@enoch, thanks for your comments. I thought it better to respond directly to your profile than on the video, about which we're no longer discussing directly. Sorry for the length of this reply, but for such a complex topic as this one, a thorough and plainly-stated response is needed.

You wrote: "the REAL question is "what is the purpose of a health care system"? NOT "which market system should we implement for health care"?"

The free market works best for any and all goods and services, regardless of their aim or purpose. Healthcare is no different from any other good or service in this respect.

(And besides, tell me why there's no money in preventative care? Do nutritionists, physical trainers/therapists, psychologists, herbalists, homeopaths, and any other manner of non-allopathic doctors not get paid and make profit in the marketplace? Would not a longer life not lead to a longer-term 'consumer' anyway? And would preventative medicine obliterate the need for all manner of medical treatment, or would there not still remain a need to diagnose, treat, and cure diseases, even in the presence of a robust preventative medical market?)

I realize that my argument is not the "popular" one (and there are certainly many reasons for this, up to and including a lot of disinformation about what constitutes a "free market" health care system). But the way to approach such things is not heuristically, but rationally, as one would approach any other economic issue.

You write "see where i am going with this? It's not so easy to answer and impose your model of the "free market" at the same time."

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. The purpose of the healthcare system is to provide the most advanced medical service and care possible in the most efficient and affordable way possible. Only a free competitive market can do this with the necessary economic calculations in place to support its progress. No matter how you slice it, a socialized approach to healthcare invariably distorts the market (with its IP fees, undue regulations, and a lack of any accurate metrics on both the supply-side and on the demand-side which helps to determine availability, efficacy, and cost).

"you cannot have "for-profit" and "health-care" work in conjunction with any REAL health care."

Sorry, but this is just absurd. What else can I say?

"but if we use your "free market" model against a more "socialized model".which model would better serve the public?"

The free market model.

"if we take your "free market" model,which would be under the auspices of capitalism."

Redundant: "free market under the auspices of free market."

"disease is where the money is at,THAT is where the profit lies,not in preventive medicine."

Only Krugman-style Keynesians would say that illness is more profitable than health (or war more profitable than peace, or that alien invasions and broken windows are good for the economy). They, like you, aren't taking into account the One Lesson in Economics: look at how it affects every group, not just one group; look at the long term effects, not just short term ones. You're just seeing that, in the short-run, health will be less profitable for medical practitioners (or some pharmaceuticals) that are currently working in the treatment of illness. But look at every group outside that small group and at the long run and you can see that health is more profitable than illness overall. The market that profits more from illness will have to adapt, in ways that only the market knows for sure.

Do you realize that the money you put into socialized medicine (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) is money you deplete from prevention entrepreneurship?

(As an aside, I wonder, why do so many people assume that the socialized central planners have some kind of special knowledge or wisdom that entrepreneurs do not? And why is there the belief that unlike entrepreneurs, socialist central planners are not selfishly motivated but always act in the interest of the "common good?" Could this be part of the propagandized and indoctrinated fear that's implicit in living in a socialized environment? Why do serfs (and I'm sure that, at some level, people know that's what they are) love the socialist central planners more than they love themselves? Complex questions about self-esteem and captive minds.)

If fewer people get sick, the market will then demand more practitioners to move from treating illness into other areas like prevention, being a prevention doctor or whatever. You're actually making the argument for free market here, not against it. Socialized bureaucratically dictated medicine will not adapt to the changing needs as efficiently or rapidly as a free market can and would. If more people are getting sick, then we'll need more doctors to treat them. If fewer people are getting sick because preventive medicine takes off, then we'll have more of that type of service. If a socialized healthcare is mandated, then we will invariably have a glut of allopathic doctors, with little need for their services (and we then have the kinds of problems we see amongst doctors who are coerced -- by the threat of losing their license -- to take medicaid and then lie on their reports in order to recoup their costs, e.g., see the article linked here.)

Meanwhile, there has been and will remain huge profits to be made in prevention, as the vitamin, supplements, alternative medicine, naturopathy, exercise and many other industries attest to. What are you talking about, that there's no profit in preventing illness? (In a manner of speaking, that's actually my bread and butter!) If you have a way to prevent illness, you will have more than enough people buying from you, people who don't want to get sick. (And other services for the people who do.) Open a gym. Become a naturopath. Teach stress management, meditation, yoga, zumba, whatever! And there are always those who need treatment, who are sick, and the free market will then have an accurate measure of how to allocate the right resources and number of such practitioners. This is something that the central planners (under socialized services) simply cannot possibly do (except, of course, for the omniscient ones that socialists insist exist).

You wrote "cancer,anxiety,obesity,drug addiction.
all are huge profit generators and all could be dealt with so much more productively and successfully with preventive care,diet and exercise and early diagnosis."

But they won't as long as you have centrally planned (socialized) medicine. The free market forces practitioners to respond to the market's demands. Socialized medicine does not. Entrepreneurs will (as they already have) exploit openings for profit in prevention (without the advantage of regulations which distort the markets) and take the business away from treatment doctors. If anything, doctors prevent preventative medicine from getting more widespread by using government regulations to limit what the preventive practitioners do. In fact, preventive medicine is so profitable that it has many in the medical profession lobbying to curtail it. They are losing much business to alternative/preventive practitioners. They lobby to, for example, prevent herb providers from stating the medical/preventive benefits of their herbs. They even prevent strawberry farmers to tout the health benefits of strawberries! It is the state that is slowing down preventive medicine, not the free market! In Puerto Rico, for example, once the Medical Association lost a bit to prohibit naturopathy, they effectively outlawed acupuncture by successfully getting a law passed that requires all acupuncturists to be medical doctors. Insanity.

If you think there is no profit in preventative care or exercise, think GNC and Richard Simmons, and Pilates, and bodywork, and my own practice of psychotherapy. Many of the successful corporations (I'm thinking of Google and Pixar and SalesForce and Oracle, etc.) see the profit and value in preventative care, which is why they have these "stay healthy" programs for their employees. There's more money in health than illness. No doubt.

Or how about the health food/nutrition business? Or organic farming, or whole foods! The free market could maybe call for fewer oncologists and for more Whole Foods or even better natural food stores. Of course, we don't know the specifics, but that's actually the point. Only the free market knows (and the omniscient socialist central planners) what needs to happen and how.

Imagination! We need to get people to use it more.

You wrote: "but when we consider that the 4th and 5th largest lobbyists are the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry is it any wonder that america has the most fucked up,backwards health care system on the planet."

You're actually making my point here. In a free market, pharmaceutical companies cannot monopolize what "drugs" people can or cannot take, sell or not sell, and cannot prevent natural alternatives from being promoted. Only with state intervention (by way of IP regulations, and so forth) can they do so.

Free market is not corporatism. Free market is not crony capitalism. (More disinformation that needs to be lifted.)

So you're not countering my free market position, you're countering the crony capitalist position. This is a straw man argument, even if in this case you might not have understood my position in the first place. You, like so many others, equate "capitalism" with cronyism or corporatism. Many cannot conceive of a free market that is free from regulation. So folks then argue against their own interests, either for or against "fascist" vs. "socialist" medicine. The free market is, in fact, outside these two positions.

You wrote: "IF we made medicare available to ALL american citizens we would see a shift from latter stage care to a more aggressive preventive care and early diagnosis. the savings in money (and lives) would be staggering."

I won't go into medicare right now (It is a disaster, and so is the current non-free-market insurance industry. See the article linked in my comment above.)

You wrote "this would create a huge paradigm shift here in america and we would see results almost instantly but more so in the coming decades."

I don't want to be a naysayer but, socialism is nothing new. It has been tried (and failed) many times before. The USSR had socialized medicine. So does Cuba (but then you may believe the Michael Moore fairytale about medicine in Cuba). It's probably better to go see in person how Cubans live and how they have no access to the places that Moore visited.

You wrote: "i feel very strongly that health should be a communal effort.a civilized society should take care of each other."

Really, then why try to force me (or anyone) into your idea of "good" medicine? The free market is a communal effort. In fact, it is nothing else (and nothing else is as communal as the free market). Central planning, socialized, top-down decision-making, is not. Never has been. Never will be.

Voluntary interactions is "taking care of each other." Coercion is not. Socialism is coercion. It cannot "work" any other way. A free market is voluntary cooperation.

Economic calculation is necessary to avoid chaos, whatever the purpose of a service. This is economic law. Unless the purpose is to create chaos, you need real prices and efficiency that only the free market can provide.

I hope this helps to clarify (and not confuse) what I wrote on @eric3579's profile.

Not knowing how to properly coil a cable != contributing to the moral dissolution of future generations.

Also, I'm getting tired of this entire ridiculous fascination society in general seems to have with people "getting their hands dirty." I grew up surrounded by intellectuals, and though they might've been able to handle simple problems around the house, there were other things they spent their time learning how to do.

These were mathematicians, programmers, psychologists and physicists, and for all the usefulness of plumbers, mechanics and others of their ilk, these intellectuals provided other services to society which were quite honestly no less vital to its success. What they taught me was how to use my brain rather than my hands, and frankly, the world as I see it is filled to the brim with people are perfectly willing to get their hands dirty but who are astoundingly unwilling to ever use their heads.

I spent about a week this summer building a fence, and for all the shallow gratification of "honest labour," I would honestly really prefer it if I could just pay someone else to do it while I stayed inside, learning about the world and everything that goes on in it, instead of working outside like some sort of beast of burden.

If you happen to be one of those people who for some reason feel that digging holes and putting large sticks in them is a meaningful pastime, I will neither stop you from doing it nor judge you for your choice. So please, would you kindly shut the fuck up about how wonderful it is to "get your hands dirty" and just leave me to my Goddamn books?

@rychan I have heard police psychologists (or whatever is the right term) say if you want to stop these horrendous mass killings, do NOT give publicity to the killers.

That is the single most important thing to do -- much more effective than gun control.

And yet we clambor to see their faces, know who they are. Newscasts capture eyes, newspapers and magazines sell. And we have free speech and a free media (except to the extent it is driven by the profit motive in small and also systematic ways.)

As for terrorists -- I think @Quboid is right on in general. Still, terrorists aren't ideological machines, they are human beings too. I suspect this kind of publicity is seductive to them, also. It is icing on the terror cake, though, not the cake itself I suspect.

Or something like that.

Ladies and gentlemen, we just found the greatest psychologist on Earth! Go back to your man-hating hole and get your cat adoption papers ready.

@gwiz665
this doesnt even fit into any definition of religion.
how you extrapolated religion from this video is a stretch of logic.
disagree with premise? thats fine.
calling it religion? not a chance.i dont see any dogmatic approach based on doctrine.do you?

which brings me to @Engels commentary.
this video proposes an alternative way of dealing with bi-polar.this alternative has been proven to work in some cases.
does this mean that we should dump modern psychology?
well this video does not make that assertion.

it simply offers an alternative way of dealing with people in crisis.
who are you to judge the validity or success of something that may work for some people?

or has psychology answered all the questions pertaining to consciousness and i just missed the memo?

i understand your skepticism concerning methods such as represented in this video but as @eric3579 suggested.if you have never experienced:depression,mania,psychotic episodes then you are already at a disadvantage in your understanding.

medication is not the end-all be-all of answers.sometimes compassion,understanding and empathy are far better fascilitators in helping a person overcome episodes of depression or mania.

when we consider just how prevalent diagnosis and medication have become:
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0030185

we should all stand up and take notice.
or do you feel the 1 in 5 numbers are correct?
that even pre-teens can be bipolar?
and if so.could you please tell me the conclusive test a psychologist uses to determine if someone is bipolar?

i am in no way by my commentary dismissing the exceptional works psychology has brought to the human table.i am just saying that it is still a work in progress and the field of psychology has not answered every question.

on a side note.freud along with his nephew edward bernaise helped create mass marketing and propaganda systems.
so....yeah.fuck freud.

Still waiting for the facts?, its been nothing more than arguments from authority & the gun deaths chart is pure bogus, I.E. bee stings annually kill more US citizens than terrorism thus terrorism is not as important as stopping people getting stung straw-man argument. furthermore, alcohol is regulated, cars are regulated even medical practitioners are licenced - if you went into surgery knowing that your doctor may be one of 40% of unregistered practitioners would you feel safe in that knowledge?.

Here is how easy it is to twist this logic to suit your claim: Since the war began in Iraq there has been 4488 U.S. causalities, comparing this to 11,000 annual gun death's in the U.S. PROVES that being at war is LESS DANGEROUS than merely being at home. This example is how correlation does not equal causation (& if this girl in the video is indeed a psychologist she should know this).

Maybe one aspect of the Mexican gun rate is also the fact that the U.S. with 'the 'Fast & Furious law' actually allowed the trafficing of guns from the United States into Mexico right into the hands of drug gangs in the hopes of stopping the cartels. (But did she mention that?).

What are the stats for mass homicides?, rather than suicides compared to other countries?. and in one breath the speaker said that a gun is the most effective way of killing yourself, and later that regardless of guns the person will find a way to kill themselves regardless of guns which she just stated were the most effective other than hanging or jumping from a height. (& Japan is a collectivist culture with a high population, where the individual is expected to look after their entire family & the government is expected to ensure public safety hence strict gun laws - so it may in fact be due to feelings of being ashamed culturally rather than seeking attention & fame as in individualistic cultures like America.

a gun is not a 'tool', it's a weapon - it has no other purpose than to kill. it's like saying a harpoon is a 'tool'.

No-one is saying its just about A) whether being allowed to own a gun B) or not. it's about as stated in the opening of this video as stated in the 2nd amendment 'A well REGULATED militia or marketplace of guns' and the American gun lobby is definitely not said anything about wanting to strengthen the gun-laws I.E. waiting times, background checks, sales at gun-shows etc.

This video is wrong in all these areas listed from start to finish it has been nothing but misrepresentation calling them facts.

I hope this guy is seeing a psychologist because he has a very unhealthy obsession. I expect him to be next to be the one who spikes the kool-aid.

I read somewhere that the first clip, from "The Champ," is the standard shown by psychologists whenever they want to create sadness in a test subject.

Forensic Psychologists say -- stop showing the faces of the mass murderers. Take away the incentive to self aggrandize.

How do you do that, in this internet world of instantaneous communication? That ain't happening via legislation. And no news outlet, all which are profit driven, will cut themselves off from that data.

It may be this is here to stay. But we can at least try to regulate the guns.

I think you are wrong in saying the medical health science isn't advanced enough. I think it very much could have caught this, it's the application of medical health science that's lacking. Too many "psychologists" are happy to sling pills at people, and furthermore the system is designed so that a poor guy like this dude would never even be able to afford proper care.

I went to a psychologist a long time ago and she wrote a novel about me, I mean a novel about me for my parents. In it she said I was introverted and scatter brained.

Sometimes I wonder what impact that had on how I grew as a young adult. Maybe she should have just kept her thoughts to herself and said instead, he is defiant and has a bad attitude towards authority as displayed in many kids his age.

@VoodooV It's not surprising to me that opponents of free markets characteristically lack an understanding of basic economics or just how incentives affect human behavior. And I'm not even an economist or a psychologist.

If a criminal has a gun to your head, and there's a policeman at the scene who is friends with the criminal and let's him do whatever he wants and leave, which one is worse?

VoodooV, would you steal, rape, or even kill if I were the law and promised you could get away with ZERO repercussions? If you do commit a crime, you'd be to blame, but wouldn't I be to blame even more for not only promising but letting you get away scot free?

It's human nature. Wall Street committed fraud on a large scale, and government was in on it. Is Wall Street to blame for the fraud? Sure, but why did they do it without any fear of loss to make them think twice? Because they knew government was letting them get away with it, which they did, no bankruptcies, no arrests.

As a college, would you turn away the opportunity of making more money by increasing tuition costs if the students weren't sensitive to the prices you charged?

Likewise, if you were a grocer selling apples, and your customers were being subsidized by free loans for apple consumption, wouldn't it make your life a lot easier to charge more for apples if no one ever complained about the price?

"Back then", college tuitions were a lot cheaper, look it up. You'd expect tuitions to become cheaper with time just taking into account the technological advances, economies of scale, etc., but prices have inflated monstruosly despite these forces.

Would you rather worry that the mechanics of supply and demand won't solve society's needs for education overnight, or that cheap loans would make the cost of tuition increasingly and absurdly high for society, even contributing to an economic recession? If the goal is to make education more accessible, wouldn't it make more sense to let education become cheaper, rather than enforce a policy that led to an ever increase in costs?

>> ^Confucius:

A cat would look at the toy, then look at you, then pee on your couch for daring something so stupid and then walk over to its food bowl and force you to feed it on command.
>> ^AeroMechanical:
What would it look like for a cat? Would it be exponential like I originally figured if my data were more accurate? Are psychologists actually scientists, or are they just pretending?



You're right, that's exactly what mine did before I tossed him out the door to fend for himself and got a dog that actually appreciated his privileged life!

A cat would look at the toy, then look at you, then pee on your couch for daring something so stupid and then walk over to its food bowl and force you to feed it on command.

>> ^AeroMechanical:

What would it look like for a cat? Would it be exponential like I originally figured if my data were more accurate? Are psychologists actually scientists, or are they just pretending?