ONTD Political

Health Insurance companies are exempt from Anti-Trust legislation.

10:06 am - 09/29/2009
(or: Its the Laws the government has passed that makes health care prices so high)

Why is health insurance the only business that has an exemption from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act other than Major League Baseball? If the delivery of taxpayer trillions by our politicians to the banks to support their fraudulently paid bonuses hasn't shown you what our current government's values are, check this link out.

Through the governmental negligence that we as voters allowed, a health care system was created in which a single health care company controls at least 30 percent of the insurance market in 95% of the country, including states like the following:


Maine, where Wellpoint controls 71% of the market.
North Dakota, where Blue Cross controls 90% of the market.
Arkansas, where Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 75% of the market.
Alabama, where Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 83% of the market.


This monopoly, combined with the misaligned incentives that trap people in employer-based health care, is causing the skyrocketing health care costs that are hurtling our nation towards bankruptcy.

I don't know what's worse: that most Republicans seem to be against ending this unfair legal protection for an entrenched industry that is ruining our country with their non-competitive practices, or that most Democrats seem to be threatening this arrangement only as a bargaining chip to push for a meaningless public option that wouldn't be accessible to almost 85% of the population?

Instead of improving our country, through creating and enforcing free and fair markets, our politicians are currently engaging in backroom deals, most of which protect the very companies who profit the most from these disastrous outdated systems -- industries like health insurance and big Pharma.

While we clearly have the ability as a group of 305 million to update the system that is American Health Care and move our country into the 21st century in the process, it's becoming clear that we may not have the leaders to do it.

Instead of seeking answers to the problem of paying for and providing medicine, we are doing the exact opposite. Taxpayers' money is being played with by politicians who are desperately trying to protect the competition-stifling, false security of the monopolistic employer-based health care system and its outdated, over-charging, under-delivering ways. Given the least consideration are those affected the most -- the patients and the doctors who care for them.

This country's founders built an ingenious system of checks and balances for a reason: to ensure that no special interest or group could use government power to commandeer the creative and economic wealth of our nation to their own ends. How much longer must we live in a country where the citizens are subservient to the banks, health insurance companies and any other special interest able to control our government at the expense of our the most basic principles of fairness, our future as a nation and, as a result, our freedom?

LOOK ITS A SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-ratigan/why-would-we-let-them-rig_b_302480.html
mylaptopisevil 29th-Sep-2009 05:41 pm (UTC)
IIRC, isn't the theory behind why it has to be anti-trust because they need as big of a net as possible in order to actually cover the costs of paying for services people actually need? IE: With 100% of the market, they get more people who won't get sick, thus they can be more capable of paying for people who do get sick?

Granted, that's why I'm all for a public option and would gladly welcome government-run health care as opposed to just government run health care coverage—because if the best way to really pay for medical care is to get as many people as possible to pay into it, then it sounds like a system that would better benefit as a government system than an for-profit company.
andyh3000 29th-Sep-2009 07:17 pm (UTC)
That's A problem, one of many ... that's what's so frustrating about this whole "debate," there are literally dozens of simple solutions (eliminate this weird regional pseudo-monopoly system, open Medicare to everyone and charge a reasonable premium to keep it solvent, regulate insurance as a nonprofit industry, etc.) that would improve upon what we have now, and yet the people who claim to want reform seem insistent on throwing up the most draconian and confusing "fixes" they can come up with.
bludstone 29th-Sep-2009 07:20 pm (UTC)
Indeed. There are so many people (here) who are taking an authoritarian solution, rather then a freedom-based solution. With your stated methods, it would create jobs while improving health care. The government solution creates beurocratic jobs, of people who need to justify their positions, rather then work to help people.

Sure, they are strong words, but right now the government has chosen to set up the system to these ends. I do not think we should trust them with our health care, and find it offensive that we are under threat of violence to pay for such.
___closetome 30th-Sep-2009 04:39 am (UTC)
Well said.
ididthatonce 29th-Sep-2009 07:56 pm (UTC)
I heard a theory once that banks are in violation of the Anti-Trust Act. No idea how I feel about that.

But... jeah. Fuck yeah free market woo!
mindrtist 29th-Sep-2009 08:05 pm (UTC)
OT: I'm going to take this moment to renew my hatred of Ticketmaster.
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