The reason no one concurred with your choice or offered a "third alternative" was because the question was, and is, silly.
Failure to ask simple questions is why some of our systems are so fouled up.
but rather than point out that embarrassingly obvious fact
If non-profit and for-profit companies do the same thing, then the problem cannot possibly be simply profit. I'm not embarrassed by so obvious an observation.
Nor about asking the question. If the answer to the question is, indeed, that profit is the key underlying problem, then the solution is simple and cheap--make the insurance business non-profit. If the problem is price competition or something else and we still have price competition of that something else in the new system, then we won't have solved the problem.
If you start with a pre-conceived solution or a bias and don't ask these questions, you not only don't come up with the most efficient solution, you may not solve the problem at all.
I tried to turn the question to where the insurance companies were on the profit/loss scale
And I didn't follow you because I was trying to stay on course. If you want to turn the question in another direction, then deal with the question, don't just meander down what appears to be a garden path without giving a turn signal. A standing question requires closure one way or another before proceeding in another direction (unless of course one is just having a "conversation"). Otherwise everything written about the garden path is just noise to be skimmed and ignored. And people talk past each other. Pointing that that the question hasn't been dealt with isn't nit picking.
"I see where you're going but" or "I think that the better question is" work quite well as turn signals. Turn signals aren't embarrassing. They are courteous and useful.
That's where the oligopolistic/not subject to antitrust laws/price setting factors became instructive.
I find oligarchy and interesting topic. Not relevant to the matter I was pursuing, but interesting, particularly given the increase in oligarchic potential that comes with the new legislation. Had that topic been raised in some other context, I would likely have engaged it. |
