Dude, what free market?
May 23rd, 2008 | by Brian Schwartz |
The big lie behind pushing politician-controlled health care is: that the United States has a free-market in health care, and that it’s to blame for costs of medical care and insurance being so hight. AFL-CIO executives John Sweeney and Mike Cerbo perpetuate this in a commentary in Thursday’s Denver Post . To be fair, I have no evidence that they are lying, that is, trying to deceive anyone. So I’ll frame my critique as trying to understand them.
Sweeny and Cerbo write:
For working families, the choice is obvious. The AFL-CIO recently conducted a survey of more than 26,000 Americans, providing strong evidence that the free market is not working.
What do they mean by a free market ? Earlier in the article they write
Without the incentive of being able to provide untaxed health care benefits, many employers would drop coverage and workers would be pushed en masse into the private health care marketplace.
Here they refer to the federal tax code, which allows companies to buy you an insurance policy tax-free, but forbids you to do so if your company offers insurance. This doesn’t sound like a free-market policy to me. In a free market, people are free to exchange goods and services without interference of a third party that penalizes or encourages certain transactions. Yet, this tax policy rewards consumers who buy insurance through their employer and penalizes those who seek other means. How can this be a free market?
(Other means include an individual policy or through other groups such as professional organizations. I’d like to learn more about regulations against this latter type, which is also government interference in the free market.)
Sweeney and Cerbo address benefits mandates (I assume) when they write that under McCain’s health care reform plan:
existing regulations would also be eliminated. For example, state laws that mandate coverage for mammograms or hospital stays after childbirth could be ignored at will.
How can Sweeney and Cerbo claim that there’s a free-market in health insurance when state laws mandate such coverage? Such laws make it a crime for consumers to buy a policy without mandated benefits. How is this a free market? See more about how mandates drive up the cost of insurance here and here.
tags: Mike Cerbo, regulation, unfree market, unions
