The problem with free market, anti-regulation fundamentalists is that their arguments lead to despicable results (witness Rand Paul’s opposition to integrated lunch counters). A prime example shows up on the Missouri Record site, where grad student Caitlin Hartsell argues that if we increase costs to insurance companies by making them pay for autism spectrum disorders, those insurers might increase rates. (Characteristic of free-market extremists, she doesn’t provide numbers, or consider the possibility that the costs could be covered by reducing out-of-control executive compensation packages).
If you have a strong stomach or sense of humor, go read her obsequious offering to her Show-Me Institute bosses, and substitute any malady whatsoever as the subject. Try breast cancer or broken limbs, and you can have an argument in favor of freeing our health insurance companies from the burden of having to pay for, umm, health claims.
I don’t know if saw, but Caitlin posted a response to this blog post here: http://www.showmedaily.org/2010/06/free-market-solutions-help-all.html
*you saw.
Great response. I laughed during each of her responses. It is terrifying that someone could write what she wrote, which I posted below, and actually believe it:
“The free-market solution does not call for no oversight at all; it just divorces the government from that job. Independent certification could still be obtained. After all, most people would choose an M.D. over a less qualified person, but they could still have the choice to see a physician’s assistant (or someone of lower certification) if they cannot afford health care from an M.D. (In this way, they get something as opposed to nothing.) With competing certification, one would see an improvement in regulation, as the certifying company’s success would depend on maintaining a spotless record, a check the federal government is not subject too.
In essence, free markets are the best way to achieve the ends we all desire: quality with low costs.”
I’ve lived in countries where “Independent certifications” are given and have personally seen them given courtesy of a few thousand extra dollars. Is Caitlin honestly so naive to think this doesn’t and wouldn’t exist?
Did she honestly just promote the idea that Americans could have a choice to see someone with less qualifications to save them money–in other words get less quality health care to save money– by saying “in otherwords they get something instead of nothing?
And who would certify a company and decide the quality of their “record”? Another company? We just saw that BP, a company who had 760 safety violations per year over the last decade was still able to get certifications and continue drilling thanks to campaign donations, could you imagine the money that company and big health care could pour into a corporation?
Republicans do not live in reality. It’s official.