Competition: The Missing Link in a Monopolized Health Insurance Market

By Pete Stapp

pstapp56@gmail.com

Competition, essential to economists from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, is now portrayed, through blustering media repetition, as a radicalized Bolshevik notion since it comes to a monopolized health insurance market by means of public option--by government—the only entity large enough to compete with monopolization. Yet the industry begs, by policies harmful to its customers, for competition.

 Monopolized markets, privately run for-profit, can deliver neither health care, nor news.

 In the Congress, a hidebound Republican Party is frog-walking conservative democrats away from single-payer policies which would bring competition to the health insurance marketplace.

 Yet the Transition Report on Competition Policy compiled by the American Antitrust Institute states: that “…competition is the preferred regulator of business behavior.” The conclusion is undeniable: competition lowers costs. Competition causes expansion in industrial-policy variation. Competition is the market’s invisible hand and bailouts directed to financial cartels are tantamount to the admission that Congress, over several administrations, failed to maintain competitive markets.

 FDR used to claim there were no accidents in politics. For failure to properly regulate commerce, members of Congress will simply claim it was not their intention. Yet the aggregate of coincidence points to legislative intent, folks. Therefore, one need only look at Congress’ PAC funding to see.

 The Senate Finance Committee could move to lower health care costs by initiating repeal of anti-competitive legislation like the McCarran-Ferguson Act which would open the health insurance cartel to antitrust enforcement. Instead, competition is inhibited in order to support existing monopolistic and cartel formations.

 Thus the Finance Committee’s policy-making elite snubs the practicality of enacting measures against anti-competitive practices while openly relying upon the continued abandonment of federal antitrust enforcement--both which further the erosion of competition. It also ensures that the industry’s captive customer base undergoes additional harm from systematic denial of vital medical services in support of corporate/investor profits.

 While competition is the health of our economic system, well established corporations will naturally collude to eliminate it by simple self-interest and is why constant vigilance by Congress is required.

 It is not true that free markets self-regulate; unrestrained, undisciplined markets are deregulated markets that hinder rivalry and rush toward monopolization—toward anti-business and the brute-force application of corporate economic might alone--wiping out competition and consumer choice along a dangerous trail of fraud and deceit. Government, the necessary evil, provides the proper restraint, discipline, regulation and enforcement which makes an economy work for everyone, the poor, the middle-class, and the wealthy.

 The Senate Finance Committee cannot act to lower health care costs without inflicting the industry with genuine competition. And it refuses to do so. Thus the Senate seditiously maintains a predatory health insurance market.

 The 60 member democratic majority is, in part, complicit with the shrinking ranks of the republicans in forging a “no-changes” health care bill unpalatable to the public. Many in the Senate simply care mostly about the relationships they’ve forged with large corporations. Their word, commitment and pride, are vested in those who pay to get them elected and re-elected.

 Congress’ historical failure to maintain market competition has left us to deal with the wretched truth of their policies—that the exertion of extraordinary corporate influence on congress is the most fundamentally obvious example of conflict of interest anywhere. Powerful corporate lobbying practices subordinate the most fundamental act of citizenship to artificial business mechanisms that can never be citizens. This is what happens when congress understands the natural human weakness to accept bribery then sanctifies it with legality.

 Such weakness is amplified in current members of Congress, who, as knowing adults willfully place Americans under the heel of a new kind of anti-competitive power—one completely alienating to our Constitution, our Republic and its Democracy.

Portions of Pete Stapp's article on competition were published in the Opinion section of the Greeley Tribune on August 27, 2009.

Comments

[JamesDX]

Maybe this is me talking nonsense, but it seems like Google isn't a company run strictly by the top and they seem to be doing quite well.

[health insurance]

I think that you need to start somewhere with healthcare.I agree with most of is being proposed and disagree with being put into a high risk pool. I like having a choice in what coverage I choose.

[Pete Stapp]

Currently, health insurance is dominated by a private for profit corporate cartel denying competition via the high costs of entry to the industry. This action monopolizes the health insurance market ensuring thru anti-competition, that you have no genuine choice between competitors (because there are no competitors) to lower the overall costs and provide choice. The choices you believe you have are just the narrow range of differences offered that do not lower costs while the private monopolized market continues its control over price and supply.

Government is a public monopoly albeit one that we have a say in. Even competition by another monopoly--public monopoly v. private monopoly, would de-monopolize the health insurance market and immediately drive down costs of private health insurance corporations who fear losing business to genuine competition. In a gov't single payer system, high risk individuals would be given priority as they should since their need for care is immediate. This is exactly the opposite in most cases with private health insurance as it seeks healthy clients which statistically assure its maximization of profits while it statistically denies payment for serious conditions as people age and or are injured.

[pandora]

The choices you believe you have are just the narrow range of differences offered that do not lower costs while the private monopolized market continues its control over price and supply.

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