Big Business Goes Big for Health Care Reform

[steven johnson]

John Stossel always has such a pleasantly cynical view on the world. Big business of many stripes feels it can make money on the Obama healthcare intervention.

Although the activists criticize Big Pharma, "The drug industry has already contributed millions of dollars to advertising campaigns for the health care overhaul through the advocacy groups like Healthy Economies Now and Families USA. It has spent about $1 million on similar advertisements under its own name," the Times reports.

It's not so hard to understand. "The drug makers stand to gain millions of new customers," the Times said.

Not that Big Pharma and Big Insurance like every detail of the Democratic plan. Drug companies don't want Medicare negotiating drug prices -- for good reason. If it forces drug prices down, research and development will be discouraged. people. (Forget that the essence of insurance is discrimination according to risk.)

It illustrates economist Steven Horwitz's First Law of Political Economy: "No one hates capitalism more than capitalists." In this case, big business wants to shape -- and profit from -- what inevitably will be an interventionist health care reform. Can you think of the last time a major business supported a truly free market in anything?


Big Business Goes Big for Health Care Reform

[bemildred]

1. Capitalists hate competition.

All this "free market" crap is just to fool the Rubes.