The Private Option

1a. 

To "control" a market means that the companies involved control supply, and can therefore control price.  Economics 101.

How do companies control supply?  I'm leading somewhere.

1b.  I said, "please describe how an oligopoly forms -- without government assistance."  You proceeded to say that oligopolies form because of government interference.  That's exactly my point, thank you: we should dismantle the anti-competitive regulations we have in place, thereby improving things for consumers.

2.

What do they game?  Regulation:  Corporate governance limits, anti-monopoly statutes, merger and size limitations, campaign contribution limits, lobbying restrictions, patients' rights provisions, rescision limits, reimbursement and coverage, are you freaking serious??

Yes, I'm serious, thanks.  So, to keep their stranglehold on the insurance market, they game:

• Corporate governance limits: How does this help them control the market?
• Anti-monopoly statutes: That's eliding the question of how they get big enough to form a "monopoly" (or oligopoly).  How are they beating other potential competitors?
• Merger and size limitations: Also eliding the question of how this helps them beat the competition down.
• Campaign contribution limits, lobbying restrictions: Ah, so they're beatingthe competition by using government intervention?
• Patients' rights provisions: They're beating the competition by mistreating their customers?  Why do their customers keep coming back?
• Rescission limits: From what I know of this, this is fraud, and I agree we should prosecute this to the hilt.  Why are companies that do this not being outcompeted by firms with better reputations?
• Reimbursement and coverage: Again, beating the competition by mistreating their customers?  Why isn't this catching up with them?

3.

You seem to be under the impression that the big insurance companies will fold in the face of regulation before the smaller companies will.  But typically, regulatory compliance costs fall hardest on smaller companies, which tends to create the kind of oligopolies and monopolies you claim to abhor.

No, you show a complete ignorance of how a market works.  Hardly surprising, Pick, since you seem steeped in helping address Big Corporation interests.  Small companies exist BECAUSE they are more responsive and can fill market niches the big boys have to let go.  They cannot compete with Empire, therefore they will write the policies that Empire won't or can't.

You got me.  I do help address Big Corporation interests on occasion, but I have no interest in saving them from free market competition.  I believe that the bigger they are, the more important it is that they be allowed to fail.

Think I'm ignorant?  Why do incumbent Big Corporations so often line up behind regulation with high compliance costs for their industry?  Could it be that they can afford to handle it (scale and access to capital), but their smaller competitors cannot? 

Take licensing restrictions.  Try starting a restaurant that serves alcohol in California; you will pay through the nose trying to figure out how to comply with byzantine ABC paperwork, while big chains like TGI Fridays have a department of people who do nothing but handle liquor license applications.

Small companies can and do compete with the Big Corporations where they are allowed to do so.  I personally know people who work in small businesses that would do far more business if bad, inefficient government regulations didn't prevent it.

Moral of the story: regulation kills far more niches than it can possibly create.

4a.

Would you object to a voucher up to the variable cost of sending a child to public school?  That way you could reduce class sizes in public schools, maintain the infrastructure and still give families a real choice between schools.

Yes, I would object to any sort of voucher program.  The money is better spent improving whatever problems exist in Public Education, rather than funding for-profit Charters or Academies which have had very mixed results.

Public schools have very mixed results, which is putting it charitably.  And this would mean more money spent on each public school student, so I can't see why you have a problem.  Don't teachers constantly advocate for better infrastructure and smaller class sizes when they try to pass propositions for bond money?

If some parents are so dissatisfied with their public school that they are willing to take a chance on those "mixed results" for their children, why shouldn't they have the choice to spend some of the money that would already be spent on their child, only in a different school?

4b.

Would you object to vouchers for kids in the bottom half of the test-score distribution, and/or kids with a history of disciplinary problems?  Their fully funded public education isn't working so well for them, and they may be dragging down their public school classmates.  Meanwhile, the research I've read indicates that kids in the bottom half of the distribution show the greatest academic improvement from voucher programs, and parents report much higher satisfaction with the discipline when their kids move to voucher schools.

Yes, I would object to ANY vouchers for ANY kids.  If there are better methods, better ways to help these kids, bring them into the public schools like they do already in America's best-performing school districts.

You assume that public schools can replicate what those private schools are doing for the kids who benefit from them.  But that assumes that you can just change to a superior "method" -- and that public schools would be willing to do so without any competition showing them how it's done.

Have you considered that a completely different environment might be the reason certain groups of kids show much greater improvement in voucher schools than other kids who make the switch?  It sounds quite plausible to me that different environments could work for different kinds of kids.

America's best-performing school districts may succeed for all kinds of reasons you can't replicate in other districts: parents who have the initiative and resources to move to good districts for their children, better environments, teachers with extraordinary talent choosing to teach in the best schools.

4c.

How about vouchers for minors who have already dropped out of the public school system?

For minors who have already dropped out of the Public-School system, I would keep their money and use it as they are already doing in many systems to establish new public Academies and special schools under the PRESENT public school systems.

You think this is more effective than offering a widespread voucher system and allowing schools to pop up everywhere to serve them?  Remember, these are kids who are so fed up with the public system that they gave up on it.

4d.

The only people who favor vouchers are

a.  Evangelicals and religious folk who want state-funded religious education, 

b.  Parents who want free Private School, and

c.  Corporatists who want to make money off America's parents.

I'm none of the above.  I could definitely support an all-secular private school system, I'm not a parent, and I'm not in that line of business.

But why do you have a problem with parents who want affordable private school education for their children, but not with parents who want free public school for their children?  Are the former greedier than the latter somehow?

And wouldn't it be good for those capitalists to spend their time trying to figure out how to provide education that people want for their kids?  Wouldn't it be good to get them to raise capital to build new schools and hire new teachers?  If they can provide something that parents prefer over public schools, why not allow them to make money?   After all, everyone working in the public school system is making money off of America's parents.

4e.

If you want your child to turn down a Public-school Education and go to the Private School of your choice go for it. This is America.  Go to work and pay for it.  Don't expect your tax dollars, which are busy providing a better society for everyone by kicking in your share of the money needed to help special-needs kids, emotionally- and learning-disabled kids, terminally violent kids, disadvantaged and dysfunctional kids go to school, to follow you.

I just got done arguing for vouchers to specifically help those special-needs, disabled, terminally violent, disadvantaged and dysfuctional kids go to a school that will treat them better than the public schools that are clearly failing them, and you rejected it.

I'd love to see you tell a parent of one of those kids (maybe one of the poor families that benefitted from the DC voucher program) that they can send their kid to another school when they can pay for it, instead of letting them choose how some of the public money (at least some of which was taken from them in taxes) is going to be spent on their child.

And they're already working for at least some of that money.  (Everyone pays some kind of federal, state and local taxes.)  Are their kids not part of that "better society for everyone" you're talking about?

There hasn't been a free market in health care since WWII!

The whole reason we have employer-based health "insurance" are the wage and price controls of the New Deal. Medicare and Medicaid then killed any semblance of a free market in 1965. The high cost of U.S. health care is because of government. So how is turning more of it over to government going to make things better? Cheaper just means government-imposed rationing, which is how it has been accomplished everywhere else. Better requires less government.

In actuality, the health care per capita GDP gap between the U.S. and the other OECD countries is exaggerated because they don't spend enough. As I explained in another post, the blunt measures of life expectancy, live births, etc. have little to do with the health care system and its financing; cultural and genetic factors and statistical methodology are more responsible. Real medical outcomes such as cancer survival rates, life expectancy post-MI, etc. are the measures that are more reflective of health sytem characteristics. The U.S. leads in almost all of these legitimate measures.

Trying to argue against irrelevant leftist talking points and convince in-power ideologues that live in an alternate reality is causing much of the political frustration. This "through-the-looking-glass" health care plan must be stopped as it is nothing more than another leftist Trojan Horse for control of the economy (i.e. "climate change" energy taxes).