It *is Corporate Welfare*.
These are FOR PROFIT corporations, and HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF TAXPAYER MONEY GET PAID DIRECTLY TO THEM.
Pennies, or trillions of dollars, neither the amount, nor the "directly to them", makes it corporate welfare. All sorts of government spending goes directly to companies, not all of it is corporate welfare. If your going to make a serious argument that it is corporate welfare you'll have to try another tack.
The exact boundaries of corporate welfare aren't ones of universal agreement or clear precision, but the main point is that the money is given to the company for the purposes of helping the company or its owners. The purpose of the government money here is to reduce the costs for those insured by Medicare Advantage. It maybe be a great program, a normal program, or a really horrible stupid program, but whichever it is, its not corporate welfare, certainly not because "HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF TAXPAYER MONEY GET PAID DIRECTLY TO THEM", not even when its typed in all caps.
A free market case can be made against anti-trust law in general, but its controversial,"
Not a good one.
One that at least has something to it. Most of the enforcement of anti-trust law has either been too slow to help, or has been targeted in ways that doesn't clearly benefit consumers. (OTOH that's not really an argument against anti-trust law as a concept as much as its an argument against how its worked in practice in the US.)
Exercise of MONOPOLY POWER DESTROYS and SURPLANTS Free Markets.
And, about the only form of 'Capitalism' that can exist in the absence of Free Markets is what is often called 'Crony Capitalism'...
A monopoly that's not legally protected, still operates in a free market. One that IS legally protected, would be better addressed by removing the legal protection (at least as a first step).
Crony capitalism is often about granting protected monopolies. It isn't an automatic or necessary result of having a non-protected monopoly, it also isn't at all likely to be a direct result of such a state of affairs (but it may be an indirect result, as jealousy of the monopoly might drive special interests to get the government to give them one).
it must 'promote competition' SO MUCH and that is why between 20 and 30 of our 50 states effectively have OLIGOPOLIES controlling their local health insurance markets.
The percentage that could reasonably described as oligoplies is lower than that. In any case your fact doesn't address the point. The fact the competition might not be as great as you want it to be, or even (as you claim) that competition is severely lacking, does not suggest that any particular policy asserted to benefit competition does not in fact do so. Your argument would be like responding to a Russian WWII tank designer that the improved armor scheme he invented had saved Russian soldiers lives, with "Saved lives?!?, millions of Russian soldiers have been killed in the war." |
