This is Neoliberalism, Part V: the False Promise of “Choice”
Beware of politicians, pundits and experts who say they support consumer “choice” — that word does not mean what you think it means.
Note: this is Part 5 of a 5-part series. For links to the other parts, please see below.
We must always — and I mean ALWAYS — be on guard against ANY conservative or centrist argument that uses the word “choice.”
These types of attacks utilise the talking points and the philosophical underpinnings of neoliberalism as set forth in Milton Friedman‘s seminal book, Free to Choose, which sought to portray neoliberal capitalism as the perfect system because it offered “choice” to the consumer. Friedman was Reagan’s favourite economist and his neoliberal principles informed and guided many of the anti-government, pro-market policies that defined “Reaganomics”.
Indeed, Friedman’s work played a critical role in fuelling the so-called “Reagan Revolution”.
The book that powered the Reagan Revolution
Free to Choose was a PBS TV series that was simultaneously published as a book in January, 1980. The concurrent airing of the TV series ensured that the book quickly became a bestseller — just as the 1980 Presidential Election was starting to heat up.
Although Reagan lost the Iowa caucuses in January, by the time the New Hampshire GOP Primary rolled around on February 26, 1980, Free to Choose had shot up to number 3 on the New York Times Bestseller List. Reagan came from behind to win that Primary with 50% of the vote.
The Free to Choose book and the TV series were both aimed at bringing the principles of free-market capitalism to the broader public. Primary among these was the premise that only Capitalism could bring freedom to human society. Through the book and the media, these neoliberal ideals were encapsulated into bite sized themes and slogans such as “consumer choice”. The idea that “choice” is not only the most important aspect of economic freedom, but that choice itself can only be delivered through free-market capitalism, is a central tenet of neoliberalism.
Reagan’s anti-government mantra was, in short, popularised by Friedman’s work, and as more and more Americans became familiar with the ideas of Friedman and his Chicago School colleagues, the more Reagan’s ideas of privatization and “getting government off the backs of the American people” seemed to make sense.
Needless to say, Reagan won the 1980 Republican Primary and went on to win the general election in a landslide.
Democrats Embrace Friedman’s credo of “Choice”
Reagan’s promulgation of Friedman’s economics, despite being derided by George H.W. Bush as “voodoo economics”, led to supply-side principles becoming general orthodoxy, and the philosophy of small government became so ubiquitous that Bill Clinton, a supposed Democrat, also embraced Reaganomics and devoted his entire Presidency to fulfilling Reagan’s wish list of ending Welfare, ratifying NAFTA, deregulating Wall Street and other industries, and passing a crime bill (written by Joe Biden) that would put black and brown people in prison at unprecedented rates.
Clinton’s wholehearted support for the neoliberal dogma of “consumer choice” was buttressed by a cottage industry of economists and cultural evangelists who founded the Free to Choose Network, a right wing conservative media publisher dedicated to broadcasting neoliberal propaganda through the PBS network and other national platforms. This group arranged a much celebrated re-airing of Free to Choose in 1990, ensuring that Friedman’s neoliberal dogma continued to inform the Clinton Administration and the Washington power elite.
“Choice” in the Health Care Debate
It has now been widely covered that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as “Obamacare”, was developed in concert with the for-profit health insurance companies. The result was a “Rube Goldberg” monstrosity of labyrinthine programs and processes that made “choosing” the right health insurance plan a nightmare for millions of Americans.
Part of the rollout of Obamacare included deploying ACA Navigators to offer in-person assistance to people in “choosing” their health insurance plan — at a yearly cost to the Federal Government that reached a high of $63 million per year. The cost of the Navigator program has since dropped to “only” $10 million per year, however the insurance plans themselves have skyrocketed in cost.
All done in order to keep “choice” in the health insurance marketplace.
While “consumer choice” was a major selling point of the ACA, choice is now also being used as an argument to attack Medicare For All. Knowing that they cannot attack M4A in terms of cost-effectiveness, customer satisfaction or any other tangible metric, opponents of Medicare For All have resorted to using the neoliberal argument of “consumer CHOICE”.
A whistle blower explains the Big Lie of “choice”
Wendell Potter is a former head of corporate communications for Cigna, who left the insurance industry to blow the whistle on just how much that industry is lying to us.He knows they are lying, because as an insurance industry PR flack he created the lie in the first place.
“When I worked in the insurance industry, we were instructed to talk about “choice,” based on focus groups and people like Frank Luntz (who wrote the book on how the GOP should communicate with Americans). I used it all the time as an industry flack.
“As a health insurance PR guy, we knew one of the huge “vulnerabilities” of the current system was LACK of choice. In the current system, you can’t pick your own doc, specialist, or hospital without huge “out of network” bills. So we set out to muddy the issue of ‘choice’.”
Ronald Reagan has been praised as a “transformational” President by Republicans and many centrist Democrats (including Barack Obama). Reagan’s neoliberalism survives to this day, and has spread not only all over America, bit to America’s allies in Europe as well.
In fact, there is now an entire “Transatlanticist” network of dedicated neoliberals who are trying to ruin the economies of Europe in the same way that neoliberal “Reaganomics” destroyed US society.
I wrote about this development here:
#End
ADDITIONAL ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES:
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Well said here!
This dangerous idea of false "choice" along with the fake "market" concept, is also being used as a front for forcing the ownership of private infrastructure across the world in poor countries, into the hands or the global financial institution and the rich people that own them.
But anyone who has ever gone through the farce of consumer "choice" when taking a train to work, or entering a highway with a toll booth, or getting electricity in their house.....understands fully there is no choice. It's just theft.
'We never forget you have no choice'.