More: No, not Majority Leader
Harry Reid who now has on his game face. Forty-four is still attempting to appease the reactionaries prior to his "bipartisan" sideshow tomorrow. He is telling the media he believes in "free markets". That is just fine, but there are no free markets anywhere in the world including the United States. Truly free markets set prices and distribute goods perfectly. No unbiased economist worth his laptop, including those at the University of Chicago, would agree that the United States has perfect markets. And because they are imperfect they need regulation: not regulation that is mere public relations, but regulation that corrects market imperfections. The health insurance market in the US is broken. It is dominated by large companies that engage in anti-competitive practices, including oligopolistic price fixing usually termed "medical underwriting". Just last year alone insurance companies made $12.7 billion in profit while dropping 2.7 million Americans from insurance coverage. Another layer of bureaucracy with no real authority to set prices will not solve the problem of escalating price increases for health insurance. The President's proposal will however, allow big business to capture yet another government authority and use it as an excuse to pass on 'increased costs due to regulation' to the customer (for an example, look at the regulation of credit cards). The best regulation is efficient and inexpensive to administer. Wall Street moans about the unfair competition of a government run system that pays below market rates to health care providers. Market prices that are unfairly high because of structural defects in the market are exactly the problem. Plutocrats do not complain about their own grotesque taxpayer subsidies or antitrust law exemptions, however. Essentially, the problem leaves two choices to legislators: extend the current Medicare system to all (eliminate the market which is the least expensive solution) or allow Americans to choose the source of their insurance, either public or private, in exchanges.
US Person says, at least let the best system win in the market place.
{2.22.10}Update: Forty-four proved
US Person correct--that he is engineering a cop out on behalf of the insurance oligopoly--by omitting a public option in his new "detailed plan" for health care reform. He proposes more regulation of price increases like the
39% increase proposed by Anthem Blue Cross of California as bipartisan bait. More regulatory incremetalism is not going to hack it. Either the insurance companies get a lower cost competitor that can influence the market price for health insurance or Americans will continued to be at the mercy of insurance companies. The President and his party will pay a price for their abject service of the
Money Power at the polls in November. BoldProgressives.org sponsored
a poll in key states asking what would be more important to voters in electing Democrats: passing health care reform with the public option or passing a bill with bipartisan support. Every state polled
large margins in favor of the public plan.
[credit: Gary Markstein]
Wackydoodle sez: "The other two will show up at the White House conference."
{first post 2.20.10}Forty-four wasted a lot of political capital last year attempting to garner bipartisan support for his health care reform plans. What he did not understand and the American people did, is the Repugnants are only interested in partisan advantage in a zero sum game. They desperately want him to fail. His wooing of cynical obstructionists like 'Zion Joe' only succeeded in alienating his political base. By all accounts the President is a smart man. Perhaps there is a more ulterior motive which would explain his equivocating about establishing actual competition for the private health care sector. To paraphrase the biblical proverb: "You can't serve the People and Mammon too." If he wants a second term, time is running out for him to decide on which side he is playing, and use all the means necessary to pass a reform bill with a public option.
