The remedial dribble of Mr. Begakis’ article (Obama’s Health Plan Ignores Human Nature, May 13, 2009) only goes to show how supposed “free-market” apologists have little understanding of the political economy they espouse. I’m not even going to go into the batshit-crazy rant of his about how Jesus died so laws of supply and demand can exist. However, the problem with his argument, as is a problem of most people who tout the superiority of the free-market, is that health care in the United States is NOT market-based.

Health care and insurance are heavily regulated, up to the point that it has created the most expensive cost for health insurance in the world. That isn’t because the care is somehow better. It’s because in an effort to tiptoe around universal health care, the United States has constructed a myriad of policies to insure as many people as possible without giving everyone coverage. I’m not talking just Medicare, but more recent projects like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Medicare Modernization Act and even the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (a.k.a. C.O.B.R.A.) signed in by Conservative free-market demigod Ronald Reagan. These Acts expanded, extended and gave subsidized support to coverage as well as entitlement benefits for things like prescription drugs. The result is that in the desire to keep the socialist bogeyman away and to extend coverage as much as possible, we have created more cost to the system than if we were to have universal coverage, and that is despite the fact that roughly 18 percent of this country is still uninsured. So, if Mr. Begakis thinks the United States already has a “superior market-based system,” then his politics are probably closer to Obama’s than he thinks.