Reply #165: And what happens when a Repub is the HHS secretary?

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

The regulated will run roghshod over the regulators as per usual.

That's the problem when people look for answers in regulation as opposed to legislation. Robert Reich addresses this issue here:

http://robertreich.org/post/628324698/obamas-regulatory-brain

Obama’s Regulatory Brain
Monday, May 24, 2010

skip

It’s almost exactly like health care reform. Ideas for changing the structure of the health-care industry — a single payer, Medicare for all, even a so-called “public option” — were all jettisoned by the White House in favor of a complex set of regulations that left the old system of private for-profit health insurers in place. The final health care act doesn’t even remove the exemption of private insurers from the nation’s antitrust laws.

Regulations don’t work if the underlying structure of an industry — be it banking or health care — got us into trouble in the first place. Wall Street’s big banks are just too big, and their ability to draw on commercial deposits for investment banking activities, including derivatives, will make them even bigger. It will also subject the economy to greater and greater risks in the future. No amount of regulation can cure that.

Similarly, the underlying system of private for-profit health insurance is a key driver of America’s bloated and ineffective health care delivery. We can try to regulate it like mad, but no amount of regulation will cure this fundamental problem.

A regulatory rather than structural approach to deep-seated problems in complex industries like banking and health care is also vulnerable to the inevitable erosion that occurs when industry lobbyists insert themselves into the regulatory process. Tiny loopholes get larger. Delays get longer. Legislative words are warped and distorted to mean what industry wants them to mean.