Fair enough. Though you never did say why you think socialism - even limited to one market - would work when all evidence shows that socialism does *not* in fact work. But fair enough. At some point we just go round and round.
Bush and Giuliani, and advocates of their plans, want to change the dynamic. They want to turn what has been a wholesale, buy-in-bulk business into a retail business. They want to replace a bunch of giant, sophisticated consumers possessing limited bargaining power with a mass of unsophisticated consumers possessing no bargaining power. For some reason, they think you and I can do a better job negotiating with Oxford and Aetna than Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola can.
The reason you and I can't negotiate better prices is because people don't have enough choices. Companies know that you are ties to your employer's choice. If everyone was a free agent, companies would be forced to lower prices.
And if we were doing something like buying a plasma flat screen, then I'm with you. But we're not out there doing something that we can simply go without, right? Like I can't be like, "Umm, well, none of these plan options are satisfactory at the moment, so I'm going to wait a couple of months and see what's out there at that point." The whole point is that it's insurance -- you want continual continuity of coverage
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Dude, honestly. The private sector is great for things like consumer electronics and cell phones. But to say the private sector does healthcare efficiently, or more to the point, more efficiently than government-run health care is simply wrong. And to pre-emptively answer the invariable and unrelenting argument that "Jeez, health care would be more efficient if only we got rid of the doggone regulations imposed upon us by the government" -- I will await a reference to a specific regulation or law that we can talk about. As in name one that is both pointless, ineffective and onerous. The vast majority of health insurance legislation is remediative -- it addresses a problem that existed.
Fair enough. I don't have the time to research specific regulations that keeps us from a free market in health care now, but I will have to come back to it soon.
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Why do people keep thinking socialism works?
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Bush and Giuliani, and advocates of their plans, want to change the dynamic. They want to turn what has been a wholesale, buy-in-bulk business into a retail business. They want to replace a bunch of giant, sophisticated consumers possessing limited bargaining power with a mass of unsophisticated consumers possessing no bargaining power. For some reason, they think you and I can do a better job negotiating with Oxford and Aetna than Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola can.
Exactly.
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