How the Health Care Free Market Works

Although I'm guessing here (its not evident from their Common Sense Health Care Reforms), Republicans probably favor a free market for health insurance. What would that be like and how would it work? Here's an example from the Midwest. A woman from Bethel, MN was shocked to learn while her husband was lying in the intensive care unit of an Arizona hospital, that she had no health coverage even though she had a health insurance card. She had been duped.

Dubious health insurance plans are spreading across the US according to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. The Minnesota Attorney General has reportedly sued two out-of-state insurance companies and ten more investigations are under way. This is the current free market for health care and this is how an expanded free market would work under Republican plans.

Actually, we've been here before. Prior to the Flexner Report that reformed health care in 1910, we had a free market for health care. Anyone could hang a shingle out, practice medicine and dispense snake oil. The US has already seen the unregulated free market for health care. Let's not go back there.