Tuesday, July 10, 2007

NHS healthfair state

I am sick to death of people saying "you need to charge fo health care
otherwise people a) don't understand its cost/value/utility, and can ask for arbitrary amounts more" - this belies a fundamental truth about large deviation theory and how humans are really bad at comprehending risks that arrive in a self-similar fashion - the way to fund health care _requires_ either that you shift peoples' understanding of risk over non-normal time frames (i.e/ you need to insure for an uncertain future, when you may either be sick for a long time, or drop dead unexpectedly, or else live longer than you thought and need more pension than you planned) or you need to _spread_ the risk over multiple people (the purpose of public, tax funded healthcare) or both - since the cost/benefit and outcome of health-care itself is a product of rapidly advancing research and technology, you cannot expect individuals to judge this correctly, so all the libertarian and right wing views on this are, frankly, bollocks.

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