The Huffington Post has a story about Sen. Inhofe refusing to even read any health care bill that comes from this administration, because blocking reform can only help Republicans.
Way to go, #@)^&%$!@)#&% put REPUBLICANS before AMERICANS.
But what did I expect, really? It's Inhofe.
However, when I saw a Democrat saying pretty much the same thing, also on Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
I had to pick up the cudgel.
If you've read the link, you know that Rep. Marshall feels that patients are divorced from health care costs, so they don't put pressure on their doctors when their doctors order a lot of tests, and that's why private health insurance isn't working, and if we'd just let the invisible hand of the free market work the way Adam Smith theorized it would about 400 years ago, everything would be fine.
WRONG. FAIL. WRONGWRONGWRONG. FAILFAILFAIL.
First, Rep. Marshall is putting the responsibility for ordering too many tests on PATIENTS instead of DOCTORS. Hold on a damn minute here. I don't know what tests I need, that's why I went to the @#)(&^@!#&^% DOCTOR. Do you know what tests to order for your condition? Did you get a medical degree?
More importantly, insurance is heavily regulated. It's not purchased in a free market. Repeat After Me, all you Ayn Rand zombies - there's no free market with insurance.
Insurance is heavily regulated for a reason = they can't be trusted to pay claims as they promised. This behavior is so well-known and well-documented legally over generations that a special fiduciary duty evolved in law just for insurance companies called the "duty of good faith and fair dealing". This fiduciary duty sometimes works for commercial insureds because they can do stuff like hold off shipping until hurricane season ends, or decide not to build on that landfill, or charge really high prices to cover their risks. In other words, they have options to protect themselves other than purchasing insurance.
But health insurance companies have NO INCENTIVE to behave when the thing being insured is a necessary, like health care, because they have a captive audience. They can charge whatever the market will bear, which obviously will leave a lot of people out. People who need health care, and who don't have any option but private health insurance.
I shouldn't have to keep explaining this. Insurance is regulated, and therefore the regulators (government) are the best point of oversight and the regulators (government) are the logical source of insurance administration, because the regulators (government) are accountable in the end to the people while insurance companies are only accountable to their shareholders, despite their alleged fiduciary duties. That is why single payer health insurance, Medicare for ALL, is the best, most efficient health insurance delivery system. Failing single payer, we must have a public option.
By the way, tort reform pretty much got rid of any leverage against insurance companies from fiduciary duties to the insured.
So Rep. Marshall, I now nominate you for a primary opponent. Unless you pick up an Econ 101 textbook and get cracking. I don't care how @#($&@)^@#$ sincere you are when you are WRONG.