An interesting parallel between single payer and free trade agreements.

[ljm2002]

83. The global argument is a ruse...

...by multinationals in order to make their predatory practices more palatable.

The fact is that third world workers are being exploited. Their hopes of a better life are often nightmares of long hours and low pay -- the same problems that our workers fought and died to change. Factories in Bangladesh where hundreds die in a fire (a la the Shirtwaist Fire back in the day), factories in China where now there are nets so that people who jump won't die. And also, prices of goods do not always reflect the lower prices of manufacturing. I've always wondered how Nike gets away with their $100+ shoes; certainly their shoe prices did not suddenly become affordable after they moved their manufacturing overseas.

Also, I am not arguing that administrative jobs are not necessary. However, the level of administrative work required in our current Rube Goldberg contraption of medical insurance / health care system is ridiculous. You have administrators in the private insurance companies -- many of whose job is dependent on how many claims they can deny; you have hospitals and medical practices who must keep extra administrators to deal with the patchwork of different insurers, and who also must deal with denied claims as a constant issue.

Your argument about cheaper goods is the same one made by the multinationals, and it is spurious because it is short-term thinking. Once we lose the ability to support ourselves, we have lost our independence too. Sure the world is more intertwined than ever before. But we have become like third world nations in that nowadays, we ship raw materials such as lumber and fibers overseas, only to have finished goods shipped back to us. We lost our garment industry and our furniture making industry. We import steel to make our bridges (ask the people of the San Francisco Bay Area how well that has worked for them on the new Bay Bridge), and these days we even import chicken from China.

Not only that, but many of these practices are environmentally disastrous. Shipping goods around the world, raw materials in one direction and finished goods in the other direction, is hugely wasteful of resources and polluting. We need to re-think it sooner rather than later if we want to have a remote chance of reversing the ill effects we already see.

Finally, you make a fundamental mistake by equating $200 in healthcare costs to $200 in goods. Once you get past the level of simple survival, goods and healthcare are simply not the same. If I don't have $200 to spend on a new TV set, I don't get the TV set. Oh well. If I don't have $200 to spend on a medication, I don't get the medication. My condition gets worse and I may end up in the emergency room or worse. They are simply no the same thing, and the trade-offs are not the same.