1. Presumably you have documentation to back up your claim that we are paying Halliburton three times what it used to cost to feed our troops when it wasn't contracted out (whenever that was).
2. Bringing Enron or utilities in general into this is a lame effort at a straw man argument. First of all, electric utilities were not "privatized" - they were deregulated. The mix or private, for-profit utilities and municipal, non-profit ones has not changed materially.
Second, the "price bubbles" and shortages of electricity that you refer to, and the high costs to CA ratepayers, were creations of a) NIMBY attitudes and environmentalist obstruction in CA limiting new capacity, b) a poorly thought out deregulation scheme implemented in CA and, c) the moronic handling of the situation by Gray Davis and his incompetent administration.
Third, whether Enron was a corrupt or criminal enterprise has nothing to do with deregulation. The crimes Enron executives are going to jail for are various counts of financial fraud - primarily defrauding shareholders and creditors by manipulating financial statements and stealing money through self-dealing in off balance sheet transactions and special purpose entities.
Fourth, electric utilities, at least as far as residential service goes, are still generally technological monopolies and were regulated historically for that reason. The health care industry isn't even remotely a similar situation.
3. The US healthcare system does a very good job of delivering health care and, as you know but surely won't admit, those who can't afford private health insurance are not denied health care in this country. The real issues are 1) the economic disconnect between consumers and providers of health care that leaves only insurance carriers and employers who pay insurance premiums with any economic stake in health care decision-making, and 2) the financial burdens on the system from a) government and insurance industry red tape and b) the out of control plaintiff's bar.
I don't know quite how to solve those problems (except, perhaps, for the last one), but then I don't claim to. I do know, however, that socialized medicine is a proven failure, as is socialism in general, and I have much more faith in the invisible hand of competition than the heavy hand of government mandate and control to find workable solutions. |
