Over the course of the late 19th and much of the 20th century (this part being my own observation, not Empire of Liberty), there was a push to return to the 18th century Public Corporation model, as new regulatory agencies increasingly dictated the business practices of regulated industries and many industries started requiring specific approval from a government department or even the legislatures before a new company could enter the market — this started out as a reaction to the excesses of the Gilded Era, where corrupt politicians would frequently grant favorable treatment to specific private interests in return for personal kickbacks. The deregulation era of the late 70s through the mid 90s was a move back towards the private corporation model, which the Obama/Reid/Pelosi government is currently attempting to reverse.

The truth though is all of this is muddied by publicly held corporations, which are in fact fictions created and sustained by the state which frequently destroy real, natural private business.

Publicly held corporations emerged from business practices and contract law before they were sanctioned by government.

Your statement would be equally true if you substituted “marriage” for “publicly held corporations” and “families” for “private business”.

That which The State touches it corrupts.

I work in the health care industry, and I guarantee you that *everybody – from the CEO’s down through the surgeons and other doctors, to the guy sweeping the floor – is in it for one thing – the money they earn. If you stop paying them – they will go home and begin seeking a job elsewhere. And Dean, so would you if your employer stopped paying you.

(* The only exception to this, might be all those sweet little old ladies known as hospital volunteers. But they are a special case.)

And then there’s this:

“…most health insurance (which is really arguably a service contract scheme, not an insurance scheme) ”

Thank you for finally agreeing with me. I have been arguing that point with you for quite awhile now, and it’s satisfying to see you have finally changed your mind. A little credit would have been nice, but I will take it however I can get it.

For B in particular, I would like to quote the judge in the Heinlein short story “Life-line”:

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.

Individual and family businesses are fine things, but they have no special right to have members of the public do business with them. If a big business can provide a better service at lower prices, should customers be coerced into patronizing the inferior or overpriced small business?

The difference between community ratings and group insurance pools is that nobody forces you to join a group insurance pool. There is an enormous moral and practical difference between jumping and being pushed, not least of which is if you’re jumping you have a chance to look at what’s below before you make your choice.

Does it really make sense for profit not to be the primary driving force in something like this? In a competitive market, profit does a fine job of motivating providers to provide good service at agreeable prices. Even in a market as uncompetitive as the heavily regulated US health care industry, for-profit hospitals have generally been outcompeting nonprofits. If profit were really so evil, wouldn’t it be the other way around?

I suppose the word here comes down to “choice.” If “lose your home, your livelihood, and everything important to you or work for/with this corporation” is a choice, then I guess no one is
“forced” to work for or with these gigantic bureaucratic collectivist entities created by the state (i.e. publicly held corporations).

Nevertheless, “gigantic bureaucratic collectivist entities created by the state” is exactly what publicly trade corporations like GM, IBM, Microsoft, Walmart, etc. all are. As well as most medical insurance providers.

As for community ratings: what the heck is the difference between “community ratings” and group insurance pools as they’re structured now? They already serve the same function, AND, the way they’re structured is mandated and heavily regulated by a wide array of Federal AND EVEN MORE by each and every state. We too often seem to act as if the government didn’t already set this stuff up, but they’ve been integrally involved for generations.

As for taking profit out of basic medical care, a question naturally comes up: does it really make sense to make profit the primary driving factor in something like this? Costs are not irrelevant and neither patients nor providers should be shielded from it, but… profit? Really? That should be the #1 driving force?

What private business are you forced to deal with? Just about every private business I deal with has plenty of competitors and substitutes. Comcast and PG&E are the only exceptions I can think of in my own life, and they’re both heavily regulated and government-supported mercantile entitites. And I could do without the former’s services completely if they got too obnoxious, and even the latter I could sever ties with by paying to install solar panels and fuel cells and having natural gas trucked in.

I do have to object to this though:

We’ve been over this before. I’ll summarize my arguments from last time here for your convenience:

1. While employer-provided group insurance shares many features of community ratings, there’s still a big difference between it and a federally-mandated nationwide system of community ratings. You can see confirmation of this by looking at the way prices have spiraled upwards in the states which have statewide community mandated community ratings systems.

2. Employer-provided group insurance is a bug, not a feature. Two of the biggest problems with our current health insurance system are the wedge EPGI drives between power and responsibility by hiding costs from patients and doctors alike, and the way EPGI shackles people to their employers.

3. Of course doctors want to be able to give their patients whatever they want without regard for costs, providing the doctors still get paid. That’s true for almost any profession, but that doesn’t make it a bad idea.

The best things about private businesses are that they’re free to innovate in how they do business on their own initiative, and that nobody forces you to deal with them at all if you don’t like how they do business. The former is destroyed by the regulatory framework, and the latter is destroyed by the mandates.

The best things about socialized goverment programs are that they’re directly democratically accountable to our elected representatives, and every dollar we put in (if corruption is controlled) comes out in the form of benefits to the public or the direct cost of providing those benefits.

The flip side of each is that in private businesses you ARE frequently forced to deal with them whether you want to or not, and of course the flip side of socialized programs is almost exactly the same.

The truth though is all of this is muddied by publicly held corporations, which are in fact fictions created and sustained by the state which frequently destroy real, natural private business. From my perspective it’s rarely easy to say what’s optimal when dealing with them; both act in opposition to the individual far too often.

I do have to object to this though:

In the case of the Reid and Pelosi health care bills…we’re enforcing a pricing cartel by instituting community ratings…”

The bill doesn’t institute community ratings; almost the entire health insurance industry is based on community ratings already, and has been for generations. That’s how most health insurance (which is really arguably a service contract scheme, not an insurance scheme) were set up in the first place and how they’ve always operated.

We already have a heavily regulated industry here, and “heavily regulated” is how most people want it whether they admit it or not. Indeed, most health care practitioners currently in the system want it to stay that way. Quite a few people in the medical profession, indeed, very much want the whole thing on a non-profit model because they don’t want to be slaves to the almighty dollar when it comes to who they can medically help and who they can’t.

“There are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice—the love of power and the love of money. Separately, each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but, when united in view of the same object, they have, in many minds, the most violent effects.”

Government micromanagement of the economy has, of course, precisely the effect of uniting these passions in exactly the manner Franklin feared.

More here.