long history of the private sector using the spectre of communism (or socialism, or "big government" or "nanny state") as a canard to prevent sensible policies eg. anything that would improve patient care, even if it were at minuscule costs and will use that canard to justify lobbying aggressively to prevent it. And if they cannot obstruct legislative action then they switch to defunding the state bodies which enforce the regulations as an exercise in "cost cutting" because "the state is wasting your hard earned taxes!!" etc.

Hope you have a better rest of your day.

Edit: I mean, once you have set a regulation, and established a body to police it, you have already interfered with the market, so even what you are suggesting could be described as having "done a communism"


>Edit: I mean, once you have set a regulation, and established a body to police it, you have already interfered with the market, so even what you are suggesting could be described as having "done a communism"

Exactly, remove regulations from health care. I'm dead serious. Regulatory burden on nurses and health care workers are insane. It's completely plausible the net effect would be far more people saved than lost, due to greater access to healthcare and lower burdens to achieving outcomes.


Which specific regulations would you propose to remove? Everyone loves the idea of reducing regulatory burden but they always fail to give specifics.

For example, hospitals spend a lot of money complying with CMS reporting rules on iatrogenic harm such as bed sores and secondary infections. Should they stop doing that?


> Everyone loves the idea of reducing regulatory burden but they always fail to give specifics.

You're right, apologies for not being specific.

>Which specific regulations would you propose to remove?

Specifically, all of them.

>Should they stop doing that?

Object to framing of the question. Hints at a false dichotomy. Desirable outcomes can be achieved without precisely following a regulation.


I love it. Libertarians and similar always like to say "communism sucks, can not work, can never work, is a completely broken model"... when the reality is that 1) they _dislike_ the model (which doesn't make it broken), and/or 2) that communism, like many systems, works well, until annoying corrupt humans wanting money, power or both start interfering with the ecosystem.

The second point is entirely accurate. It's one of the major factors that makes communism, socialism, untenable in many ways.

What's hilarious / frustrating is how these same people think that humans in a libertarian utopia won't be corrupt, won't want for money and power, and as a result, "Sure, remove all regulation - the market will get more efficient! It certainly won't end up like the railroads in the 19th century, or something out of an Upton Sinclair novel!"


I choose free markets BECAUSE everyone is corrupt, not the other way around. Regulators, who are third parties to the transaction beholden to neither those seeking health care nor those offering it, are the most susceptible to corruption. Regulators need eliminated to reduce corruption, amongst other things.


It's always the regulators isn't it?

Never the supplier using ill gotten capital from predatory business practices to lobby or perpetrate regulatory capture.

Nope, it's always those pesky regulators sticking their hands out. Never those Captains of Industry! Paragons of Humanity and Unquestionable Beings of Moral Fiber and Impeccably Ethical Manner!


>everyone is corrupt

What part of that didn't you understand? Where did I say the captains of industry aren't corrupt. I said "everyone."

The consumer has the power to voluntarily spend or not spend with a particular health care provider for the vast majority of health care decisions. Their providers are beholden to the customer.

The regulator, on the other hand, is not beholden to the customer this way. The regulator, are typically integrated as part of government and thus not only are they unbeholden to the customer but they also are part of the same entity as men with guns who can use violence to achieve their ends. They are nearly always unelected and only in the loosest sense does the customer have any control -- no one seriously votes for their senators / representative based on who they approve of in say the FDA (can 99% of voters even name a single regulator in say the FDA?) -- that vote is dominated by other even more important issues you need your representative for. These regulators are effectively an ultimate source of corruption, backed by guns and only in the most tangential sense accountable to consumers but with wide latitude to control industry in ways that harm the consumer.

Yes everyone is corrupt, including the 'captains of industry' and even the 'consumer' but regulators make things massively worse. Regulators create an amplification effect of corruption.




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