Sticky Slope Arguments – or – The Argument From Intended Consequences

This post describes other applications of this sort of technique – taking a possibility that someone doesn’t want to face and treating it as a hypothetical scenario in order to disarm their defensiveness and get them to think things through. You can even use the technique on yourself.

Is this really a point about Conservatism v Progressives in general, or more particular to that dynamic in the US? Whilst I don’t really want to defend conservatives at all, I think that in most countries there is less of the hysteria that characterizes the American Right and that has created the unfortunate position moderate conservatives in the US now find themselves in.

With regards to the Kenyan Eugenics Plothealthcare debate some of this is about party politics rather than ideology anyhow. It seems to me that any of the proposals up for discussion still keep a fundamentally market-based approach to health care and any intellectually honest conservative (keep on walking, Frum) would not really object but rather praise it. But then I live in the UK with Teh Social1stNazi NHS so I should probably be dead by now or something.

That’s an interesting point about positions, but I’m not sure it’s correct to call much of the right in the US ‘conservative’ in any meaningful sense of that word. The more moderate elements amongst them, yes, but the rest not so much. Whilst the Democrats are in some senses trying to preserve things (e.g. Social Security during Bush), they’re actually trying to change society too (Climate change, health care), so I don’t think your positional distinction holds up too well.

Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus would have fit right into today’s conservvative movement in the US–no reasoned objections, but the omens are bad, so nothing must be done.

I have tried this tactic before on gun control. A few years ago in Michigan we liberalized our concealed carry laws, removing the discretionary powers of local governments to reject applications. The opposition made their slippery slope argument that it would lead to loosening other restrictions like carrying firearms in banks. We asked them to assume we wouldn’t try to loosen those other things, and if in doing so they would support our changes. They still wouldn’t. Truth be told, we actually did intend this to lead to further loosening, which it did.

The tactic did not work then, and I do not believe it would work here. The slippery slope concerns aren’t fabricated on some deep resentment of the President as a person. The fact in many minds is that the CBO has said the reform will not lower costs, while legislators who are writing the bill show up on video having said that it is a step toward single payer.

Medicare instead of your current private insurance really isn’t a winning slogan for liberals.

How about Medicare instead of death by uninsurance?

The comment seems to suggest that the tens of millions of Americans without health insurance are not part of the constituency that needs to be won for health care reform to pass. Perhaps that is true, or perhaps I am misreading your point. Can you clarify?

As a liberal academic raised in a family of conservative blue collar folks, I can certainly understand and to some extent sympathize with the conservative concern that implementation will be flawed and that those flaws will be the undoing, which seems to be the core of what Markus is concerned with. Though briefly I do also find it somewhat sad that the guy at 538 seems to have forwarded the most cogent articulation of why the federal government may just be the most competitive insurance agent while playing by the free market rules (aka why insurance is different from, say, innovative enterprise like making superconductors).

However, I do not believe that invalidates the benefits of finding some initial starting ground we can agree on, which is what this essay proposes. It proposes that rather than disregard the entire enterprise on the basis of what might go wrong in implementation, we come to a common ground of finding points of agreement: what would we like a future of insurance or (gasp!) health care reform to look like in this country? What specifically are opponents afraid will go wrong in the implementation? What can be done to find compromises that raise the chances of success and lower the risks of failures in implementation?

I actually favor a more federalist approach to this. I don’t think insurance/health reform is an intractable problem. I believe the bulk of conservative opposition is not only a staunch and universal belief that the federal government is a terrible administrator, but that if/when it fails, it will fail in a way that is catastrophically large because it will be gambling on such a large scale. I also believe this is precisely the beauty of federalism. I would like to see some plan that mandates universal insurance coverage, but leaves it up to states to decide how to implement that system. Could be through incentives and regulation of present ‘free market’ insurers, could be a hybrid system, could be rolling out a universal state-sponsored system. What you get in this type of federalist system is more on the ground experimentation where we can see what works and then begin to implement borrowing ideas from the programs that have proven themselves more successful. Failures are more moderated in scale, less of a financial burden on the country as a whole, and there is less bureaucratic inertia invested in a (potentially) failing future system.

Rational debate is only possible when the two sides are both proposing reasonable ideas. That’s not the case in the current health care debate because the current system is so utterly dysfunctional, financially disastrous, and simply inhumane that arguing for it is rather like objecting to indoor plumbing as something newfangled and unsound. Unfortunately, the crazy side of the current struggle–I refuse to call it an argument–has a tremendous advantage because its very craziness disinhibits it. Delicate pencil drawings of Holbo’s sticky slope idea are quite invisible in their tiny corner of the immense canvas upon which the psychotic right sprawls its lurid themes in crayon.

No, if the opposition is composed of those who profit by unreason, and those who really enjoy their unreason. The goal would be to marginalize the opposition as much as possible.

– Are my methods unsound?
– I don’t see any methods at all, sir.

There seems to be an assumption in the post that their paranoia is something like a froth on top of some more or less reasonable position. But what if it’s not, what if there is no foundation whatsoever; a list of talking points written by professional demagogues in think-tanks, distributed thru AM radio, churches, various other grassroots organizations.

In practice though, when you get the opponent to concede that the “Bizarro-Obama” plan might work, the opponent takes the opportunity to demand some concessions “in good faith” and then the eager-to-engage liberal offers concessions and the decent plan erodes into uselessness. (plus is stuck at the useless spot on the slope) See Baucus on healthcare-reform or Saletan on abortion, or… oh hell, now I’m depressed again.

I’d just like to separate this out so that we can take a moment and really appreciate how subjective the human experience is:

And those looking for a debate with tolerant respect are more likely to find it on the Corner than at DailyKos, HuffingtonPost or even the NYT.

“Freedom” I assume, broadly understood

Indeed it is, at least in part, about freedom. But not “Freedom”.

Suppose Obama doesn’t really care about healthcare. Suppose he simply knows it’s a dynamic he has to go through in order to keep the majority of liberals on his side. So if it fails, he can blame the conservatives. And if it succeeds he can claim victory. Suppose he’s from Chicago, the home of cynical triangulation politics. Suppose he lost me 3 months ago and it’s time for us to apologise to Nader and time for him to say, “I TOLD you so!”

Obama is losing me too but Chicago as the home of cynical triangulation politics? Really? What does that even mean? At least when people called it the home of “thug politics” I knew what the code meant.

This is what passes for reasoned debate?

I do not doubt John, that you are in favor of “Freedom”. But the reason I used the scare quotes in the first place is that you and I may have different ideas about what that word means. In my world, it does include the freedom to fail, and to suffer on occaision, and to be helped as well.

The question before us is who best to help and how.

No matter the problem, be it incandescent light bulbs, unisex bathrooms or health care, the Left’s answer seems always and everywhere to be more Government.

Please point out the great solutions being proposed by the Left that don’t involve government money, government mandates, government grants, government restrictions on personal freedom and the market, etc.

To Jim Harrison, you have no idea of my personal circumstances or where my life has taken me. You bring it up to engage in ad hominem attacks, and not the honest debate you claim to be seeking.

Please point out the great solutions being proposed by the Left that don’t involve government money, government mandates, government grants, government restrictions on personal freedom and the market, etc.

Problem: hundreds of billions of dollars in pointless occupation of large middle eastern country.
Left’s preferred solution: withdraw US troops from Iraq.
Additional government money required to implement solution: none.
Additional mandates required ditto: none.
Grants required: none.
Restrictions on personal freedom and the market required: none.

Lane, you need to demonstrate that those government mandates, grants, etc. do indeed negatively affect “Freedom”; mere distaste for the government is not enough because people on the other side often have comparable distaste for large private businesses.

No matter the problem, be it incandescent light bulbs, unisex bathrooms or health care, the Left’s answer seems always and everywhere to be more Government.

Abortion. The Left’s answer is *less* government. (Although somewhat paradoxically, in the federal system, it takes one government to stop other governments from intruding into private decisions.) It’s the Right that wants government to dictate who can and cannot get abortions.

Gay marriage – a few people on both sides have advocated getting the government out of the marriage business altogether, but everyone understands that the *outcome* of this would be freedom of marriage, which is the Left’s goal and the Right’s fear. Most people on the Left accept the status quo of government officially recognizing marriages, but believe it should do so *less* restrictively. Most of the Right wants to keep the restrictions. As in the abortion case, it may eventually happen that one government will be needed to tell the other governments to butt out.

Government surveillance of private citizens – I’m really surprised this isn’t a bigger point of conflict between libertarians and the right (if the libertarians are actual libertarians, it damn well should be). The right is enthusiastically in favor of more government surveillance of the private lives of anyone the government feels like surveilling, and the main voice of opposition to this comes not from libertarians questioning the wisdom of their tactical alliance with the right, but from leftists like Glenn Greenwald. (At least, I think he’s a leftist. Maybe he’s actually a libertarian who thinks that this issue is more important than the tax rate.)

Immigration – few people actually speak out in favor of less government restriction of immigration but of those, most that I know are on the left. The right wants to build a damned Berlin Wall (although this is an issue on which libertarians have been known to dissent).

I think a more accurate way to summarize the philosophical difference is that the Left is open to the idea that more government might, in some cases, be an improvement, although it is not always better. The Right seems to be the one with the no-nuance “less government is always better, regardless of the circumstances” belief. (Or, if you think this is an unfair portrait, where are your examples of the right being in favor of more government?)

As a liberal, I believe that government is both dangerous and useful. (Like automobiles, explosives, or many other technologies.) In a democracy, it is the people’s responsibility to watch out for the dangers while keeping our government performing its useful functions. Criticism of any particular government act should, therefore, be taken seriously and examined in detail, if it has any factual basis.

But criticism of the idea of having government at all is silly, because the alternative is anarchy, which is conclusively proved (by historical examples) to be worse. “More government” and “less government” are not really very useful concepts; government is not an amorphous homogeneous blob, it is a tool that should be used for some applications, and not used for others. Distinguishing between them can *only* be done by examining the details of particular applications, not by superficial sloganizing.

It’s the difference between saying “It’s a bad idea to use dynamite to brush your teeth” and “It’s a bad idea to use dynamite”. Dynamite, used properly, can be worth using. Just not for dental hygiene. Context is important. Not every proposed use of dynamite is an inevitable step in the road to blowing your head off.

Again,

http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=HealthCareReform.Home

I briefly skimmed it. But it really looked like a very real alternative proposal. Prehaps the Democrats eventual plan will be “better”. I doubt either will fix health care.

But it seems to me that if the deabte is between angry people shouting keep your government hands off my medicare and the Democrats plan –

The Democrats have an advantage.

But if the the debate is between the two plans I am skeptical that the Democrats will have an advantage.

I would like to see that debate.

On to the specific policy provocations.

Defense should be left to another discussion.

Gay marriage. There is nothing stopping homosexuals from gathering with their friends and families and declaring themselves married. It happens all the time. No laws required. Getting government out of marriage all together is something that is very popular on the right. The debate from our side isn’t about whether gays can get married. It’s about whether certain people should be required to acknowledge those marriages (religious conservatives, one of which I am not). They feel their First Amendment rights are being trampled upon when against their most deeply held beliefs they are being forced to countenance these unions. Get the government out and the problem would go away.

Abortion is also mostly an issue for religious conservatives, excepting the fact that in the opinion of a great many of us, it is not and should not be a Constitutional Issue. I myself am pro-choice in matters of law, but it is no where in the Constitution and stretching the Constitution to include it is damaging to both the law and the polity. If you don’t want people to vote against abortion rights, then convince them with argument, don’t shut them up with the club of the Law (and the same holds true for Gay Marriage).

Government surveillance? Look at Britain, which under the Labor (sorry, “Labour”) Party has become the most watched country in the world. Cuba can’t afford that many cameras. I realize that Bush is a favorite whipping boy of the Left for this, but Carnivore came in during the Clinton administration, as did Magic Lantern and international phone calls and emails have been intercepted and recorded since the 80s. I’d like less surveillance in some areas too, but that’s a big government problem, not a Conservative one.

Drugs. Well, the Supreme Court justice who got the most hate mail for striking down California’s medical marijuana provision was Scalia. Not because everybody on the left hates him (and they do), but because he so clearly violated his own stated, conservative principles to side with the Left majority of the court. Evil Clarence Thomas wrote the most scathing dissent in which he was joined by the rest of the Right side of the court.

The puritanical and nanny state strains in this country run strong. Progressivism brought us prohibition and is now at war with cigarettes, and the puritans banned porn, pot and dancing. I see this more as a Libertarian/Not issue than as a Left/Right issue. But you show me the Democratic congress critter proposing repeal of the drug laws (or at least the ridiculously unconstitutional property forfeiture laws) and I’ll sign up.

Immigration. Nothing sensible can be done without a secure border. The last time comprehensive immigration reform was tried, it was passed specifically because it promised to stem the tide from south of the border. It did not and the situation is worse today than it was then. Open borders are untenable with a welfare state and birthright citizenship. Some immigration restrictions must be in place. And any and all restrictions are a joke when illegal immigration swamps legal immigration by 10:1.

Police the border, then expand legal immigration 5 fold and everybody wins. After the flow of illegal immigration has been stemmed, then it makes sense to talk about those who are already here (say it, you know you want to, “amnesty”). But while people are flowing in like water, speaking of “reform” is fantasy.

If you don’t want people to vote against abortion rights, then convince them with argument, don’t shut them up with the club of the Law (and the same holds true for Gay Marriage).

Who is “you” and what is the “shutting up”?

I posted this a while ago but it got stuck in moderation for some reason. Here is a somewhat modified version. Now the discussion seems to have devolved into “a which is better Conservatives or Liberalism?” (your gay marriage inhibits my freedom of religion? please) So I apologize if it seems off the current thread of the discussion. Anyway,

John Holbo writes:

“And slippery slope arguments, arguments from unintended consequences and the paranoid style generally are the tribute conservatism pays to the deep appeal of progressive and liberal values. They are all attempts to outflank all that without engaging it.”

Maybe that’s correct of conservatives in general (I don’t know really—I tend to see way more straw mans, but that’s an empirical question), but I think what you’re really alleging is that conservatives tend to engage in fallacies of relevance (of which the slippery slope is not one strictly speaking).

This is important, because the slippery slope user alleges there is some plausible (to them) causal chain which will produce “death panels” (or some other idiotic accusation). On your variation of their view, however, the conservative objector merely intends to change the subject. The death panel eventuality is the same subject, the conservative will point out (as I think Lane has attempted to point out above), so he will dismiss your point about intentions and distractions.

What’s wrong with the slippery slope arguments (in part, at least) is their insistence on the likelihood of an unlikely road towards communism, socialism, fascism, or liberal fascism (or, more moderately—high costs, rationing, etc.). Objecting to that kind of argument involves a technique rather different from the one you suggest (the sticky slope). You have to show in this case that the causal chain is unlikely or poorly established.

In your case, I think, the sticky slope answers general problems of *relevance.* So, the sticky slope invoker can say: “I know the Obama plan, as you describe it, is an unmitigated moral evil, but what about Obama (prime)’s plan?” You essentially trick them into the return to relevance. My impression is however that that strategy will only work for the (conservative) guy who doesn’t know his strategy is a fallacious one. The one who does has already signaled his disregard for what his opponent’s argument actually is. Good luck with him.

Lane: Where do you live? What you describe is nothing at all like the American political landscape I’m familiar with (in Virginia). Libertarians are not a substantial component of the Right as it presently exists. Religious conservatives are a majority, and corporate managers and rentiers, though few in number, have large influence. (The latter don’t care much about noneconomic issues, except as a way to mobilize the former.)

Your apparent attempt to exclude religious conservatives from a discussion of what policies the Right is advocating is bizarre, at best. At worst it’s a deliberate No True Scotsman argument. You may not personally agree with religious conservative arguments. But they are, by and large, the arguments of the contemporary American right and it is useless to pretend otherwise – nobody will buy it.

Nothing sensible can be done without a secure border.

No state in history has ever had a border that is “secure” in the sense that nobody ever crosses it without official permission. Not even the Berlin Wall. Just last week two Americans were in the news when they were released after being caught *after* crossing what is possibly the most “secure” border in human history. The permeability of borders may not be desirable, but it is inevitable, and any policy based on requiring that you close the border is a policy doomed to failure.

But in any case, it’s clear that even trying to “secure” the border, whether or not the attempt succeeded, would require far more government action and cost than opening it or maintaining the status quo, and therefore, the Right’s position on immigration requires more and bigger government than the Left’s. This fits oddly with their anti-government rhetoric, which was the whole point of coming up with the list in the first place.

The problem with this idea is everywhere it has been tried in ends up producing worse care than the vast majority of Americans now have.

The way this is worded seems to me to be objectively false. Which doesn’t mean that it’s the right approach for the US, but that this particular argument against it is empty.

Henri Vieuxtemps ,

“Same as with public education, military, police, etc.”

But all the best available evidence is that via a voucher program the private sector provides at least the same quality education with increased consumer satisfication at a much lower cost.

http://www.uaedreform.org/SCDP/Milwaukee_Eval/Report_10.pdf

http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/41868652.html

Henri –

this is an area where market approaches are destined to fail.

But why are market approaches the only other options? Charitable giving and non-profit organizations are also possibilities, are they not? The idea of state run health care came from the same era as the idea of state run steel companies. And it should have died with them. The organizational power of the internet isn’t just good running political campaigns.

often he is not trying to minimize the cost/benefit ratio, because often it’s a matter of life and death.

And this is exactly where government run programs become dangerous. With my life and my resources I can choose or not to maximize the cost/benefit ratio. I bear the cost (and possibly my heirs). When the government steps in, they have a duty to at least consider cost/benefit ratios. The current debate in Washington is all about cost, is it not? We have to hold down costs!

But why? Because absent cost reductions, Medicare is going to eat the Federal budget in about ten years. And the only answer to that problem is rationing. And it is politically impossible to tell the Senior Citizens of America that they are going to be facing cuts in their medical care.

And aren’t we forgetting that the whole promise of universal health care is that everyone gets what they need? Right? Or is it, you get what the Government Health Board Determines you need based on a formula they have developed with the help of many experts?

And for advocates of those in poverty, ask yourselves whether future earning potential will figure into that formula?

Uncle Kvetch –

Arguing by anecdote does not prove objective, or even statistical claims. I have as many sob stories on my side recounting the horrors of government run programs around the world.

Reforming the insurance industry is something with broad support on my side of the aisle.

Arguing by anecdote does not prove objective, or even statistical claims.

Then present some statistical claims. You’ve asserted that “everywhere [publicly financed universal health insurance] has been tried in ends up producing worse care than the vast majority of Americans now have.” Please feel free to present your evidence.

someguy, yes I looked, and again: most of these schools in your link (80%) are religious schools. I do know that Catholic schools are cheap, but these are not what people normally call “private schools” in the US. They are organized and run by the Church.

Or, on the final point, what Digby said.

Right-wingers think it was a great thing that Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire. By all means let us take a leaf from his book and also call a spade a spade: modern conservatism has become a moral evil —Greed and superstition defended by the cynicism of public relations experts and the sophistry of callow eternal adolescents.

I think the above bears repeating. My guess is that most progressives reading that comment would have recoiled a bit from the bluntness of it though. Even if sympathising with the spirit of it there’s that voice in the head instinctively questioning whether it is quite fair enough, kind enough. Evil? We don’t use words like evil do we? Maybe if we deconstruct that a bit to ‘less good’ , but then…. Jeebus even ‘moral’ is a bit shaky, maybe differences is neural connections … (….don’t want to become the monster, stare into the abyss too long…) Since the thread’s been hijacked anyway, I thought I’d add a bit to the discomfort.

Progressives and right-wingers do not think alike. There really is a war, and its as old as history (and if progressives don’t step off the back foot, out of their comfort zone, and muscle up a bit I swear I’m smelling toast)

Whether and to what degree it is innate [a position I am increasingly leaning towards, fully aware of the implications] or learned, research is increasingly pointing to a difference in brain architecture/processing (I am thinking, for instance, of Jonathan Haidt’s research into different moral etiologies and their impact on reasoning (progressives tending to privilege fairness/compassion- conservatives more swayed by authority/disgust/ingroup issues), Altemeyer’s RWA scale, Drew Westen’s MRI scanning (revealing different brain responses to inputs according to political persuasion).

Progressives are viscerally disgusted by many of the tactics that right-wingers use routinely (e.g. lies, sophistry, fear mongering, propaganda generally, disruption of progressive blogs) – the progressive instinct is to engage them with the tools that they themselves respond to: reason, logic, truth, fairness. Too often all it does is feed and empower the wingnuts – hand the floor over to them, move the overton window a bit more their way (while those listening out for a clear, constructive progressive voice simply turn off, drift away, fall silent, lose all conviction). I think the right-wingers would call that a win.

Shorter version: So y’all had to go feeding the troll, wrestling with the pig, when a simple stfu would have sufficed

Lane,

Last things first, no the border cannot be airtight, it cannot stop 100% of those attempting to cross. But it can be made much more secure than it is. Millions of people pour across every year. Drop that number to tens of thousands and I’ll call the work done.

When people are willing to risk death to cross the border, this is difficult. But there is a way. You hominids could turn the border into a killing field. That would stop unwanted hominids from crossing. Hey, more food for us corvids!

When the solution is mass murder, it’s wrong, no matter how good the reasons are.

& I’m so out of this one!

to save anyone else bothering to click through at 67, the “lifelong Democrat” making “firm” and “must-read” points is in fact camille paglia

I think the promise of universal health care is that everyone is entitled to a certain reasonable level of health care. You probably won’t be entitled for a private hospital room and a nose job.

Basically you’re entitled to be investigated, diagnosed, medicated, cured and kept alive, whatever the condition might be, without ever having to worry about what it all costs or where the money’s coming from. I think that’s quite a good thing.

Henri Vieuxtemps,

Really? Whenever I here private school I think Catholic. That is probably because most everyone I have ever known who sent to a private school went to a Catholic private school. And partly because this the breakdown of private school attendance

Catholic 42.5%
Nonsectarian 19.4%
Conservative Christian 15.2%
Baptist 5.5%
Lutheran 3.7%
Jewish 4.7%
Episcopal 2.1%
Seventh-day Adventist 1.1%
Calvinist 0.6%
Friends 0.4%

http://www.capenet.org/facts.html

In a larger sense I am confused about what difference it makes. We know that private schools can provide the same education at a much reduced cost.

Right now many of those private schools are Catholic. So what? With vouchers anyone who wants to attend could attend and get the same education at a lower cost. People frightened by the term Catholic school could choose not to attend.

All the studies seem to indicate that this does nothing to hurt public education. If anything the available data suggests that the competition leads to better educational outcomes for both the private and public school students.

Further I am pretty sure that there is nothing special about Catholics that makes them the only ones capable of providing the same education at a lower cost.

You cited education as an area where private markets are destined to fail and the government must step in.

“Because, I claim, this is an area where market approaches are destined to fail. Market approach works best for mass-production of cheap identical things. Healthcare is very different: it’s complicated, consumer is not well educated about his options and costs; moreover: often he is not trying to minimize the cost/benefit ratio, because often it’s a matter of life and death. This seems to be exactly the kind of situation where governments step in and do what they do, take care of general welfare. Same as with public education, military, police, etc.”

I have pointed out that it is actually the case that private markets provide the same education at a lower cost.

If as you claim health care is the same situation as education, why shouldn’t we expect the private market to provide the same care at a lower cost?

“OK, forget about the Catholic schools (although they clearly don’t have anything to do with “private market”); ”

The private education market doesn’t consist of just Catholic Schools. How is it not a private market? People buy education from a wide assortment of private education providers.

“this model you like is exactly like a universal healthcare model practiced by many European countries: private hospitals – public financing (vouchers in your case). ”

So you suppport the one of the Repbulican Health Care reform plans I provided a link to above?

The heart of the plan seems to be public vouchers for private care.

http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=HealthCareReform.Home

If so, excellent, no problem.

“Vatican is as much a ‘private’ education provider as the US government. Why does it seem complicated?”

One important difference is folks voluntarily give the Vatican money to have their children educated. If they don’t feel that education is worth the money, they don’t volunteer the money.

The EITC, Earned Income Tax Credit, is currently enjoyed by millions who don’t have to pay any income tax. It is a negative income tax. Presumably the tax credit for health care works the same way. I am almost certain it would. I re-call reading bits of the plan that very strongly implied that.

Assuming the tax is negative, do you have any issues?

Henri Vieuxtemps,

“Well, not everybody gets EITC, and what’s the point of all this anyway? If they want to give everybody medical insurance, why not just give everybody medical insurance?”

Because you get choice, competition, and the profit incentive remains. Same reasons free markets work better than command and control.

Henri Vieuxtemps,

They work better in education, which was one of your examples of where markets cannot work, same as with health care was your claim. If you have an education market even the Vatican vs the US govt, you can get the same education cheaper.

“but all an insurance company does is negotiating with providers, collecting the premium, paying your bills, and pocketing the difference; insurance company is a middle-man who rips everybody off. ”

That is a lot! And you left a lot out!

What does a cell phone company provide? A tower and a bill? Goodness what a ripoff!