{"id":1728,"date":"2009-08-18T00:32:35","date_gmt":"2009-08-18T05:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/?p=1728"},"modified":"2009-08-18T00:32:35","modified_gmt":"2009-08-18T05:32:35","slug":"petron-and-the-healthcare-debatethe-public-option-as-a-signal-paul-krugman-blog-nytimescom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/2009\/08\/18\/petron-and-the-healthcare-debatethe-public-option-as-a-signal-paul-krugman-blog-nytimescom\/","title":{"rendered":"Petron and the Healthcare Debate::The public option as a signal &#8211; Paul Krugman Blog &#8211; NYTimes.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When petron was a <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Government-owned corporation\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Government-owned_corporation\">government owned company<\/a>, they were able to distort the supply curves because they were in essence the regulatory arm of the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Government\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Government\">government<\/a>. If the outcry was large enough shell and caltex may increase their prices but petron&#8217;s price does not move. What&#8217;s interesting in the case of the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Filipino cuisine\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Filipino_cuisine\">philippines<\/a> is that petron was sold to foreign interests and afterwards the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Petroleum industry\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Petroleum_industry\">oil industry<\/a> was <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Deregulation\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Deregulation\">deregulated<\/a>. Double whammy to the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Filipino people\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Filipino_people\">Filipino people<\/a>. Our government does not have the balls and probably the manpower to effectively police what is in effect price collusions of oil industry players. The solution is string institutions but I guess that is near impossible for us right now. Buy back petron would be second best with the least amount of complications, although where we are going to get the money, I don&#8217;t know. Maybe a few of Pres GMA&#8217;s entourage could chip in!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The public option as a signal<br \/>\nLook, it is possible to have universal care without a public option; <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Switzerland\" rel=\"geolocation\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=46.8011111111,8.22666666667&amp;spn=10.0,10.0&amp;q=46.8011111111,8.22666666667%20%28Switzerland%29&amp;t=h\">Switzerland<\/a> does. But there are some good reasons for the prominence of the public option in our debate.<br \/>\nOne is substantive: to have a workable system without the public option, you need to have effective <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Regulation\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Regulation\">regulation<\/a> of the insurers. Given the realities of our money-dominated politics, you really have to worry whether that can be done \u2014 which is a reason to have a more or less automatic mechanism for disciplining the industry.<br \/>\nvia <a href=\"http:\/\/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/08\/17\/the-public-option-as-a-signal\/\">The public option as a signal &#8211; Paul Krugman Blog &#8211; NYTimes.com<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Reblog this post [with Zemanta]\" href=\"http:\/\/reblog.zemanta.com\/zemified\/f427f090-72f1-4b29-9cf4-bb0ed71c4d81\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: medium none; float: right;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.zemanta.com\/reblog_e.png?w=525\" alt=\"Reblog this post [with Zemanta]\" \/><\/a><span class=\"zem-script more-related pretty-attribution\"><script src=\"http:\/\/static.zemanta.com\/readside\/loader.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When petron was a government owned company, they were able to distort the supply curves because they were in essence the regulatory arm of the government. If the outcry was large enough shell and caltex may increase their prices but petron&#8217;s price does not move. What&#8217;s interesting in the case of the philippines is that &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/2009\/08\/18\/petron-and-the-healthcare-debatethe-public-option-as-a-signal-paul-krugman-blog-nytimescom\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Petron and the Healthcare Debate::The public option as a signal &#8211; Paul Krugman Blog &#8211; NYTimes.com&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,79],"tags":[276,277,639,745,1074,1188,1362,1391],"class_list":["post-1728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-reposts","tag-business","tag-business-and-economy","tag-government","tag-investing","tag-paul-krugman","tag-regulation","tag-switzerland","tag-the-new-york-times-company"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}