Shut 'em Down!

I was just watching this last night on tv lol.


"I KNEW I SHOULDN'T HAVE CALLED ON YOU"

Here is a little thing you are over looking. Monopolies are a product of "Free Market Capitalism". You can read all about it in your in American History books in sections dealing with the period of 1880-1920 to be exact. Monopoly Busting aka The Sherman AntiTrust Act of 1890.

So in fact you are wrong when you say it's not a depiction of a commentary against "Free Market Capitalism". You're not accurate when you say "Capitalism is not the trigger for "abuse of power" when you have phrases like "He who controls the capital controls the capitol" which are grounded in historical realities.

So I got all the new information on my plan. This is not the exchanges, however, given the laws in place all insurance companies are making changes to better suit their financials

Deductible: goes from $750 to $1250
Out of Pocket: Cap from $2500 to $3250

Prescriptions: From 75% covered; $25 min copay; $120 max copay; 30 day supply; member pays full diff in price between generic and brand drug; mandatory use of mail-order beg with 3rd fill of maintenance drug to Medical deductible and coinsurance apply

Surprisingly to me, my premiums didn't go up by much... From $25.38 to $25.54 ...

So the ACA has brought upon me, Less care that is less long term affordable...

I want real change not hocus pocus!

I know you won't believe me when I say it, but I'll say it anyways. There are no monopolies in a free market and there is no free market in a monopoly. They are literal opposites

Monopolies are nearly always created by governments and their intervention.

I wonder what your premium would have been to keep the 750 dollar deductible?

I think you both landed on Park Place and Boardwalk one too many times when someone else already had already bought then and had hotels built on them....

Monopolies are awesome!!!

I always found the premise of that game to be BS actually. Land on a space and you have to stay there. What if i didn't wanna stay in your goddamn hotel? Maybe I'm ok with sleeping in my shoe for the night. *** off with your 2k a turn fee.

That plan would be a

Deductible: $500
Out of pocket max: $2,000
Prescriptions: 80% covered; $15 minimum copay; $60 maximum copay; 30 day supply; mandatory use of mail-order beginning with 3rd fill of maintenance drug


Premiums are $61.81

Looking at this plan more closely....... except for 90/10 coverage and the SLIGHTLY cheaper deductible, and 5% more for presription coverage, this plan covers more closely to my current plan at $36.43 more expensive....

the only reason anyone says that there can not be monoplies in a free market is because they always beleive that even if someone achieves market domination that they aren't ever completely safe in that position... where as when a government backs a specific organization they make their position safer via subisidies and other such things protecting their position...

The argument really isn't about market domination... it's more about who feels safer when they're up there... lol...

Free markets certainly bring with them more potential but also more risk...

Lets also keep in mind that my wife has to now be on a separate plan since she can have insurance though her work. That is a whole different line of figures though, and I don't know if I can say the ACA contributed to that. I would just chalk that up to piss poor health care.

then the board gets flipped and pieces go everywhere... play money all over the floor...

that one kid is still reading loudly out of the rule book while you give him a noogie

Oh and those are Bi-weekly pay checks on premiums.

And Nikolce is rubbing his hands in the background while the money falls, silently whispering to himself. "dance puppets.....dance!"

So that means that you can't establish for us some form of natural monopoly that exists in the market today that isn't regulated to be there by the government?

and what risks do you speak of?

Standard oil.

That's a really low premium...

I cant complain about my premiums.... My company has always offered a great premium.

It would be 50 dollars a check if I had my wife and kid on my plan with 80/20 and $123.61 a check with them on that plan or 247.02 a month

they never invented a game we couldn't turn into a screaming argument that escalated into an all out brawl...

but you're gong to have that when you get all your children out of the discount bin and the free to a good home box...

/sigh

I personally can't give you an example no... If that makes something true though... well I hope you get the idea lol...

In any case... back to the actual conversation... You made the argument that monopolies can not exist in a free market... well you kinda did because you went from never to nearly always... but anyways... It's not necassarily true... like I tried to explain to you people say that because of how they interpret what a monopoly is... how it originated... and the main difference being that they believe that in a free market... even if they dominate the field... even if they have what we might consider a monopoly based on market domination that they are never truly safe in that position... that someone else could rise up at some point or a market fluctuation could hammer them...

Financial instability and crashes... even without true monopolies some corps have risen to heights that are high enough to shake economies globally with their collapse... take AIG for example...

You are more likely to have oligopolies than monopolies, at least in the world today.

Collusion (LIBOR), price fixing (Apple and book publishers), quantity fixing (OPEC), high barriers to entry (what every private company tries to create), etc.

Television.... god Kara! Keep things in perspective!

See this is what kills me, you guys rail against a oligopoly because of the conceptual idea that its too much power to be run by a small handful of people/entities but then you'll turn around and cry for single payer or some other government takeover of the market.

It just doesn't make sense.

How can you not?

I like the switch from "free markets never have these" to "why rail against an oligopoly and still want a single payer medical system."

The 100% free market is not perfect. The only regulations allowed pertain to property. There are no consequences for companies actions except/unless people boycott which a lot of people who love the free market deride. This theory does not even address the commons problem and many more issues.

The 100% planned market is not perfect. Too much regulation stifles innovation, becomes overly complicated and expensive, turns to crony capitalism, etc.

There are some systems (nuclear energy, military, other utilities, frontier exploration, etc) that companies either a) can't be fully trusted to run on their own, b) is too expensive and risky for a company to want to finance and run on their own, or c) a combination of both a and b.

The free market is not a magical unicorn that fixes everything. Reality is a combination of both free and planned economies.

Those are nowhere near the same thing. The US Government doesn't actually control Healthcare, we're not the UK where medical staff are government employees.Our Hospitals and Health Insurance providers are independent on the open market.

The ideas you are trying to champion have failed throughout history in terms of promoting universal prosperity. You act like Oligarchies didn't exsist before the founding of America and that our founding fathers hadn't seen the failures history taught. Checks and Balances was derived for a reason.

Well we were talking about "Total Recall" which is sci/fi about a corporation rising to control the entire market and then establishing rule over a planet. I initially said monopolies meaning what we saw in the context of "Total Recall" You know a true one business comes in and takes over the world (insert evil laugh) or whatever. I believe what everyone here is trying to call a "natural monopoly". Those cannot exist in the theoretical free market. But then again a market that is 100% free is pretty much impossible to attain as well.

There are however certainly plenty of examples of government backed monopolies (federal reserve system, K-12 public education) as well as government monopolies themselves (single payer healthcare). There is also plenty of ammo as to why the lack of choice they provide is BAD for you and me.

Corporations really only rise to such heights in today's world because governments intervene and push them there. AIG, Bearsterns had government help tipping the scales in their favor.

The free market is the single greatest tool humans have ever conceived to bring economic prosperity for everyone and eliminate poverty. I might grant you the one exception of nuclear power & weaponry but we also used to think privatized extra orbital flight would never happen either as it was too dangerous.

lol...

There is a very, very, very large difference from initial exploration (be that space, oceans, or other countries) and companies capitalizing on previous research.

I don't know who told you there would never be orbital flights by private companies but that has been the goal (as well as many others) for many companies for more than 30 years.

Companies (Virgin, planetary resources, etc) are not doing anything new. They are capitalizing on stuff that NASA and other institutions have been researching for 50~ years.

I don't know of any conditions in a theoretical free market which would prevent a natural monopoly from occurring, would you please elaborate?

K-12 education is not a government backed monopoly. You are able to get a private education. Arguing that a public education is monopolistic is not valid.
Single payer systems also typically do not remove the option for supplementary/additional care to be paid out of pocket/privately.

Exactly what proof is available (measurable, quantifiable) which describes to what level choice is decreased, and (if it occurs) what affect it has on an individual?