This is a response to ShamedJedi’s video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVo54LGLkX8
The Constitution guarantees very few rights to the people. Instead, it explicitly enumerates what the federal government is allowed to do and reserves everything else for the states to decide (see the tenth amendment). It does not guarantee a right to practice free market capitalism any more than it guarantees a right for you to brush your teeth. Instead, it says that it’s not up to the federal government to decide how the markets function nor how you practice your personal hygiene (see the ninth amendment).
The ninth and tenth amendments are tiny: just two sentences combined. I’m sure it’s very easy to overlook them. Just ask our government. It’s the willful ignorance of these fundamental blocks of our constitution that have lead us to our current crisis. Further perverting them will not make it better.
If you’re going to target free market capitalism as the culprit for a problem, please be sure that free market capitalism is taking place first. If we’re talking about almost any aspect of the US economy, it clearly isn’t. The government believes that it has the intelligence and foresight (as well as the mandate, apparently) to meddle in a system of incomprehensible dynamic complexity driven by innumerable internal forces and know what the outcome will be. They are always proven wrong.
Free market capitalism has nothing to do with the current health care industry. The industry is wrapped up so tightly in government regulation and government/corporate cronyism that even basic free market principles like supply and demand simply can’t function. The government has this pervasive idea that by forcing out free market principles they will be able to change how the market acts, but their expectations of the effects are fallaciously presupposed on free market reactions. You can’t remove something from the free market and expect it to behave as if it were still in it. For example, emergency rooms are required by law to provide service to anyone, even if they can’t pay; that is so opposed to free market capitalism that it has had the opposite of the intended effect. Instead of guaranteeing service to the few who need emergency service but can’t pay for it, hospitals have closed their emergency rooms, denying the service even to those who could pay.
The problem of the working poor is also exacerbated by government regulation. Minimum wage is supposed to guarantee a livable wage to any worker, eliminating the working poor; instead what it does is eliminate low end jobs, increase prices across the board, and drive down real wages for everyone else.
It would take a considerable feat of ignorance to assume that further government involvement in the health care system would give any better results.
A free market is the best option to regulate the health care industry because it provides the most efficiently democratic means possible. Every individual votes with their money as to how their health care is to be provided and who provides it; it’s not dictated to them from above. The free market does several things well that governments cannot, among them innovation, price reduction, and specialization. It seems these three things would be invaluable to health care consumers. Perhaps our solution to the health care crisis should be to remove all national healthcare policies and actually try free market capitalism.
