306 Lowering Healthcare Costs

It seems unlikely that the solution to lowering the cost of universal healthcare can come through politics, there are simply too many players: doctors, insurers, unions & entrepreneurs, who are complicit in the status quo, as proven by the Obamacare debacle. The reason Obamacare doesn't do cost containment is because the Insurance & Healthcare industries did not want it to; they're the ones who get the money, and they're the ones who run up the costs. But don't just blame self-interested business & unions; patients who expect the best of everything for nothing is a significant part of the problem.

Socializing healthcare would be the best solution with its top-down cost containment; it's worked in other countries, and Medicare is already doing it. A Capitalist solution has not been forthcoming for the simple reason that healthcare is not a voluntary commodity; though not technically monopolistic, traditional market pressures do not apply. Liability issues are also unreasonably avaricious, both on the side of plaintiff attorneys & the insurance companies. And unions use the rhetoric of fairness but their reality is as exploitative as any of the other pigs at the trough.

In the meantime, here is a fait accompli healthcare cost containment strategy: first, make Clinic nonprofit & encourage volunteerism; second, advertise set prices that include everything, including labs & devices; third, frustrate liability claims using legal artifices; forth, prevent unionization; and, most importantly, fly under the radar of vested interests. If it could become fashionable to use “organic” healthcare, perhaps it might just catch on?