Monday, August 29, 2005
(11:06 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Hypothetical Scenario
Let's say that in theory I had some reason to research the health insurance market. Let's say that it seemed to me that the market size for health insurance would be equivalent to the amount earned in health insurance premiums that year -- sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it? Well, let me assure you -- there is no information on that at any of the trade group or corporate advocacy sites. None at all. I suppose you could extrapolate based on the information on individual health insurance costs, etc., but nowhere do you find a number saying, "The health insurance industry is a US$X billion industry," because then the supposed "crisis" in health care would be all too obvious -- that is, a bunch of rich men have a lot of money at stake in making sure they take some kind of cut from these crisis-level health costs, and therefore we will never have a nationalized health system.It's the political economy, stupid! And we're not allowed to say, flat out, "We can't have a rational solution to the health care system because certain people and corporations have positioned themselves to profit from our health care crisis and so the federal government is powerless to change the situation." We're not allowed to say, for instance, that corporate greed is the primary problem here, because that would be "class warfare," and the "economy" would be harmed if the health insurance industry were basically abolished. And perhaps we could say that part of the reason that the health insurance industry will win out against the federal government is that the health insurance industry has actual real money, whereas the federal government has to keep rolling over its credit card with a free balance transfer every time a solicitation comes in the mail.
