Much ado is made among conservative circles about the free market being the panacea for all our ills. The concept of an unlimited or at least a very little regulated free market has been an historical disaster for all but the very wealthy. Free markets have been with us since the beginning of human history and until markets were regulated we never had a middle class. There was extreme wealth or extreme poverty. The wealthy had the best of everything including healthcare while the poor barely had enough to eat.
Under conservative free market philosophy, the market will self correct for any anomalies such as market bubbles and recessions. The great depression and this last "great recession" are examples of the failure of that philosophy. A truly unrestrained free market may sound great but its weakness are found in human nature itself. The excesses of the few who in their greed take unfair advantage of others will destroy the whole for all. The market as an "organism" lacks one crucial quality to ultimately be truly "free". The free market and its corporate constituents lack any kind of conscience, social or moral.
Only a government which is truly for and of the people can exercise the conscience of the people and that government must impose the conscience of the people upon that free market in order to prevent chaos in the society in which that market operates.
Healthcare is a second area in which the social conscience of the people must be in ultimate control. Like the greater free market, individual corporations such as insurance companies have no inherent conscience. As such, practices such as denying coverage when some one gets sick and pre-existing condition denials have become rampant. Only the moral and social conscience of people through their government can restrain these corporate practices and abuses. Some in the extreme may call this socialism but so be it.
Americans claim to live is a society of laws but only when it is convenient for them. Only when it is to their advantage and doesn't interfere with their individually perceived sense of right and wrong and not the moral values of the nation as a whole are those laws respected. Neither an individual nor a corporation has the right to pick and choose which laws to obey. To allow otherwise would again lead to total chaos and the breakdown of the very society those laws are intended to protect.
The term "free market" should be replaced with "fair market" and all that a fair philosophy implies. Only when the moral and social conscience of the people is allowed to guide the market can it be truly free and fair. Only then can true prosperity for all the members of a society be realized.
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