Monopolies
U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–NY) claims that her “vision” for the U.S. is “Medicare for All, unionization rights, antitrust and breaking up monopolies.”
IN FACT, “Medicare for All” and “unionization rights” establish monopolies instead of breaking them up. This commonly causes prices to rise and/or quality to decline. Here are the specifics:
- Per essays published in prestigious medical journals, extending Medicare to everyone, also known as “single-payer” healthcare, is a “euphemism” for a government “monopoly” that bans “competition” and is “open to political manipulation.”
- Per the Journal of Labor Research, “Unions are unique to our society because, under the National Labor Relations Act they are given an exclusive franchise to organize individuals in the workplace for purposes of representation and negotiating terms and conditions of employment. No other nongovernmental organization is given such a monopoly or express procedures for establishing its exclusive representation status.”
- As documented in a variety of academic works, monopolies, price fixing, and the exclusion of competition generally lead to higher prices and/or lower quality.
- Socializing much of the costs of healthcare in the U.S. has inflated prices, incentivized fraud, and led to overuse by creating a buffet mentality in which people wantonly consume with little regard for costs.
- Countries with higher proportions of socialized medicine than the U.S. spend a smaller portion of their economy on healthcare, but they ration it through wait times, banning clinically effective treatments, and creating hurdles to access.
- Other countries also financially benefit from U.S. medical innovations, which are greater than any other country of the world.
- Although unions generally increase the average wages of unionized workers, they simultaneously reduce the competitiveness of unionized firms while driving up taxes and consumer prices. This has led to large-scale losses of union jobs and higher costs of living in states that don’t have right-to-work laws.
