National Health Care and Capitalism

[HydrogenBond]

The national health care system in the US is among the best in the world due to capitalism. The free market system allows competition and maximizes the efficient allocation of resources. One the down side, the capitalist system creates a situation where premium health care is not affordable by everyone, leaving many without affordable health care. The numbers are in the tens of millions.

 

One of the solutions that is toyed with is a public sector health care system, where the government would oversee health care. This has been tried in other countries and the result is long lines and marginal care. The wealthy in such countries utilize the capitalists system and seek health care elsewhere, often on the US.

 

One free market solution that could create the best of both worlds is connected to the Government helping to set up buying groups who would shop for health care in a capitalist free market. If one does not know what a buying group is, let me give an example. A friend of mine owns a few paints stores. It is hard to compete with the big guys like Home Depot. So what he and other mom and pop stores do is pool their buying powering via buying groups allowing them to buy cheaper than HD. The mom and pop stores gain a higher margin but have lower volume. This allows both to compete side by side.

 

What I would do is have Uncle Sam create a group of intelligent free market govenment employees to organize maybe 5-10 buying groups. With the collective purchasing power of $billions, they can negociate what they wish to pay within the capitalist system. The reason Uncle Sam needs to get involved is to initially eliminate all the capitalists middlemen who would eat up too much of the cost savings. This will allow wholesale prices to be passed on to anyone wishing to participate in the program. The reason one has many buying groups is to encourage competition and choice between the groups to assure prices stay low. As the groups get going they will need administrative oversight (creates jobs in the private sector). The competition will help keep the buying groups lean, since one can shift their care to any group without loss of benefits.

[HydrogenBond]

The current free market system is not totally free market in the sense that not everyone is competing at the same level. Most people are grudgenly content to be shortchanged since they don't have the skills needed to do otherwise. The system has a smaller than ideal number of shepherds with tons of sheep waiting to be sheared, with the sheep kept ignorant to the true value of their wool.

 

This is where buying groups come in. It teaches the sheep how to think more like shepherds since they are part owners in the company. Part of the buying group activity is to give people an economic sense of the true value of their wool. By increasing economic literacy, the exsiting system becomes much closer to the ideal of a free market system. Lack of literacy in economics creates an approximation to a free market system that shifts the free market to only a small number of people.

 

What is also good about the buying groups is that it allows the sheep to play another free market game. This game is called lobbying. It is usually limited to shepherds and not sheep. It is where the shepherds gather to determine how to divide up the wool. With the sheep becoming their own shepherds, they can looby to determine who gets to buy the wool.

 

For example, if one paided $100 for medicine last year and decided that this is too much and I can only pay $90, the sheep will end up paying $110 and feel cheated with no recourse. As a buying group, one can stand firm at $90, until suppliers break rank to cash on the volume sale.

 

One of the positive side of buying groups, is that the sheep have not yet learned to be motivated by only economic greed. They are just looking for a fair shake from the system. What this translate to is a buffer zone for existing business.