Posted by Sir Four at 12:42pm Sep 27 '12Health insurance requires regulation, is my point. There's the idea that we can improve health insurance simply by letting companies sell across state lines. In the absence of federal legislation, then, insurers could set up shop in the least regulated state and engage in practices that some states have sought to outlaw for their citizens....such as my state which banned "pre-existing conditions" years ago. Deregulating and selling across state lines would only be a benefit to those customers who are ideal in the insurers' eyes. It'd be a detriment to everyone else.
What I'm talking about with libertarians is the tendency to adhere to a certain maxim regardless the specific circumstances, which is: less regulation is always better because the market always produces the best solution if left alone. I would grant that this is true for a wide range of things! It's a great starting assumption, and one liberals ought to give more credit to. But there are always cases that break the rule, and need to be treated differently.
Aside from health insurance, another case would be privately-owned utility companies. They too must be well-regulated due to the nature of the product. A town is beholden to one water company afterall; there aren't going to be multiple providers digging up roads and laying pipe to compete for your business. So it falls to the government to ensure water quality meets standards, prices remain predictable, outages are dealt with quickly, etc.
Another case is private industries that pollute. Because pollution travels beyond private property and even beyond state lines, impacting communities in sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle ways (e.g. fine particulate matter increasing respiratory illness in ways that are nigh-impossible to prove in a court of law yet are statistically elevated in areas down wind from coal power plants), pollution must be regulated--or else it's just a freebie for companies to emit that stuff and bear no cost from it directly.
What I'm talking about with libertarians is the tendency to adhere to a certain maxim regardless the specific circumstances, which is: less regulation is always better because the market always produces the best solution if left alone. I would grant that this is true for a wide range of things! It's a great starting assumption, and one liberals ought to give more credit to. But there are always cases that break the rule, and need to be treated differently.
Aside from health insurance, another case would be privately-owned utility companies. They too must be well-regulated due to the nature of the product. A town is beholden to one water company afterall; there aren't going to be multiple providers digging up roads and laying pipe to compete for your business. So it falls to the government to ensure water quality meets standards, prices remain predictable, outages are dealt with quickly, etc.
Another case is private industries that pollute. Because pollution travels beyond private property and even beyond state lines, impacting communities in sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle ways (e.g. fine particulate matter increasing respiratory illness in ways that are nigh-impossible to prove in a court of law yet are statistically elevated in areas down wind from coal power plants), pollution must be regulated--or else it's just a freebie for companies to emit that stuff and bear no cost from it directly.
Yes, that's it exactly - Sir Four