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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (263061)	4/29/2008 6:30:11 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I bring up Walmart because, when they are in an area, there tend to be few (sometimes no) choices for consumers as Walmart drives other companies out of business. To the extent that this concept has any validity at all, its vastly exaggerated by many. Many Walmarts face quite a lot of fairly direct competition. Even the most isolated Walmarts face some competition, and they face the potential for much more should they stop giving the consumer what they want (not necessarily perfectly or even close, but better than other companies). Even a monopoly (and Walmart is no monopoly) can be effected by competitive pressures. Unless its a protected monopoly (through government favoring it, or through its own use of force) competition can arise if it gets lazy, inefficient, and unresponsive. Here you go again, changing the argument when I show you that your position is simply incorrect. Rejecting your strawman, and applying my actual argument isn't "changing the argument when you show my position is incorrect". Now you are saying that the benefit isn't an issue if it didn't go to the middle class? The benefit is an issue when it doesn't go to the middle class. Your statement is both unconnected with reality, and unconnected to any of my statements. And its not just an issue, but its often something that's hard to get rid of. But not AS hard in most cases as it would be if the benefit went to the middle class. I want single payer which, by definition, puts for-profit insurance out of business. True single payer would. However few people would want that. Most people with good insurance want to be able to keep that insurance, rather than accept a lowest common denominator from the government. If the government does provide the lowest common denominator insurance they would probably accept it, some of them even eagerly, but many would want to be able to buy their own extra insurance with better coverage. You could try to have the government pay for "better coverage" (sometimes called "gold-plated insurance") for everyone, but that is not likely to be affordable. Beyond the political and practice aspects, I would have a great problem with the justice of the idea of outlawing provision of private insurance. Then there is the record of the idea. In Canada it didn't work so well and is breaking down, with private insurance growing, and court cases allowing it. Instead of individual lawsuits against Healthnet, we would have Congressional Hearings with everyone yelling at the administrator and, probably, cabinet secretary. Overheated grandstanding by congressmen isn't exactly the best way to get a good system.