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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (42323)	3/23/2010 2:36:53 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Not with respect to the nearly $500 Billion dollars in direct taxpayer-paid SUBSIDIES that the insurance industry has received in this program since it's inception Yes in that respect, since the subsidies are put in place to benefit the consumers, not the companies. They are a payment for something, that thing being a lower price for consumers. I define corporate welfare, largely by intention, since so many things that have aren't intended as welfare for corporations still have government money flowing in to corporations. If government money flowing to corporations was the standard than any time they sell something to the government it would be "corporate welfare". If you define it more by effect than intention you set yourself up for some very complex cases, where its very hard to tell where the biggest benefit falls. Any weapons program that turns out to be mostly useless would be "corporate welfare". Programs like Medicare Advantage" would be "corporate welfare" if the companies clearly benefited to a noticeably larger extent than the consumers or any other government aim for the program. Normally you would have to engage in a very complex analysis of the program to determine that, and even after doing so you might not have a definitive answer.