Economics 101, in Which I Prove that Car Markets Do Not Exist

I begin to see now why the Catallarchs sometimes got so frustrated with some of my initial comments way back when I first started posting there. See, I've been having this discussion with some of John Edwards' supporters about health care and the free market. I initially just tried to offer a suggestion that, I think, was fully in line with the spirit of Edwards' proposal, but that worked rather more in conjunction with the market. Mostly my proposal is that the idea to create Health Markets^TM is silly since we already have a health market. Some however, have chosen to dispute that fact. Here's an example:

In a Health Market, the premiums are collected by the health market, not by the individual insurance company.
* Is that the case in every state today?

In a Health Market, nobody can be turned away for a pre-existing condition, being too old, or having something in their health history that indicates they are a higher risk to insure.
* Is that the case in every state today?

In a Health Market, insurance companies must meet a benchmark standard in coverage to participate.
* Is that the case in every state today?

In a Health Market, private insurers must compete against a public plan set up on the same lines as Medicare.
* Is that the case in every state today?

In a Health Market, the Health Market consolidates billing to reduce the costs imposed on health service providers by a blizzard of claims forms
* Is that the case in every state today?

In a Health Market, the information about the relationship between treatments and quality of care is public information available to support research into providing more effective health care, and not private information available to better determine who should be denied coverage.
* Is that the case in every state today?

In order for the claim to be accurate that "Health Markets Already Exist", each and every one of those features must be present in each and every state in the union.

However, I rather think that no state in the Union has a full-flegged Health Market, and most people in the country have nothing at all like it available.

Interesting. No, it's more than interesting. It's fantastic. Watch what we can do now!

• In a Car Market, the premiums are collected by the car market, not by the individual car dealership.

* Is that the case in every state today?

• In a Car Market, nobody can be turned away even if they are a serious risk to take the car without actually paying enough to cover the cost of that car.

* Is that the case in every state today?

• In a Car Market, car dealerships must meet a benchmark standard in order to participate.

* Is that the case in every state today?

• In a Car Market, private car dealerships must compete against a public car dealership, one that's just like Carmax, only run by the DMV.

* Is that the case in every state today?

• In a Car Market, the Car Market consolidates billing to reduce the costs imposed on car providers by a blizzard of different ordering forms.

* Is that the case in every state today?

• In a Car Market, the information about the relationship between cars and quality of driving is public information available to support research into providing better cars, and not private information available to better determine to whom a car dealership should actually sell a car.

* Is that the case in every state today?

In order for the claim to be accurate that "Car Markets Already Exist," each and every one of those features must be present in each and every state in the union.

However, I rather think that no state in the Union has a full-flegged Car Market, and most people in the country have nothing at all like it available.

And you know, that's really just too bad, 'cause I was thinking of getting a car. Whatever will I do with no car markets available? Maybe I'll just head up to Canada. I hear that they have universal car coverage up there. They're all 1993 Chevy Cavaliers, require a 6 month wait, and require a 46% deduction from every paycheck. But, hey, they're free!

UPDATE: Corrected the embarrassingly bad grammar mistake in the last paragraph.