Re: In a mildly regulated Free Market, Competition will motivate the private sector to provide workable goods and services such as energy and health care.
A few things that should be pointed out, that are not captured in your statement.
1. The insurance industry is one of the lightest regulated industries, yet their service is vital to our long term health and survival. For example, they are excluded from anti-trust laws - but why should they? In a "free market" the consumer has the opportunity to choose a competitor, which forces business to improve. But in the health industry, there are state-by-state monopolies that prevent consumer choice, and therefore the "free market" cannot function properly.
2. Because of the health care monopoly, we also have the consumer threats of denial of coverage, which is actually resulting in the deaths of some people, and the bankruptcies of many others. If nothing else, we need government intervention to protect people from the most common denial of coverage issues.
3. There are also 10s of millions of Americans without insurance coverage that are at risk of death if they require certain kinds of health care and can't afford it. And because of the current system, we have open emergency room policies that are raising the costs for everyone who pays into the system to care for those who are not in the system. The government reform should deal with that, too, by expanding coverage to more Americans.
4. The private energy industry is today motivated to do things that are contrary to our country's long term needs. We see Asia and Europe investing in alternative energies, but our own American energy super-corporations aren't investing in it, and it just happen to be that alternative energies are too expensive for small and medium sized businesses to overcome the barriers. That's why we want to add government incentives, and new legislation so that we are competitive in the future.
5. These alternative energies are also expected to reduce pollutants and relieve our dependence on foreign oil. The win-win-win situation with new Energy policy is that it wins with jobs, it wins with the environment, and it wins with national security. Why would you prefer to wait for the private industry to be forced to deal with it? That could take years, at which point America would be far behind the rest of the world. We can't afford to wait.
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