Quote from: NewLiberty on November 05, 2013, 05:57:59 PM

Quote from: Hawker on November 05, 2013, 05:42:45 PM

Quote from: User705 on November 05, 2013, 04:17:59 PM

Quote from: Hawker on November 05, 2013, 11:32:45 AM

Quote from: User705 on November 05, 2013, 07:19:29 AM

Quote from: Mike Christ on November 05, 2013, 06:29:43 AM

Here's a place where the free market doesn't apply for the free market requires rational actors; there's nothing rational about getting hurt, passing out, and waking up in a hospital with a bill.

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Why would the free market not apply? What can be more rational then planning properly for emergencies that involve you living or dying? If anything it's irrational to hope that some government run "free" emergency care will help you out.

Lets take a typical Saturday night admission to an emergency room. Girl gets hammered and falls on her high heels and breaks her ankle.

Can a drunk person be expected to make rational plans? No.

Do we want to live in a society where a drunk woman with a broken ankle is supposed to look after her own care? No.

Under these circumstances, there can't be a market solution.

So in your example this woman made no prior emergency plans whatsoever via insurance and to top it off got drunk and the rest of society now should be forced to take care of her. We'll in that case why bother with any market solutions at all if people don't need to plan for their own lives. Talk about perverse incentives.

Correct. The market has its uses. The care for the sick, drunk and injured is not one of them.

Sure it does, the market is operation through the government which reaps huge taxes through the liqueur tax. They have a strong interest in encouraging people to become drunk, that they get hurt is just a fringe benefit for them as it validates the nanny state.
Government is a market participant, it is just that one participant that has the right to kill you and take all you have if you happen to be in a geography it controls, but in order to maintain folks in that geography it only harvests those it can most easily get away with, such as this foolish woman who didn't bother to remove her Louboutins after getting drunk.

Women have always gotten drunk and have been suffering broken ankles since high heels were invented. You have conceded that there is no way a market can be run for drunk injured people. Our cities are full of such people every Saturday night. So we provide emergency rooms. If you want to advocate that we leave them to their fate, feel free to do so.

By the way, I'm not picking on women here - drunk guys who beaten up are in the same position.