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Comment by Broken_Hippo | Hacker News Reader

And neither does a market, regulated or not. You can generally find bad examples of such things.

At least it is possibly to cut back your use of toilet paper without dire consequences so long as you have clean water. It might not be pretty or wanted for most of us, but it is possible while still keeping clean. Bidets might get more popular, if available, and others would learn from the folks that use cloth diapers and real washclothes on their babies.

This situation isn't as easy to fix when you replace toilet paper with medication or health care. It isn't like one can simply make do if they are out of medicine.

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EDIT: Disregard 'you consider the NHS...' - got your comment mixed up with somebody elses.

The actual point is that nationalization tends to have mismanagement and shortages as an outcome, and private markets do not (at least not to the same extent). You consider NHS to be an example of a well run nationalized system, and yet the NHS deals with chronic rationing [0] [1], has queues for many things (and actually lets you pay to jump place in line) [2]. I'd hardly call that efficient or well run - instead, I'd call it symptomatic of central planning. W/ regard to people using bidets, cloth diapers, and washclothes - in a system with chronic shortages, people don't have those either. During the 90s and 00s I thought that perhaps China's simultaneous transition from poverty and shortage to (relative) wealth and abundance (which was driven by their transition from state control to capitalism) would have finally put this 'the state could eliminate shortages and give everybody everything' nonsense to rest, but it seems that people have very short memories indeed (or just weren't born yet when the major experiments in nationalization were underway).

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/dec/08/nhs-rationing... [1] http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2015/apr/24/ra... [2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3104106/NHS-charge...

The shortages in the American private market is simply much more difficult to see. Folks might theoretically be able to go to the doctor, but not having the money to do so - instant shortage of healthcare. There are wait times here for doctors, but can you really tell me that the insurers in the states have no mismanagement? They had to pass a law to cover pre-existing conditions like diabetes. There is a lot of waste in the system in the states - there is truly no reason for an expensive MRI machine to sit there empty most times unless it is reserved for emergencies... yet they are such.

No system is perfect. My experience with private care has been in the US, and my experience with nationalized is in Norway. I've tried to go to doctors both places with waiting lists of weeks, and the waiting is a bit longer for specialists here than there. Give and take. I'd still prefer to actually be able to get health care when i need it regardless of having the finances to do it. I actually prefer to have a mix of the two - strong national care with an option to be private.

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