The author of Why Margaret Thatcher matters (2008 Basic Books) attempts to first explain free markets, in explaining why Margaret Thatcher was so passionate about them as a key to a moral society:
“The argument for free markets involves a beautiful, fascinating, counterintuitive theory. It is one of the great achievements in human thought. It is also, basically, simple. A free market is one in which the prices of goods and services are determined by individual sellers and buyers, not by the government. It differs from a planned or command economy in that no centralized authority makes decisions about resource allocation.” p. 118
Then she goes on to explain how selling a product at gun point or deliberately not fulfilling the order on January 1 that you promised is not healthy free markets and government is needed to ensure that won’t happen. (p. 122) Since she probably wrote this part in 2006 or 2007 she had no way to know she was predicting exactly what has happened during the Obama reign with the ACA.
Employer based health insurance (60% of workers, 90% of market) which grew up after WWII was originally a choice by employer and employee which then developed to a jumble of government law and regulation. The biggest plum for manipulation by Washington was exemption from income tax on that benefit. If the government had bowed out and let the system evolve, perhaps we wouldn’t have had the messy government built system as a foundation for another failed system—Obamacare. PPACA was signed into law on March 23, 2010 and the President has been violating it ever since.
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