[Peace-discuss] Re: marketplace mythologies was: Insurance
Companies Should Compete
E. Wayne Johnson
ewj at pigs.ag
Thu Dec 3 21:14:38 CST 2009
Ricky,
I guess I really was poking fun at Leahy's doublespeak and the ideologic
play on words
it puts him in. Patrick Leahy has contributed as much to the
bureaucratic morass that
characterizes the highly regulated practice of medicine in Amerika.
You are not digging deep enough into the medical-industrial-legal complex
and the web of rules and regulations that prevent competition.
Single-payer only changes who pays. It doesnt change the cost.
Single-payer just ensures the foxes of the medical industry that the
hens are plump and well-fed.
I want to stomp on the foxes.
One not need to call upon the dark annals of history to refute your
argument against the
benefits of competition. A few days ago I became leery that my auto
insurance was getting more and more expensive.
A few clicks on the internet last night...now I am saving $126 per month
without having
to speak with any insurance salesman at all. Competition in the
marketplace is a good thing.
Surely you are not so semiotically inflexible that you can't engage in
metaphor about the marketplace.
Perhaps you prefer to have Big Sibling make all of our choices for us?
Or just for the rest of us?
*
Regulation serves abusive corporations because it raises the bar for new
entrants.
It's another case of the collusion of the "left" at its worst ("stupid")
and the
"right" at its worst ("evil"). The "do-gooders" want more regulations
because they think that more regs will make
their miserable and pathetic fear-driven lives "safer". The
greed-driven corporate plutocrats accept more regulations
with glee, because for them it represents a way to slime their
competition out of the market.
The great bulk of the work of the FDA is no longer to provide consumer
protection but to
provide a competition free shelter for the entrenched companies who
produce materia medica.
Even the Obots bumped up against an impediment with their own goofy regs
in delivering the flu vaccine,
and the government had to declare an emergency to bypass its own
competition limiting rules.
The insurance companies paid a lot of money to their lobbyists to get
those exempting regulations passed.
Practically No one in America seems to be serious about providing decent
medical care at a reasonable price.
On 12/3/2009 5:15 PM, Ricky Baldwin wrote:
> Um ... REMOVING their EXEMPTION from anti-trust laws is "getting the
> government out of the way"???
>
> This is a common misconception of how the famous "marketplace" (a
> ridiculous name, anyway - as if Exxon and GM were just tables at
> Lincoln Square). But this misconception is at the very heart of the
> fog that keeps the economic emperors (clothes or not) in power. It is
> the insidious myth that, but for the interference of "government",
> free competition would keep businesses honest, efficient and
> meritorious, even serving humanity, etc.
>
> In fact the reality, as long history shows repeatedly, is quite
> different, and often opposite. Left to their own devices (or the
> devices they can creatively acquire) profitable businesses engage in
> ruthlessly destructive wars, the very least result of which is
> anything resembling "efficiency" -- with the possible exception of
> human needs (such as clean water, air, land, food, etc.) -- and very
> quickly consolidate themselves horizontally and vertically into
> monopolies that act as they please with the lives of the puny humans
> trespassing on the surface of their planet.
>
> It is against this trend, as a block and tackle against gravity, that
> the government enforces (when it does) anti-trust laws. But there are
> always opponents, who stand or believe they stand to benefit from
> monopolizing trends. There are others who believe this trend is so
> powerful that anti-trust laws are by nature inefficient (working
> against gravity), and the proper response of a people organized ought
> to be not just to allow monopolies to form, but in fact to aid them,
> with the eventual goal of then using the government to take them over
> and run them in the community interest. This of course assumes better
> government than we ... have ... have had ... in ... forever.
>
> (Even when opportunities arise, i.e., the bailouts, our government
> smiles and announces that the problem was the biggest corporations
> hadn't stolen enough yet, fast enough, so we'll just give it to them -
> poor, little, inefficient thieves.)
>
> Others say - as in the case of the proposed merger between NBC and
> Comcast - they are already too big; bust 'em up. They are given
> permission (by us) to run these shell games, er, enterprises on our
> land, our airwaves, using our waters and forests, etc., and we have
> the right to set some parameters.
>
> But even proponents of this view often assume that competition is
> inherently good. It isn't. It's often incredibly destructive and
> wasteful, besides being inhumane. It leads sweatshops in New York and
> Indonesia, slavery in Florida's fields and in the homes of the
> well-to-do, the brothels of LA and Thailand, etc.
>
> On a more mundane level, it's competition that meant that when we
> lived in Champaign on a certain morning of the week every week we had
> to be awakened repeatedly starting at 2am by THIRTEEN garbage trucks
> going up and down our street, each collecting a can here and there and
> moving on. This uses several times the fuel, produces several times
> the pollution, etc., as a city service - and as a result raises the
> price to the "consumer" (funny term when you mean throwing away trash,
> isn't it?). Examples of this type are nearly infinite. Yet we
> persist in the belief that competition somehow helps us.
>
> But lest we (ok, I) digress too far, the issue here is health care.
> Do these bozos deserve exemptions from anti-trust laws? Did Al
> Capone? But the real answer to our health care woes is complex,
> surely, but just as surely includes some form of universal plan that
> covers everyone - single payer, national health, something. I don't
> say its perfect in places like England and Canada - the people there
> complain about it all the time - but when they hear about "our"
> system, they react as if you just proposed cannibalism. That's how
> barbaric it is.
>
> We'd all know it if we weren't scared stiff of the Jews, Commies,
> atheists, gays and immigrants hiding under our beds and in our bedroom
> closets.
>
> Ricky
>
> "Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn
>
> --- On *Thu, 12/3/09, E. Wayne Johnson /<ewj at pigs.ag>/* wrote:
>
>
> From: E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag>
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Fw: Insurance Companies Should Compete
> To: "Jenifer Cartwright" <jencart13 at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Date: Thursday, December 3, 2009, 3:42 PM
>
> Yes!
>
> Get government out of the way (by removing the nanny-state
> corporate-welfare protection)
> and let the Free Market Operate.
>
> Amen, Sister!
>
> "a free and fair marketplace. "
>
> That's the stuff!
>
> On 12/3/2009 3:25 PM, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
>>
>>
>> --- On *Thu, 12/3/09, Patrick Leahy /<info at leahyforvermont.com>/*
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> From: Patrick Leahy <info at leahyforvermont.com>
>> Subject: Insurance Companies Should Compete
>> To: "Jenifer Cartwright" <jencart13 at yahoo.com>
>> Date: Thursday, December 3, 2009, 1:55 PM
>>
>> Dear Jenifer,
>>
>> On Tuesday, I took to the Senate floor and formally filed my
>> amendment to repeal the antitrust exemption for health
>> insurance companies.
>>
>> I look forward to debating this critical measure during our
>> deliberations on the broader health care reform bill. After
>> all, to bring insurance costs down, we've got to introduce
>> more competition in the marketplace -- and my amendment will
>> do just that.
>>
>> Already, nearly 40,000 members of our Leahy online community
>> -- including you -- have emailed their Senators urging
>> support of this amendment, and 18 of my colleagues have now
>> co-sponsored it.
>>
>> But we need more Senators to join us to get this critical
>> amendment passed.
>>
>> *Click here to invite your friends & family to forward an
>> email to their Senators too -- and urge them to support our
>> amendment to repeal the antitrust exemption for health
>> insurance companies!
>> <http://ga3.org/campaign/hcr_antitrust/forward/e8winbdz4jenb755?source=hc_anti3>*
>>
>> Our amendment will introduce antitrust oversight to the
>> health insurance industry, ruling out of bounds egregious
>> anti-competitive conduct like price fixing that harms
>> hard-working American families and raises costs. It's an
>> outrageous loophole that must be closed.
>>
>> The health insurance industry should compete on a level
>> playing field just like every other business in America,
>> large and small, so that consumers know that the price
>> they're being quoted is the product of a free and fair
>> marketplace.
>>
>> That's why our amendment repealing the health insurance
>> industry's antitrust exemption is so important -- but I need
>> your help, right now, to get it passed.
>>
>> *Click here to invite your friends & family to forward an
>> email to their Senators too -- and urge them to support our
>> amendment to repeal the antitrust exemption for health
>> insurance companies!
>> <http://ga3.org/campaign/hcr_antitrust/forward/e8winbdz4jenb755?source=hc_anti3>*
>>
>> As we move forward with debate on the health care reform
>> bill, much of our discussion will be about bringing costs
>> down while expanding and improving insurance coverage.
>>
>> This amendment is a vital part of that effort, and we've got
>> to do everything we can to get it passed. *Please invite your
>> friends & family to email their Senators now.
>> <http://ga3.org/campaign/hcr_antitrust/forward/e8winbdz4jenb755?source=hc_anti3>*
>>
>> Thanks so much for your help.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Patrick Leahy
>> U.S. Senator
>>
>> P.S. A vote on our amendment could come in a matter of days,
>> so please take a few seconds, right now, to make your voice
>> heard. *Please invite your friends & family to email their
>> Senators now.
>> <http://ga3.org/campaign/hcr_antitrust/forward/e8winbdz4jenb755?source=hc_anti3>*
>>
>>
>> *Visit LeahyForVermont.com <http://ga3.org/ct/1p57st71hUSU/home>
>>
>> *
>>
>> *Click here to donate
>> <https://secure.ga3.org/03/LFV_contribute/nLd57st7a4g1R?source=hc_anti3>*
>>
>> Paid for by Leahy for U.S. Senator Committee, Inc.
>> PO Box 1042
>> Montpelier, VT 05601
>>
>> * *
>>
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