Big Business Socialism

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Now I don't think I had heard of Timothy P. Carney before so I read some of his other Op Eds.  He is certainly anti government but he takes it far beyond the big business conservatives and seems to recognize that what we have now is not free market but big business socialism.  There is a great deal to agree with in his commentary in The Washington Examiner to day even if I don't agree with his solution to the health care cluster fuck we have now it would probably still be better.  But I do applaud him because he recognizes the problem - there is nothing "free market" about our current health care system.

Insurance companies lobby for big-government regulations, subsidies, mandates, and tax-code distortions that funnel them money, keep out competition, and stultify innovation. These policies preserve the employer-based health-care system that mocks the idea of free-market competition. Then they cry "unfair competition" when government threatens to encroach on their government-protected monopolies.

 But they're not just lobbying against a government option. Today, health insurers are lobbying to force you and me to buy their product or face a tax hike (the individual mandate).

 They are lobbying to force entrepreneurs to buy insurance for employees (the employer mandate). They are lobbying for more subsidies paid for by us taxpayers. In short, they are lobbying against regular people and against the free market.

I have thought for a long time that most of what is wrong with our health care system is the fact that it is employer based - the individual does not shop for insurance their employer does and they are stuck with whatever plan their employer chooses.  And the government encourages and protects this system:

They also benefit from an absurd tax break--the exclusion on employer-provided health benefits that drags down wages, shifts money into their industry, increases the deficit, and dries up the individual insurance market where actual competition could take place.

Most shocking to the conscience, however, might be the special protection big government provides for insurers covering patients through employer-sponsored plans: even if an insurance company's negligent denial of coverage causes harm or death, federal law protects insurers from legal liability.

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This is an industry that thrives on government protection. But still many conservatives and Republicans stand up for it and speak as if we have an obligation to protect it. We don't.

Now here is where we begin to differ:

While a government insurance option should be opposed, we should not defend their right to exist, but instead we ought to be threatening their near-monopolies with a force as powerful as the federal government: the free market.

A free market might yield a health-care economy without HMOs and without employer-sponsored insurance as the norm. And we would all better off, except for the health insurers.

The problem is that those that are healthy will choose not to get insurance until they need it and then the private insurance companies will then refuse that insurance.  For health insurance to be cost effective everyone must be in the pool which means it must be mandatory, not unlike automobile insurance.  A single payer would be the most efficient - basic care supplied by a single payer and then the insurance companies could sell policies for those who want additional services. Not unlike the French system and they are rated 1st while the US is rated 37th.

So while Carney may not have the solution he at least recognizes the problem.