The evils of Socialist Education

[cyrano]

If we offer a public option for education, then that will mean all private schools will have to close--what chance do they have, against the juggernaut of Big Gummint? Plus, then Barney Frank will decide whether kids deserve to go to class or not! Obama is establishing Dumb Panels where they will send your handicapped child to an internship at a petrol station or force them to work bussing tables at IHOP!

Hitler's Germany had public schools! What more need I say???

Comments

[technocowboy.livejournal.com]

How about a Public Safety option? Does that mean we have Burninating panels and PewPew panels to decide who gets to have their fires put out and who gets saved by cops?

[evilmagnus]

We only have a finite number of cops. Why should the Government decide, thru their socialist '911 call centers' who should get a cop and who will die from the gangbangers? With private mercenaries, you, the customer are assured the best possible service through the application of 'teh Capitalism'. Assuming it wouldn't cost too much to respond to your call. And your premiums are up to date. And you're inside the coverage area. And you have no pre-existing record of having ever called the cops, even if it was to help someone else.

[cerulean-me.livejournal.com]

LOL! Great point :)

[miss-friday.livejournal.com]

I realize that you are trying to be satiric in drawing parallels between public education and public health insurance. However, even a cursory glance at the current state of public education will reveal it's staggering failures that have beset it for the last 40 years, and will beset it for the next 40 unless drastic action is taken.

Dare to take a close look at the current state of public education (or sink up to your elbows in it by working for them) will reveal flaws within flaws within flaws. Will reveal structural and systemic problems that are so easy yet impossible to fix your head will explode trying to comprehend the irrationality of it.

No public education is not a good parallel for public health care. In fact, it is an endorsement for anything but. For the majority of students (not the best and the brightest) private education works, public education does not. This is why in the worst economy in 40 years, parents are scraping every dime they have to pull their kids out of public schools and put them into private ones. (Private school enrollment this fall is way up everywhere in the Bay Area.)

I'm not afraid of Barney Frank or Barack Obama running health care in this country. I'm afraid of the bureaucrats that they (via 8 proxies) will hire. You want to see the future of public health care, take a close look at Medicare (ballooning costs as far as the eye can see) and the Veterans Administration (where they have a nasty tendency to amputate the wrong leg). There are your parallels, such as they are.

Sorry about the rant. I'm a wee bit passionate about the subject.

[evilmagnus]

I, too, used to work in public education. Specifically, public education reform thru private enterprise. And whilst I agree that public schools suck for many students, I think you're missing the point:

private education works, public education does not

Yes, but for most of the people for whom public education fails (black urban children, white rural children in certain states), private education simply isn't an option. It's not that private schools don't exist - it's that there's no way they can afford to attend. So it's either the public school (which also allows mom to go to work) or no education at all.

Medicare is the most efficient medical delivery system in the country. Sure, it has problems, but efficiency isn't one of them. Administration forms 6% of total costs. Compare to around 30% of total costs in a typical private insurer / private hospital. They also pay the least for prescription medications - savings they pass on to their patients.

And the problem with the VA is funding, pure and simple. They're massively, chronically, shamefully underfunded for the care they provide, and it's a national disgrace.

[miss-friday.livejournal.com]

I work in both private and public education currently and see both sides of the fence simultaneously. Not all private schools are of the $30,000 tuition variety. Many can be found in the inner city and cost less than $10,000 per year. About the same amount the state pays for that child to be educated in a public school. Give parents the choice which school those funds should follow their child to. But we're straying from health care...

What are the costs of the prescription drug benefit? How are those compared to the projected costs which were used to pass the benefit? What is the quality of care under Medicare? Why do so many people find it necessary to have private insurance as a supplement to Medicare?

More and more doctors are withdrawing from Medicare (or refusing new Medicare patients). Do the greater private insurance payouts off-set the loss of Medicare income? Or is there another reason?

"Massively, chronically, and shamefully underfunded." I recognize that phrase. It's frequently used by the NEA and the AFT.

[evilmagnus]

More and more doctors are withdrawing from Medicare (or refusing new Medicare patients). Do the greater private insurance payouts off-set the loss of Medicare income? Or is there another reason?

Reimbursements - it can cost more to do a procedure than medicare will pay for it, often by a substantial margin, depending where you are in the country. But hospitals often can't give up accepting medicare patients for other reasons, so they swallow the losses or, if they're lucky, pass the costs on to the private insurers. Here's a report from 2005(!) on reimbursement rates. It's worse now:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Medicaid+reimbursement+rate+gap+grows+again-a0134674210

"Massively, chronically, and shamefully underfunded." I recognize that phrase. It's frequently used by the NEA and the AFT.

The who? I don't know those acronyms, but I have a couple of friends who are docs in the VA system - real good docs, with impeccable training, who chose to work the VA rather than private industry (where they'd make much more money). Don't forget that the previous administration actually cut VA funding whilst at the same time massively increasing it's workload. You can't expect it to shine under those circumstances.

What are the costs of the prescription drug benefit? How are those compared to the projected costs which were used to pass the benefit?

Excellent questions. I'm dubious that the projections were based in reality, just because of the horse-trading that went on during the bill's passage. Remember that medicare drug coverage is a new benefit.

What is the quality of care under Medicare? Why do so many people find it necessary to have private insurance as a supplement to Medicare?

Quality of care depends on the hospital you go to, not your insurance plan: providers are different from payers. Medicare doesn't ration procedures the same way a private insurer does, either (their criteria of need tends to be better, and they don't pull your coverage when you make a claim).

As for why some folks keep private coverage - well, I guess they can afford it and see value to it. This is probably particularly true for prescription drug plans.

[roisnoir.livejournal.com]

This is why in the worst economy in 40 years, parents are scraping every dime they have to pull their kids out of public schools and put them into private ones. (Private school enrollment this fall is way up everywhere in the Bay Area.)

This may also be because the state has pretty much decimated the funding for the public schools and several of them closed.