Free Market can’t do Healthcare
The origins of our current healthcare system date back to FDR. He initially proposed a publicly funded healthcare system which was opposed by the American Medical Association. During the wage and price controls of WW2, employers were then permitted to provide health insurance tax-free in lieu of gross pay. Thus, our current confusing and inefficient system was born.
Eventually, the system proved unable to provide adequate insurance for the poor and the old; also known as the most vulnerable members of our society. As such, LBJ established Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 as additions to the Social Security Act. Approximately half of all seniors in 1964 were uninsured. Now, virtually all seniors have coverage thanks to Medicare.
Medicaid is not quite as comprehensive. The main problem that the ACA tried to address was poor people’s lack of access to insurance. But as of 2002, there were 40 million Medicaid enrollees, and about half of those were children. The ACA dramatically expanded those numbers. ACA would have expanded even more except for the initial Supreme Court case that rendered Medicaid state expansions optional. Because of this, poor adults and children suffer needlessly at the hands of politicians.

The private market has had plenty of time to address those issues. They have failed, so the government — rightly — stepped in. Free market advocates who ideologically claim that the free market is always more efficient obviously have not educated themselves on the health insurance marketplace. Companies had 20 years to provide poor and old people with insurance. Either they weren’t doing it well, or they weren’t doing it at all. How much time are we going to give the market? With the passage of one law — and subsequent additions in later years — government was able to solve this problem. With the passage of the ACA, 21 million people have gained health insurance. If more states accepted the Medicaid expansion, this number would be even higher.
Has a private company offered a product that has reduced the uninsured population at that scale? No. Have they been able to offer competing products or coverage since Medicare and Medicaid were passed, or since the ACA was passed? Of course not. Why? They’ve certainly had the time. Apparently they have the know-how and smart people, instead of “lazy government bureaucrats” as conservatives like to call government workers. Let’s face it: by the time the ACA was passed, they had about 60 yrs to figure out how to cover poor people (and old people!) and they haven’t been able to do it. This is most likely because it is hard to do those things and turn a profit. That is understandable; it is also exactly why and when the government should step in to provide a service. Conservatives who ignore that realization reveal themselves not as critical thinking, intelligent people, but as partisan ideologues who aren’t actually working to serve the people, but simply their own party’s power and money interests.
Written — 7/24/17
