Re “Free up markets to address home insurance crisis” (June 6): Adam B. Summers’ evaluation of California’s insurance dysfunction offers the best prescription for solving our other economic woes. Allowing a free market would reduce the excessive costs of gas, housing, food, doing business and virtually all the other things that make California’s cost of living the highest in the country.
Government interferences (economists call these market artificialities) that he cites include price controls, regulations, bureaucratic inefficiencies, wage laws, litigation, as well as so-called consumer and environmental protections on top of the arbitrary whims of regulators and advocacy organizations. Considering all the challenges that dominate our economy, these same government-imposed market restrictions apply across the board.
Unless California loosens its monopolistic death grip on its over-controlled markets, these crises will only get worse.
— Raymond Roth, Oceanside
