Companies screwing us is the American way....
Companies screwing us is the American way....
*sighs* I give up.
Private industry=evil
Government=saints
No sense in arguing any further.
How does an insurance company profit? 2 ways - squeezing providers to accept less and denying benefits. Now tell me what value they add to the system? Profit for doctors makes sense. Profit for drug companies makes sense. Those can encourage innovation. Profit for insurance doesn't help innovation because they use the power to pay less for drugs and doctors lowering the innovation profit and competition would create. And they have a $1 to $1 incentive to screw over the insured.
I never said government is flawless and stop demagoguing the issue. I just don't get the idea that we can wipe away regulation and not worry about getting screwed over by private industry. Hell, even car salesmen have regulations they have to follow put in place because they were screwing over car buyers. Remember that the next time you buy a new Ford that's actually NEW and a FORD. Who do you think is in a better position to regulate commerce than the government?
Wow. that was weird. We will just pretend you didn't even ask that question.GodfatherofSoul
Am I to assume you're against government regulation?
Of course. We agree.godfatherofsould
We use government to protect our interactions with each other.
Not the absence of laws, there is definitely no absence of laws and regulation as there is an over abundance of laws and regulations...it is simply the absence of PROPER laws and regulations because our legislators are often very ignorant of the industries they regulate.godfatherofsoul
We keep removing regulations and having major economic disasters based on people exploiting the absence of those laws; e.g. the Savings & Loan debacle
EXACTLY, which is why I am sure we both agree it is unfortunate that the government created and regulated fannie mae and freddie mac which was a collossal failure and was at the epicenter of the crisis....and again it wasn't due to lack of regulation in the mortgage industry as for example there were often dozens of pages of government required disclosures at mortgage loan closings.godfather of soul
The roles of government and a private companies aren't comparable.
"With love, with patience, and with Faith
....She'll make her way" ~ Natalie Merchant
simple point: regulaiton is needed in industry to protect worker rights and the safety of the consumer. undue overburdening regulation goes overboard and increases costs and availability. a simple idea would be to enforce regulations on the books and then figure out if they work or not. look at the BP oil spill and the mine accident in WV: simple analysis is that regulations were either ignored, poorly defined, or unenforced. so the fix? add more regulations. novel concept would be to enforce what is on the books since it was, at some point, decided that they would fix the problems in those industries. time and time again, it is shown that those regulations were not enforced at all, or well. so how does adding more regulations that have a history of being not enforced or non-enforceable do anything? it doesn't. that is the real disagreement.
When a child cries....somewhere in a small, lonely, sad place in the world.....a hobo laughs.