rod03801:

> I'm just disgusted by the waste. That infuriates me. If I waste my own money, I pay
> for it dearly. But that's just it. I personally wasted it. Someone else wasting my
> money? No thanks.

I entirely agree with this. All governments, big and small, are inefficient and wasteful. I chose two examples at the extremes because in both casers there is inefficiency and waste. Guatemlans pay little taxes, and they get little for it. Austrians pay a lot, and get a lot for it. Both cases at the extremes work inefficiently. In a perfect world governments would operate in balance but in reality petty corruption and poor management lead to either money being wasted or in worst cases simply stolen or given to private companies run by friends.

> Personally, I'm fine with how healthcare always has been, for the most part. There
> are things that need looking at, of course! But for the government to basically take it > over? No no! It's going to become a mess. And DEFINITELY if it means gourmet
> menus in hospitals, free room and board for relatives in there, and 3 day stays for
> relatively minor procedures!

Again, my examples are extremes. My cousin in Guatemala is a doctor. He gave me a tour of a publicly run hospital there. They had no disinfectant, and they couldn't afford to repair the windows. So the operating theater had an open window and I could see plain old house flies flying around the room. Outside there were natives mostly, peasants who were too poor to go anywhere else. Then when my brother had his twin boys they ended up in a private hospital for 5 weeks. My brother paid about US$10,000 per week so they could stay in the intensive care unit. They were born prematurely. The clinic was the best money could buy, even better than you would see here in Canada. If you have the money, private is the way to go. If you are poor, you get insects flying around you as you get operated. That is what you get with next to no state involvement in healthcare.

Austrians of course sit on the opposite side. The state absorbed the cost and paid for it with high taxes. Austrians can also pay for private insurance. However, why would anyone? You already pay taxes, so why give even more hard-earned money to a private company.


> And you say historically, privatization has not always been the best solution. Well,
> I'd say government bureaucracy has been the best solution even less.

I think the worst thing is this. Privatization does not eliminate bureacracy. It merely transfers it from the public to the private sector. Privatization does not really save money to the state. It merely transfers tax dollars from the state into the hands of a private (or publicly traded) company. There is no guarantee that having a private company do things for the government will necessarily lead to tax savings.

The theory has always been like this. The state is bureacratic and inefficient at running things. If the state instead tenders contracts to private companies, then those companies have to compete for the contracts and only those that can do things at a better price will get the contracts. That leads to savings because the government has to pay less as companies compete by offering lower prices.

In reality things are completely different. Contracts are no always granted according to price efficiency, but rather based on other factors such as lobbying and other relationships between government and company employees.

Bureaucrats grant contracts according to friendships, campaign donations, political affiliations, sometimes even religious affiliations. That means that pricing is often inefficient. Large companies with more capital can use that capital to influence the outcome of the contract tendering process. More often than not, large companies will win over smaller companies. The state then becomes a sustainer of monopolies and large corporations.

So bureacracy and petty corruption mean that privatization is not always the best solution to state inefficiency, and very often it can exhacerbate the problem. Privatization would work in a system free of corruption, influence meddling, lobbying and special interest groups. There is also no guarantee that a private company can do things at a lower price. A company would if it could lower employee salaries and use cheaper materials and resources. However, that is not necessarily the case. Now we just took tax dollars, and made somebody rich with them, with no guarantee of savings for the state. As always, theory and practice don't always go together.