Danes feel Obama is greater than Jesus

[kandrathe]

Which came first, the insurance companies or the government controls on the insurance companies? Since, I think you'll agree, that insurance companies came first, then they had their chance in a free and open market before the government 'interfered'. And there's my answer to you: you want to take us back to the conditions that started this whole mess in the first place. You think that this time, things will work out right, that the free market will generate an equitable solution. When has that ever really happened? When has an unregulated profitable industry not turned into a monopoly?

Your premise is that the insurance market messed up somehow, but actually I think that in order to have a legitimate insurance market you need some government regulatory authority to insure that contracts are enforced. Otherwise, the bad guys can masquerade as good guys, under sell the good guys, then renege on fulfilling their contractual obligations. You need some level of government authority to keep the playing field fair and level. Internationally, we have this problem with bootleggers who can easily copy and distribute DVD's and CD's. So, again, when your product is a contract, or based on royalties, you need governments to help create the market in the first place. Otherwise, these industries are quickly wiped out by the pirates.

So, we agree that the mixture of government and industry is a poor solution. One or the other needs to go. If the government goes, we're back to square one which failed. So, lets just for laughs, try the other solution.

Not entirely. A big problem with the insurance market is that its roots are still in state regulation. Each state has its own rules, so a multinational, or international company needs to follow 50 different sets of market rules. There is much that can be done to reform the entire insurance market (and not just health insurance), however, it would take all 50 states surrendering their insurance regulatory fiefdoms or a US Congress with a backbone strong enough to sell this reform to the American people.

As for monopoly, I spent four years working for a regional railroad just after deregulation. Prior to that, if you wanted to ship something by rail over the regions track you had to pay the regional railroad price. Which gave rise to cheaper prices on interstate trucking. After deregulation, rail roads began to compete again and began to re-examine all their former business practices that were wasteful and not customer oriented. So, even under regulation, the worst excesses of monopolies can be expressed.

Sometimes monopolies cannot be avoided if the desired goods or services are only offered by one company. "A monopoly can seldom be established within a country without overt and covert government assistance in the form of a tariff or some other device. It is close to impossible to do so on a world scale. The De Beers diamond monopoly is the only one we know of that appears to have succeeded. - - In a world of free trade, international cartels would disappear even more quickly." -- Free to Choose, Milton Friedman