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Comment by Lewisham | Hacker News Reader

This is the rub that I never understand with right-wing politicians who prize the free market, but then enable things that actively hamper it: tying health care to having a job, tying startups to people who could somehow afford college or just didn't go.

If you want to enable the free market, you have to remove the barriers.

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> tying health care to having a job

Since when is that a right-wing thing? Employer-provided healthcare started as a result of (left-wing) price controls. And Obama and a Democratic congress purposely avoided that issue when they "reformed" healthcare.

Now hold the phone. Obama and a Democratic congress avoided that issue because it would have had ZERO traction with some huge campaign donors. That's still a mark against the administration, but it's also the reality of a government ruled first and foremost by capitalist lobbies and greed.

Second, left-wing price controls did not start the current healthcare model, empty hospitals beds, profit-based medicine, the great depression and WWII created employer-based healthcare [0].

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1140451...

> Obama and a Democratic congress avoided that issue because it would have had ZERO traction with some huge campaign donors.

You described special interests, not right-wing capitalists. Special interests including people who would be confused then upset about losing their employer-provided healthcare.

> left-wing price controls did not start the current healthcare model

Sure it did, at least as the employer involvement is concerned. FDR froze wages, so employers provided other benefits, like company cars and free healthcare.

I'm not saying there's a clean way to get there (keeping employers and healthcare separate) from here (the current mess). But it's not a right-wing conspiracy or something.

No, but nor was it a left-wing conspiracy either. People in the US like to throw mud at each other about whose to blame for this shitty situation, but we're all in this together.

Also, I fail to see the difference between special interests and capitalists. They may not be right-wing capitalists, but the folks who run Blue Cross, Anthem and Harvard Pilgrim sure as hell didn't want a public option anywhere close to the finished ADA legislation, and they paid big money to make sure that happened.

But either way, something has to give, because health insurance and for-profit corporations are an oxymoron. When you're for-profit and offer insurance, that makes your primary operating procedure to charge as much as you can for the least amount of service.

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