LRC: Did Romney Win a Victory for Free Markets?
Did Romney Win a Victory for Free Markets?
by Michael S. Rozeffby Michael S. Rozeff
The Investor’s Business Daily (IBD), reliably Republican in its opinions, embraces Romneycare as "a victory for market-based reform." The recent Massachusetts legislation that mandates health care insurance for everyone in the state is "a big step forward." They fancy "that the plan relies on consumers in a market, undeveloped as it is, rather than seeking to replace private insurance and dictate private care through government fiat."
As I showed in my previous article on this subject, IBD’s assessment is wildly inaccurate. What the IBD applauds is a thorough government entanglement with health care businesses that leaves intact a few empty shells that suggest a "market." A reasonably accurate term for this procedure is fascism. There is no market reform in this because there is no market left standing. When the IBD says that "Mittcare" is "a far cry from Hillarycare," it is saying that fascism is preferable to the communism it sees in Hillarycare, namely, health care owned and operated by state enterprises.
IBD is so certain that health-care fascism is a good thing that it advocates it as a "rough model for market-based, consumer-driven reform of health care nationwide." While some of this is a knee-jerk "us versus them" (Republican vs. Democrat) attitude and some part of it is the IBD’s liking for fascism per se, a good part of it is driven by plain old errors of economic thought. IBD really does erroneously believe that the market needs reforming and that Republicans (and government bureaucrats) are just the engineers to oil and tune up the market machine.
Continued...
by Michael S. Rozeffby Michael S. Rozeff
The Investor’s Business Daily (IBD), reliably Republican in its opinions, embraces Romneycare as "a victory for market-based reform." The recent Massachusetts legislation that mandates health care insurance for everyone in the state is "a big step forward." They fancy "that the plan relies on consumers in a market, undeveloped as it is, rather than seeking to replace private insurance and dictate private care through government fiat."
As I showed in my previous article on this subject, IBD’s assessment is wildly inaccurate. What the IBD applauds is a thorough government entanglement with health care businesses that leaves intact a few empty shells that suggest a "market." A reasonably accurate term for this procedure is fascism. There is no market reform in this because there is no market left standing. When the IBD says that "Mittcare" is "a far cry from Hillarycare," it is saying that fascism is preferable to the communism it sees in Hillarycare, namely, health care owned and operated by state enterprises.
IBD is so certain that health-care fascism is a good thing that it advocates it as a "rough model for market-based, consumer-driven reform of health care nationwide." While some of this is a knee-jerk "us versus them" (Republican vs. Democrat) attitude and some part of it is the IBD’s liking for fascism per se, a good part of it is driven by plain old errors of economic thought. IBD really does erroneously believe that the market needs reforming and that Republicans (and government bureaucrats) are just the engineers to oil and tune up the market machine.
Continued...
posted by Local Ale | 9:58 AM
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