Good stuff, dude.

Sounds like I was more of a Star Wars man than you were. Also, at about age 10 I was really obsessed with a movie called “Logan’s Run.” Sex was a big part of it, with Farrah in the movie soon after her nipply poster changed us into men and also some weird sex stuff in the movie, like picking partners off a TV and going through a slow-motion orgy tunnel.

Granted, many of my students nailed the assignment. Alas, it is so hard to remember them in the midst of all this other nonsense.

It depresses me that students never stop being stupid.

A tidge.

Pretty much one hundred per cent off topic, but this.

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.

I’m sure it will all be great, but I want to get first in line to read your Little Red Hen.

(Also: wouldn’t that make a great comic.)