7 Examples of How Liberals Misrepresent Libertarianism

6 & 7: Deregulation and “Free” trade

This can really be classified as one big argument, since both points ultimately talk about the same thing – lack of regulation is bad for the market, and no market system is ever truly “free.”

This is patently absurd, but it can get a bit complex when trying to explain why. Therefore, I have chosen to focus on just one of many potential current affair issues that this can be applied to: healthcare.

Back in 2011, Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul sparred over whether or not healthcare should be viewed as a right. The video is linked conveniently below for your leisure:

Okay, so this really amounts to a difference of perspective and definitions between these two views. Sanders, like most modern liberals, seems to think there is something inherent in the goodness of humanity that should force the hand of the healthcare industry. That’s fine on a philosophical level, as Rand Paul already concedes as a physician himself.

The problem, however, comes from a couple of different points: one, what is being implicated when the word “healthcare” is used, and two, what is really responsible for the lack of access already seen.

When Rand Paul says everyone has access “healthcare,” he’s really talking about actual healthcare – albeit, as he admits, of varying quality when ERs and clinics are involved. When Bernie Sanders speaks of “healthcare access,” he’s really talking about access to healthcare insurance, and that the limited coverage of such is what causes so many Americans to receive either inferior or no care.

So, with those lines being drawn, why does Rand Paul say that seeing healthcare as a legally guaranteed right is the same difference as seeing all the laborers involved in the industry as slaves? Because as he says, forcing an individual of any profession to do whatever the state deems him to do is slavery to a certain degree, and most physicians truly want to help people anyway, so it’s not really a requirement to do so. But forcing doctors and hospitals to see every patient regardless of whether or not it can bring in money is at some point a problem – because, like it or not, hospitals still need money to stay alive.

Everybody deep down knows this, including Sanders – that’s why the politicians behind healthcare reform these days aren’t really trying to reform healthcare; they are trying to get more people covered by health insurance so that hospitals can still get their money and pay the bills, but more sick people can also get better quality care. Nothing wrong with that in theory, but there is one problem – the very entity seen as the savior in all of this (big government) is also a main culprit behind rising medical costs – and, subsequently, the need for insurance – in the first place.

There is something known as “Certificate-Of-Need” (CON) Regulation. It’s a government program that blocks competition between lucrative hospitals and other alternatives (home health care, smaller operations that have no friends in D.C., etc.) and allows the former party to monopolize the industry. Basically, its function was to allow the big greedy hospitals the autonomy to deem for themselves whether or not any competing entities were really “needed” in the surrounding district. In other words, if one hospital were already exchanging money and deals with its buddies in congress, then the reward would be the ability to legally obliterate any newcomers who could potentially steal away business (and profits).

Let me ask you in business terms: when you become the only game in town and you have successfully built a monopoly for yourself in any given market (always with govt’s help, btw), do you still care about competitive prices? Or, with no competition left, do you then factor in all conceivable costs of your operation, apply them to the prices of your goods, and then throw it all on the customer? Of course you do the latter. That’s why monopolies are evil things. Yet the very same government that is already helping the medical field turn into a greed-powered industry is now going to suddenly make things better by regulating even more?

Insurance companies certainly do take advantage of this crisis of rising cost (much like college tuition, needless government incentives have caused the cost to rise exponentially faster than inflation), but they are merely trying to do good business, and they are not the source of this problem. They are a red herring for Washington to point to because Washington doesn’t want to point to itself. And it’s more than just the CON regulation that has f*cked up medical costs in the U.S. – there are regulations that keep competition from happening within the medical insurance world, as well. For instance, Americans can’t have their pick of any insurance company – it has to be an insurance company that originated in their current state of residence. If you move between states and had great insurance rates before, you are forced to switch to the “best” insurance company of your new state, which could be significantly more expensive. Also, certain states impose weird mandates on their own insurance companies which then affect their costs needlessly.

There are a few good books that go well more into detail than I can here, but trust me when I say this information is easy to find once you know where to look – no thanks to the likes of Sanders.

So when Rand Paul says he doesn’t want to be enslaved, he’s speaking about how even more govt. regulation is very unlikely to solve a problem that was largely created by govt. regulation to begin with. It’s silly to keep trying the same course of action to “fix” something as what broke said thing in the first place. Competition allows for lowering of costs and the lessening of necessity for pricey insurance policies, then subsequent rise of options for the patient; regulation only leads to rising costs and monopolies. Historically, this has always been true, especially where the health industry is concerned. Rand Paul understands it. Dennis Kucinich even understands it. Bernie Sanders, as usual, parrots what the ignorant general public wants to hear.

So, does deregulation always amount to disaster? Of course not – sometimes it amounts to salvation. But again, Miss Christina has a bone to pick and an agenda to push. Therefore, in her article, regulation, just like all her other issues, are rendered as black-and-white.

Don’t, my fair-minded readers, be fooled.