We also need to fight against the constant refrain for "privatization" of other government functions that we hear from the plutocracy and the "conservative noise machine." There are certain areas within our economy and our government that are natural monopolies. Any attempt to cede control of these natural monopolies to private corporations, leads to abuses of the system by the private corporations at the expense of the tax-paying public. One example is Enron and its rolling blackouts to raise the cost of electricity at the expense of the public in California in 2002-3. Another example is the use of civilian contractors to perform functions normally performed by the military itself in Afghanistan and Iraq, in particular the use of civilian truck drivers to convoy military supplies and employing other civilians to provide food services.
There is nothing new to this: Great Britain under Margaret Thatcher is a grotesque example of what happens when you privatize government services.
I will quote from the late Steve Kangas's website Liberalism Resurgent:
"The abuse of natural monopolies is what happened to Great Britain after Margaret Thatcher sought to privatize public utilities. The experience was a disaster. The British government first privatized telecommunications, then gas, then electricity and then water with little thought about how these monopolies would act on the free market. By 1987, public outcry over the skyrocketing rates and dropping quality of British Telecom forced the Thatcher government to reluctantly impose regulations. The same thing happened to Gas. But what was truly disastrous was the way Britain privatized electricity; it allowed a ludicrous arrangement where power providers could compete with each other. Even though there were adequate power sources in Britain, the industry rushed to build more power generators to compete with each other, to the point that there was 70 percent overproduction by 1995. What's worse, this competition nearly killed Britain's coal industry. Coal generators are expensive to build but cheap to run; gas generators are the opposite. Gas is also much quicker to install. As the power companies rushed to build new power generators, they chose gas over coal. By 1992, the British government closed half its coal mines and laid off 70 percent of its miners."
Our health care system is falling apart for our working and middle class, especially in terms of the affordability of insurance and HMO's. In terms of service provided per dollar spent--including the fact that health costs have risen at twice the rate of inflation for forty years--I believe that health care is now both a virtual and a natural monopoly, which should be brought under the control of the public sector in the form of Medicare for all--with controls on prescription drug prices--or some other single-payer system. (See Roger Bybee's In These Times article, "America's Healthcare Crisis is Getting Worse," Representative John Conyer's Common Dreams article, "Best Way to Save Medicare, Offer It to Everyone," Senator Bernie Sanders article in The Guardian newspaper, "Single Payer Health: It's Only Fair," Wendell Potter's article in PR Watch "Insurers Getting Rich by Not Paying for Care," Robert Reich's blog article "Mr. President: Why Medicare Isn't the Problem, It's the Solution," and finally Lauren Kelley's AlterNet article, "The GOP's 5 Most Absurd Lies About Health-Care Reform, Debunked," for more in-depth coverage on this subject. )
(http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/20-7)
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/10/healthcare-congress)
(http://prwatch.org/news/2011/04/10665/insurers-getting-rich-not-paying-care)
(http://robertreich.org/post/4559031328)
(http://www.alternet.org/story/149598/)
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