I Tweeted about HHHoppe’s outstanding idea on healthcare just recently. I’ll admit that there are portions of the rhetoric of this more mainstream plan that sound pretty good. Phrases like “channel[ling] the cash companies now spend to cover their employees back to the workers who really pay for it” sound good. The author even goes so far as to say, “The marketplace, with more than 100 million consumers writing their own checks, will take care of the rest.” Let the free market decide! Sounds good, right?

Here’s the thing though: This plan, as outlined in Fortune On-Line, is NOT a free market plan. It’s not close to a free market plan. It simply moves the effects of government control around. It even goes so far as to list, as one of its key components, “protect people with pre-existing conditions.” Whenever one sees the term “protect” in a piece of legislation, you can bet there will be ample opportunity for graft. That is how the State functions. The ostensible protection of the few is used to soak the many, often while those supposedly protected don’t benefit in the least.

Every time a pseudo free-market plan like this gets press, it helps confuse people about what a free market is. This plan ain’t it.

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