Is this thing still here? I've neglected it for some time.

Anyway.

Presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain has said before that he is definitely opposed to attempts to de-privatize the health care industry. McCain, ever a Republican, believes that the market will sort things out. As I have opined before, this position makes no sense: the "invisible hand" trope invented by Adam Smith works only when the interests of business and the interests of the public are congruous. In the case of health care, the market cannot sort things out by design. The health care customer wants the most health care he can get. The health care company wants to provide the least health care possible. Why? Because the less health care a company provides, the greater its profits, and in a capitalist economic system, profit maximization is the name of the game. Therefore, it is impossible for the market to solve the problem of health care.

Health care is one of those things that the market may do "efficiently" in the sense that it maximizes marginal benefit and minimizes marginal cost. But this efficiency is averaged out over the entire health care industry. On average, Americans have good health care. But on the individual level, things are rotten. 18 million Americans are un-insured, and millions more are under-insured, meaning they can go to the doctor for a routine visit, but if a catastrophe were to happen -- a family member needed a heart transplant, for example -- they would be unable to afford the expense and would have to let that family member die, or go into massive debt. Contrary to what Bush & Co. would have you believe, the number one reason Americans go into debt is not unrestrained spending on Faberge eggs; it's health care spending, necessitated by aa health care system that provides a level of service equal with a person's ability to pay. Can you pay $1,000 a month? Great! You get top-tier care. Can you pay $300 a month? You'll get middling-level care.

And, truthfully, the market is not sorting things out. The markets sloughs off onto the government -- as it always does -- those people who cannot afford its products. If you can't afford health care, then you are shuffled to Medicaid, where taxpayers foot the bill because insurance companies don't want to. This is typical of the private market, and a trait that is frequently overlooked by Republicans who trumpet the superiority of the market. The "this" is this: the private firm reaps for itself the benefits of private spending, but passes its losses onto the government. For all the trumpeting of free enterprise that Republicans make, they are unwilling to let the market deal with the losses as well as the profits. This is why they routinely vote for corporate welfare: tax breaks, exemptions to regulations, absorption of debt by taxpayers, monopolization. This is what the housing industry is receiving right now: taxpayers will end up absorbing the losses generated by a mortgage industry that knowingly fooled consumers and made a boatload of money unsustainably. This is what happened in 2005 when Congress voted to take over United Airlines' pension plan after United decided it could no longer afford to pay out pension benefits.

Is this not the definiton of a double standard? Private individuals are expected to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps, to be unflinchingly self-reliant, and not expect the government to save them when they fall. Yet, a corporation is allowed to reap the benefits of an unfair, unsustainable, and possibly illegal practice, and yet, when that practice breaks down and starts costing the corporation money, individual Americans -- many of whom had nothing to do with the corporation -- are expected to pick up the check. How does this make sense?