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Originally Posted by Praxus
The ammont of economic decisions in an advancing economy is so vast that it is impossible to make timely and accurate decisions on the part of the Government agencies . When the economy reaches a certain point (in size), economic calculations become impossible without a free market price system.
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I agree completely. Computers and decentralized decision making would have worked better, but in most all cases the free market is the best way of allocating resources.
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Originally Posted by Praxus
Authoritarianism is a symptom of Socialism. Every socialist nation has been authoritarian. It's kind of nessecery to have a tyrant(s) in charge when you mean to deliver men into abject slavery.
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How can you say that? What about Germany, the Nordic countries, France, etc. Those countries are not authoritarian. I'm not talking about socialism where there is no free enterprise. I'm talking about socialist in terms of government social programs and direction of the economy. In fact, I wouldn't advocate socialism in terms of the ways that its been practiced before for America in any way. I'm a socialist in terms that I think that its an evolutionary idea that technology will eventually help us progress toward. Socialism is not something that can be forced on people, and its not something that is defined in absolute terms.
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Originally Posted by Praxus
Socialism has increased in the United States since 1879, so what should we draw from this information. It certainly isn't that socialism aided GDP growth. I'm sure that if you look at the GDP growth rates of Great Britian, you would find a similar trend.
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I hold that the declining growth rate of the US is characteristic of a developed economy. When a country is industrializing and allocating new resources, its easy to grow, but after it has reached maximal allocation, its much more difficult.
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Originally Posted by Praxus
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The statistics that you give are for the EU, which includes less developed countries such as Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary, and Greece. Those countries cannot be expected to have the same standard of care as the rest of the well developed European countries. Your analysis also incorrect because you don't control for the type of cancer diagnosed. Lung cancer incidence is much higher in the EU, and accounts for part of the difference.
Rate of cancer deaths in US: 41%
Rate of cancer deaths in EU: 62% (including underdeveloped countries)
Incidence in US: 173,770 (12.7% of cancers)
Incidence in EU: 243,600 (15.9% of cancers)
The higher incidence of smoking in Europe also contributes to higher rates of other cancers such as pancreatic, which has nearly 100% 1 year mortality.
Anyway, I've done quite a bit more research on this, and the statistics seem to prove that you are right, however the difference isn't as big as you think..
First, it is more appropriate to compare two countries of similar status, so lets compare the US and Sweden. Secondly, we should adjust the statistics so that they are collected from the same year. Because treatments are continually improving, it doesn't make sense to compare two different years. Also, this is a cross sectional analysis, and since incidence is generally increasing it doesn't make sense to compare incidence and mortality along the same year cross section (because survival isn't only within a year). However, I don't have a good way to account for that, so I'm going to assume that its similar between the US and Sweden.
Cancer rates in the US in the year 2000 (according to CDC, not estimates, as the cancer.org chart you linked to was):
incidence: 564.5/100k mortality: 248.1/100k
motality percent: 43.9%
Cancer rates in Sweden in the year 2000:
incidence: 40,880 mortality: 21,876
mortality percent: 53.5%
US cancer stats:
http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/uscs/Table....2000&Display=n
Swedish cancer stats:
http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/can...eandmortality/
That is a significant difference, and although part of it is maybe accountable to smoking, the whole difference is not. So you are definitely right, the chance of surviving cancer in the US is higher than in Sweden. I don't know if the same thing is true of heart attacks, since I don't have another 1.5 hrs to devote to number crunching.
However, I would attribute the lower infant mortality in Sweden and longer life expectancy only partially to lifestyle changes, but also due to better access to preventative care. It is also important to consider that we pay 4x as much for our healthcare as the European states, so it better be better!
So, in conclusion, we can say that US healthcare provides better outcomes for those that get cancer, but it doesn't do a good job at helping keep people healthy.
Socialized medicine, with free checkups, etc, is better at keeping people healthy, but is less able to stay on the cutting edge of technology of treatments. A good portion of that difference is probably due to less government funding of healthcare research. In the US, the NIH budget is huge.
A more interesting comparison would be between a free market and socialized healthcare system in two equivalently underdeveloped countries where government funding of research is not as much of an issue. I would put money on the fact that the socialized system would be better.
In conclusion, I wouldn't advocate completely socialized medicine in the US, but perhaps we can do something to give people better access to preventative care.