Sauce for the Gander

>>People wouldn't gamble if they had no confidence in the bookie paying off.<<

With health care, not taking the gamble can be unbearable. But that's about what it takes to make me roll those dice: when a complaint is making it impossible for me to sleep, or work, or is otherwise unbearable. The chance of mishap for me is always high. The chance of trouble-free success is low. I consider visiting the doctor to be a very long shot made out of desperation.

>>Yeah, sure: morphine only works if you believe it does. <<

Not exactly. It works better if you believe it does. So does pretty much every other treatment. You're adding the placebo effect to the base effect. That makes a difference.

>>People who spend money on quack or con artist don't like to admit they've been had. They play back into the hands of the spin doctor, the chiropractor, etc.<<

They do the same with the mainstream options, and some of those are little better. Statistically speaking, even.

>>With any form of actual pain treatment (all of which could be dismissed as placebo) you pay for what you get, as you get it. With insurance, you pay for what you may never need, and may not get from the insurance company when you do need it.<<

The problem is that almost nobody working a normal job can afford more than the very cheapest medical supplies or services. Unless you are downright rich, many health services are simply unaffordable -- you pay more for an hour than you make in a day or a week, and a single significant injury or illness can cost more than you make in a year. It's a matter of trying to pay for institutional-scale expenses with an individual-scale budget. The alternatives are to do without, or to pay for "insurance" and pray that if you do need to make a claim, enough money will come back to knock the bills down to something you can almost afford.

That is evil.

>>Majority rules does not apply to science. A thing works or it doesn't.<<

If only it were that simple. That rule applies to many sciences that deal only with the abstract or concrete aspects of the world. It does not apply to many sciences that involve living things, and pretty much does not apply to any science involving humans. You just can't pin down all the variables. Even in conventional medicine, drugs and other treatments work well for some people, marginally for some, and not at all for others. This is especially true in some fields, such as cancer or mental health. And frankly a lot of those treatments are little better than placebos.

Conventional medicine works badly for me. I've had so many experiences where a thing worked poorly, not at all, or backfired that I approach only with great reluctance and an expectation that whatever they try many not work. That tends to subtract the placebo effect from everything, which means that very little works even close to as well as it's supposed to. And then people do not want to believe that when I tell them, until they have seen one of the bizarre results, which as you may imagine is not a demonstration I wish to furnish.

It makes me more flexible about what I consider "works" and "doesn't work." I approach everything with both hope and skepticism. If it works, I keep using it; if not, I try something else.

>>They couldn't stay in business if they didn't have many customers convinced that they provide services as advertised. They're like the chiropractors and neighborhood preachers, I think: successful con artists keep the rubes coming back for more.<<

Oh, they're great at convincing people. They sell "peace of mind." Which is great, unless you need to make a claim. Then you're screwed.

>>We'd have to find some figures, but the fact that people do keep buying insurance may be a result of #1 -- they haven't yet made a large claim so
expect it to be paid as advertised.<<

Some studies have supported that, yes. Another heavy support is that most bankruptcies (I think it's about 60% now) are for medical bills, and of those, most (about 80%) were from insured people.

>>In fact a good many young healthy people have rationally chosen to go without insurance -- which is why Obama's plan will force them to buy it.<<

No matter how healthy you are, you can still get hit by a car or something like that, so it's always prudent to have access to good health care. However, I'm extremely against any plan that FORCES people to buy health insurance. Most people who can afford it already have it; most people who don't have it can't afford it. And people who hate the industry shouldn't be forced to support the people who are getting rich from it.

A revolt can work. The catch is, you need overwhelming numbers. It's like storming a castle. The government has massive power to enforce its desires, wrong or right. In order for a revolt to work, that means flooding the system with so many challenges that not even the government can afford to apply force to all the people who are breaking that rule.

With health insurance mandates, that probably won't work, because most people will pay for health insurance. If people who can't afford it refuse, there will probably be few enough that they can simply be fined into bankruptcy or thrown into jail for being poor. That's a vile thing to do, but our government has kissed off its ethics long since.

However, a revolt also relies on a groundswell of rage and resentment. That we do have; the insurance companies have made a majority of people HATE them. So it's possible that a spark in one place could flash into a wider conflagration based on that smouldering resentment.

The drawback to that, of course, is that enraged people tend to smash things. Reasoned reform is therefore greatly preferred over revolt and riot.