The Fraudulence of Libertarianism (Neoliberalism)

Eric Zuesse

As I documented on September 17th, libertarianism (called neoliberalism in Europe) is based upon lies about history, and is therefore believed only by individuals who are ignorant of the historical reality (which I there documented by linking to the relevant evidences — which are the exact opposite of what libertarians believe to be the case).

However, libertarianism (neoliberalism) isn’t only lies about history; it is also lies about political polices. A good recent example of this is the defense that the libertarian Republican U.S. Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance presented to NBC News in an interview on September 15th, in which he revealed what Donald Trump’s intended healthcare plan is. Jonathan Chait at New York magazine on September 17th headlined “Vance: Trump’s Health-Care Plan Is to Let Insurers Charge More for Preexisting Conditions” and provided an excellent analysis of it and accompanied that with relevant facts about what Vance was referring to, which is the changes that Trump intends to make in Obamacare (“the Affordable Care Act”). I shall add here a link to the interview’s transcript, so as to further facilitate the reader’s access to the source that Chait is quite correctly analyzing:

https://archive.is/EHu3J#selection-1407.0-1426.0

Vance explained the Trump plan during an interview [transcript here] with NBC’s Kristen Welker: “He, of course, does have a plan for how to fix American health care, but a lot of it goes down, Kristen, to deregulating insurance markets, so that people can actually choose a plan that makes sense for them.”

Vance is advocating a partial or complete return to the system that existed before Obamacare. In that world, prior to 2014, it was very difficult to find affordable coverage unless you were on Medicare, Medicaid, or got insurance through your employer. There was a market for individual insurance, and it was possible to buy plans if you didn’t get coverage through a government plan or through work. But that market was dominated by “adverse selection” — the only way insurers could make money was to weed out any customers likely to need medical care.

Cheap plans could be sold to people who were young and healthy. Oftentimes, those plans denied coverage for any preexisting condition, or had hidden limits on the amount the insurer would have to pay, so if you got very sick, you would discover you faced ruinous costs not coverage by your insurance.

Obamacare turned that dysfunctional individual market into a market that offered affordable plans even for people who aren’t young and healthy. It did this by restricting the degree to which insurers can charge higher rates based on age (they can only make older customers pay a maximum of three times the rate they charge young customers). More importantly, it prevented insurers from screening out customers with a preexisting condition or denying coverage for necessary procedures. …

https://archive.is/EHu3J#selection-1481.0-1481.478

Understanding health-care policy is a siloed journalistic skill, and Welker did not seem to recognize the radicalism of Vance’s plan. Instead, she [the NBC ‘News’ interviewer] summed up his answer, “What I hear you’re saying is Obamacare stays in place.” That is close to the opposite of what Vance said — he announced that Trump wants to reverse the regulatory protections in Obamacare that have made the individual markets affordable for people who have preexisting conditions.

Chait also explained that whereas Obamacare made it possible for a sick uninsured individual to obtain affordable health insurance but increased the premiums that other Americans pay in order to do this in a way which would preserve the profitability to the insurance companies, the plan that Vance described would undo both ends of that deal which Obama had struck with the insurers. Therefore, the interviewer’s summary at the end was, indeed, actually “close to the opposite of what Vance said.”

As you look at and listen to the video of Vance’s statement there, you will notice that unintelligent pro-libertarian viewers (people whose votes Trump will need in order to be able to win this election) will probably not even notice that Vance said there, “you want to make sure that preexisting coverage – conditions are covered, you want to make sure that people have access to the doctors that they need,” and they almost certainly won’t recognize that Vance is actually saying that Trump’s plan would eliminate this coverage — coverage which Obamacare was the first governmental health policy ever to provide this care to sick individuals. So, Vance is speaking only to libertarian fools, people who won’t recognize that Vance lied when saying that Trump’s plan would “make sure that preexisting coverage – conditions are covered, you want to make sure that people have access to the doctors that they need.” They won’t notice the self-contradiction between, on the one hand, removing sick people from the general and healthier risk-pool and transferring them into costlier higher-risk pools; and, on the other hand, paying for their “access to the doctors that they need.” Those higher-risk pools will, indeed, be restored again to being unaffordably expensive; and, so, the percentage of Americans without health insurance will go back up again to 16%, which now (because of Obamacare) had been reduced to 9%. And, thus, emergency-room visits (which are the costliest of all) would soar. 

So, this is a good example of how the libertarian-neoliberal con slips through the BS filters of libertarians-neoliberals, as-if maybe 2+2=5 instead of merely 4.

On 1 September 2020, I headlined “Lancet study finds U.S. has, by far, the world’s most-overpriced medical care.” It included graphs documenting that America had the costliest and worst health care in the industrialized world. On 26 January 2024, Kelly Maxwell headlined “25+ Important U.S. Health Insurance Statistics For 2024 & Beyond” and documented that it’s still the case and that Obama’s promise that his Obamacare would produce “universal health insurance cooverage” (100% of people having health insurance) in the U.S. is still far from having been fulfilled, so that America is the only industrialized country that does NOT have 100% of its citizens covered. However, the coverage-ratio was increased from 84% when Obama took office, to 91% today. Maxwell says “U.S. health care spending is 19.7% of GDP, and that is expected to continue to increase.” He didn’t say that the global average is around 11% and that America has by far the lowest life-expectancy of any of the OECD nations. In other words: we pay gthe most and get the worst.

So, what does all of this show us? It shows us that America is by far the most libertarian/neoliberal of (at least) the industrialized nations and therefore is designed to maximize the profits to the owners of its corporations, and to minimize the benefits to the country’s citizens. The problem here isn’t merely the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, but instead it is that this country is a dictatorship by its billionaires (something that an intelligent libertarian/neoliberal would expect a libertarian/neoliberal country to be, if any such person even exists). This country is reeking with corruption. It pours down from the top, but libertarians/neoliberals blame the people at the bottom for it.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.