More Specious Arguments re: the Health Care Debate

[Joanne98]

by Deb Cupples | Apparently, the folks running The Politico are dead set against a public option for health insurance -- instead preferring a so-called "free market" approach (yes, the same "free market" approach that has, over the last couple decades, resulted in health care costs skyrocketing into the stratosphere).

Perhaps the folks at The Politico aren't capable of drawing logical conclusions based on objective examination of data from our nation's recent history.


Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman tells us:

"Judging both from comments on this blog and from some of my mail, a significant number of Americans believe that the answer to our health care problems — indeed, the only answer — is to rely on the free market. Quite a few seem to believe that this view reflects the lessons of economic theory.

"Not so. One of the most influential economic papers of the postwar era was Kenneth Arrow’s Uncertainty and the welfare economics of health care, which demonstrated — decisively, I and many others believe — that health care can’t be marketed like bread or TVs. Let me offer my own version of Arrow’s argument...."

I'm glad that Dr. Krugman mentions the article, but I submit that nothing more than a grasp of simple arithmetic is needed for us ordinary folks to understand that relying on the so-called "free market" will not result in high quality yet affordable health care.

Please hear me out:

Fact: private, for-profit companies seek to make profits. Period.

Fact: the folks running for-profit companies enrich themselves personally by (legally) funneling company money into their own bank accounts.

Fact: every dollar that goes toward health-care company profits or executives' personal bank accounts is one less dollar for us consumers to spend on actual health care goods and services.

Even hyper-Republican, "free market" loving columnist George Will admitted recently that a public health insurance option would bring down costs for us consumers:

"Assurances that the government plan would play by the rules that private insurers play by are implausible. Government is incapable of behaving like market-disciplined private insurers. Competition from the public option must be unfair because government does not need to make a profit and has enormous pricing and negotiating powers.

"Besides, unless the point of a government plan is to be cheaper, it is pointless: If the public option conforms to the imperatives that regulations and competition impose on private insurers, there is no reason for it."

In other words, a government health plan would be cheaper for us consumers, likely inspiring a bunch of us to dump our more expensive private insurance plans -- precisely because the government plan would cost us less.

Continued>>>
http://bucknakedpolitics.typepad.com/buck_naked_politics/2009/07/apparently-the-folks-running-the-politico-are-dead-set-against-a-public-option-for-health-insurance----instead-preferring-a.html#more

[Laelth]

1. Krugman is right on every point.

But the current measures being considered by the Administration still stink ... all of them.

Forcing people to buy insurance is no more the solution to a failed health care system than forcing people to buy houses is the solution to homelessness.


:dem:

-Laelth

[bemildred]

2. Yes, the "free market" is what gave us the present disfunctional "health care" system.

We regulate the heck out of health care providers, but insurance companies can do any stupid self-serving thing they feel like, and nobody holds them accountable except the occasional plaintiffs attorney in the occasional egregious case.

[MsLeopard]

3. Not for profit health care now! K&R

Not for profit health care is the only answer.