Teabaggers and Health Care

[wakluvit]

I think the free market system is a wonderful way to go for health care reform. We currently don't have a free market in health care reform because insurance companies cannot compete across state lines. You are stuck with the policy you have and do not have the choice to find truly affordable health care.

An example would be Apple. Apple is making tons of money and no one is screaming about their corporate greed. I don't hear anyone saying that an iPod costs too much. Apple has given the technology industry a decade of great innovation because they were interested in, get this, profits! How dare them, I don't want my iPod anymore. This is what a truly free market will give us.

We have been brainwashed to think that our current system of healthcare is broken because of the greedy corporate executives of the insurance companies. Yes, they are driven by profits just like Apple but their hands are tied by the current Federal and State laws designed to protect us.

For a free market to truly exist it actually has to be a free market.

In terms of health care how does the free market focus on what is best for the people, the best way to treat people, the best way to cure illness? The answer... it doesn't. A corporations only obligation is to make as much profit as possible. That is the bottom line. A corporation doesn't exist to help people. There is no integrity in a corporation. There may be an appearance of integrity as a public relations gimmick but if anyone thinks that there is a corporation in existence that puts the best interest of the masses ahead of profit they would be sadly mistaken. Is a hospital there to help people or to make money? Do you think at their board meetings they agonize over losing a patient or the cost of a new piece of equipment? Is a phameceutical corporation there to help people or to make money? Look up the history of the Pure Food and Drug Act to see where an example of the down side of an unregulated free market.

A regulated free market is the best way, but wedon't even have a well regulated free market for healthcare.

Free markets give us innovation. Are our lives better because of the invention of CT Scan Machines? I would say yes. Was the CT Scan invented by the government? No. Does a corporation make a profit on the design, manufacture, and sales of the CT Scan? Yes. So, if a corporation is making a profit on a CT Scan that is having a positive benefit to us, how is that not in the best interest of the public?

That's the benefit of a free market, innovation. What incentives will Doctors and medical device companies have to be at the cutting edge of medical innovation when they are simply meeting a quota? I am a cancer survivor because I went to Johns Hopkins and had the cutting edge equipment provide me with the best radiation treatment available at the time. Johns Hopkins makes a lot of money, the machine they used on me is made by a corporation that makes money. That doesn't mean they aren't in the best interests of people. They have to be because they are one of the top hospitals in the country and therefore they make money because people go to them to get treated. Profits tie directly into the care that they give people. Now, that sounds like the America I want to live in.

Danno, go ahead and demonize corporations until you are blue in the face. Without them, this country wouldn't be the same. I'm not buying the argument that insurance company greed is the reason our health care system is broken. I believe the wrong kind of government regulation is to blame.