The fallacy of nationalized healthcare

[tsafficianado]

Removed to avoid offending Trish

[Ben]

"... the simplest and most cost-effective solution for America's healthcare woes would be the banning of tobacco products."

You'd simply drive the market underground, spur criminal activity and then you'd have drug -- I mean, cigarette -- gangs fighting over cigarette turf.
A lot of people would be eager to corner the cigarette market... as it would be worth billions and billions. (Most likely the Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman. He'd want to get into the illicit cig market.)
Banning drugs doesn't work. I mean, the same argument could be made for alcohol. We saw how that turned out. An epic failure.
You treat any drug addiction as a medical problem. Focus on treatment, EDUCATION and prevention. (College kids by and large don't smoke. Because of education.) Banning a drug doesn't work. As we've seen with ALCOHOL and every other drug.

[Ben]

[tsafficianado]

you're suggesting that people would start smuggling cigarettes in volume into the US? a carton of cigarettes, which MIGHT fetch $200 ON THE STREET, has the volume of about half a kilo of cocaine which fetches about $30,000 on the street. So someone would forego smuggling one product for another which has a markup of about 0.7% of the other? Or someone would risk imprisonment to grow tobacco on any useful scale and forego growing marijuana to capture a dollar/acre yield that would be about 0.02% that of marijuana?
And comparisons to alcohol prohibition is not germaine, at the time of prohibition there was virtually no intention to or significant effort to enforce.

[Ben]

[Jericho]

you're suggesting that people would start smuggling cigarettes in volume into the US? a carton of cigarettes, which MIGHT fetch $200 ON THE STREET, has the volume of about half a kilo of cocaine which fetches about $30,000 on the street. So someone would forego smuggling one product for another which has a markup of about 0.7% of the other? Or someone would risk imprisonment to grow tobacco on any useful scale and forego growing marijuana to capture a dollar/acre yield that would be about 0.02% that of marijuana?

If there's money to be made, people will smuggle it in.

Here in the UK, the government loses millions every year in lost revenue due to organised tobacco smuggling.

[tsafficianado]

come on people, put on yer thinkin caps, i didn;t say a ban would prevent ANYONE from puffing on occasion. In 2009 the market for cigarettes in the US was SEVENTY SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS at (2009)current retail prices. My suggestion that black-market cigs might fetch $200/carton would balloon that figure to HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS. Surely that sort of a payday would inspire some smuggling, but please stop and think for a second what would be involved in bringing in a volume of cigarettes that represented even a teeny weeny fraction of that volume - we are talking about millions of traincars full. Not gonna happen.
Every percentage you reduce tobacco consumption has a huge impact on long-term healthcare costs, and if you think smugglers could put a dent in that magnitude of demand then i will go back to the dirty pictures and give up on you guys.

[PomonaCA]

If there's money to be made, people will smuggle it in.

Here in the UK, the government loses millions every year in lost revenue due to organised tobacco smuggling.

Someone needs to smuggle in some spelling and grammar, the UK could use it.


Ok, that was harsh. I'm sorry.

[trish]

Primarily I am a 'scientist' with a degree in Economics. In simplified form the attached graph suggests my take on 'nationalized healthcare', with an emphasis of the impact of reducing the capitalist incentive in the healthcare system. Take a look, and before you go on attack THINK about the simple principles I am trying to convey. This is a 'cocktail napkin' sketch, there is nothing 'accurate' about the particulars, ...

There's nothing accurate about the qualitative trends either. There's simply nothing accurate about the graph. Why don't you give us the link to a credible source for the data and let us draw the graph, Mr. Scientist? lol

[Jericho]

I'm sorry.

You certainly are.
But, by all mean, keeping trying, you'll get there eventually.