These days, when liberals defend Obamacare, they often say something along the lines of, Look, Obamacare can’t be that bad, even big business likes it!
A writer at the liberal Mother Jones defended Obamacare by pointing out that the largest hospital chain in America is fighting to save the law.
Wendell Potter, at the Center for Public Integrity, seems to think it’s a rebuke to Obamacare’s critics that the nation’s largest health insurer is making bank off the law:
This is an odd sort of reasoning: Growing profits of the biggest companies (often accompanied by industry consolidation) shows that federal regulation and subsidy of those industries is successful. Maybe this is how liberals think you argue like a conservative. On the other hand, it’s not altogether surprising to hear liberals, who tend to favor centralization and worry about the chaos of pluralism and competition, to applaud “rationalization” of industry through consolidation and stability in favor of diminished competition. And Obamacare, by all appearances, is a major factor in the industry’s push to consolidation.
But consolidation in health care is dangerous. An op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, by physician Marty Makary, lays out the dangers of hospital consolidation:
Big Government often benefits Big Business to the detriment of competition, and thus consumers.