The federal government has banned Aetna, a health insurance company, from marketing and enrolling new Medicare patients. This is interesting both because it shows how willing the government is to regulate anything it can get away with, and how unwilling it is to let companies with terrible business models fail. Of course, Aetna's president has been hasty to promise that this is just a fluke.
If this isn't an example of the state's disgusting forceful intervention into the market, I don't know what is. It's too bad Aetna doesn't have a president like John Mackey of Whole Foods to stand up to the government and say, "Leave us alone!"
I use Aetna and I think they're wonderful. It's a shame that they're probably going to lose a lot of business and eventually go out of business because government hates competition.
"It's a shame that they're probably going to lose a lot of business and eventually go out of business..."
On a recent post at YAL, opposite complaints were made. Insurance companies were basically uncompetitive monopolies backed by government resulting in consumers being unable to punish them for bad product.
http://www.yaliberty.org/posts/obamacare-will-implicitly-tax-the-middle-...
"...because government hates competition."
Isn't Ron Paul part of the government? Who is it that takes antitrust action, and who profits from being a monopoly?
Also, there is a push at the federal level to remove antitrust privileges from insurance companies in order to increase competition.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/24/politics/main6239739.shtml
"If this isn't an example of the state's disgusting forceful intervention into the market, I don't know what is."
Protecting consumers from an unresponsive corporation is a clear example of the evils of government intervention?
If this issue had been left for disgruntled consumers resolve, either to shift the market by choosing a new provider or boycott and embarrass Aetna into submission, wouldn't we be seeing the same result acquired much less efficiently?
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