So far, we have allowed the market to develop and oversee the healthcare system in the US. According to the NY Times this morning, small businesses are buckling under the weight of health care costs. So, I’d like someone who prefers a market solution explain why it is logical to allow the markets to remain in charge of health care. I don’t want to hear about small government or tea parties. I want a real economic argument for why choking small business is central to the American ideal.
Though I generally consider myself to be a liberal, in this area my conservative stripes show. I am very concerned about the protection of small businesses, and it doesn’t seem as if the un(under)regulated healthcare system is currently taking any interest in doing that. Small businesses employ 40% of the labor force, and the current market system hoses them in a number of ways: they can’t negotiate with insurance companies like corporations can, and they don’t have enough employees to reduce risk enough to reduce individual premiums. They current system “favors” large-scale corporate employers all the way through.
Our history of anti-trust legislation shows that corporate interests don’t take a “care for the community/good neighbor” approach on their own internal moral compass. Some government intervention, through statute, has been almost constantly necessary. (I do understand that many would debate this, too.) Some government intervention in healthcare seems similarly necessary to keep Main Street solvent. Many are suggesting that the current jump in premiums is a cash grab prior to legislation that might deplete insurance company earnings. I guess I have to take the term “earnings” with a little bit of irony. Perhaps “take” might be better.
When the day is done, I feel as if the current healthcare debate is really a referendum on corporate versus individual interests in our country. I sure hope that corporate domination isn’t America’s only lasting legacy to the world. We have done cooler things than that, like invent jazz and public libraries.
One Comment
I’m letting this comment through because it is so interesting rhetorically. Look at how tax incentives in this argument equal a move toward socialism. That is a very interesting move. He also conflates my discussion of markets with the term “free market,” a term I never actually employed in the post. They are not the synonymous, in my opinion.
Also note the assumption here that employers pay health expenses, which of course they do not do, they pay (often only part) of health insurance. My employer never pays a doctor or hospital. That I do, all the time, even though I have “excellent insurance.” I also nuked a link because this blog isn’t going to boost any traffic for any entity in this debate.
The commenter does open an interesting argument that health care might actually be highly regulated, but notice again that the comment doesn’t prove overregulation, it is only asserted. He also doesn’t address the small business angle, which was the core of my post and the question I posed. In healthcare and in just about everything else, the small business is under attack by corporate America.
The only infuriating part of this comment is that creeping in of the “socialism” specter, that old rhetorical move that is used to suggest that anything other than unfettered freedom of the market is a slip into the hands of socialism, this time engineered by progressives who are so patient that they were willing to wait 60+ years to destroy capitalism from within by offering greedy corporations payroll tax breaks for health care benefits back in the 50s.
Of course, Medical Savings and Loans would be only too happy to have access to that money to invest and then fall back on the bailouts FDIC when their unregulated investments fall through, because something like that has never happened before.
Still, this shows one more layer of interest for me in this debate, so I’m letting it through.
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I worked in the government health care sector for multiple years before quitting in disgust.
First, the system we have right now is not the free market. It is highly regulated at the state level.
The very fact that employers pay people’s medical expenses rather than people paying medical expenses is a sign that things are woefully wrong.
This system was engineered by progressives of a half century ago. The architects of employer based health care intended it to be a step toward socialized medicine, just as Obama position the public option as a step toward single payer.
In a free market health care system, individuals and families would own their own health care resources and would negotiate directly with doctors. Medical expenses that fell out the means of a person to pay would be paid for by openly acknowledge charitable or public assistence.
At present market rates, people will buy about a half million dollars in insurance. If you add in payroll taxes used for Medicaid, you would find people pay in about $750K to $1 million a piece for health care. If people kept that money, 98% of the people would be able to pay for their life time medical expenses out of pocket.
The really insideous thing insurance does is to concentrates wealth. The insurance companies have all the money that people would have saved for their medical expenses and they use it for insider leverage.
The free market reform of health care would break apart employer based insurance and use a form like the Medical Savings And Loan. This system uses a combination of savings accounts and loans to assure that policy holders are equipped to finance their health care.
Regardless, your post is based on the false assumption that the high regulated system government by tax incentives is the free market.
The broken system of employer based insurance was created by the progressives of yesteryear with the specific intention of it being a stepping stone to socialism.
I’ve been in this debate for 30 years and have seen the manipulation of public opinion first hand.