Why Free Market Healthcare does not exist.

David Thomas-Jensen
Sep 8, 2018 · 6 min read
“close-up photo of 100 US dollar banknotes” by Pepi Stojanovski on Unsplash

There is no such thing as a free market where either buyers or sellers are coerced.

You cannot call healthcare, defense, energy, or even food as industries as free markets. On some level, all of these industry sectors cannot be walked away from, or substituted, therefore by definition they are not Free Markets.

It’s shocking to those of us who got good grades in Economics classes and found the information straightforward and quite logically simple and clear in its explanation of the behavior of markets that so few people understand the principle of Markets, Free and otherwise.

Most people assume all markets are free and State policy determines whether or not they are allowed to operate in that natural fashion. This may be the case in many societies and markets and its wise to assume that interference in free and open markets, stifles innovation, competition, and expansion of opportunity and services, for it is true. It does. But markets that by nature are not Free, require special consideration, a neutral governor in order to keep them innovative, their purpose and objectives clean, and the continued investment and innovation moving. Such markets due to the absence of either going without, or a viable substitute cannot be lived without, are not free and to treat them as such is to accord unnatural profits, influence, and power, to the suppliers in an ever more predatory and exploitative and arguably anti-competitive market.

We live in a world dominated by our country, dominated politically and financially to four industries, three of which are predatory and the fourth, banking which facilitates and leverages and profits immensely from it, the expansion, control, and dominance of the other three. The three markets in question are the Energy Market, The Health Care Market and the Military Industrial supply chain Market. Pills, Energy, and Bombs.

“Neither buyer nor seller may be Coerced into transacting, in order for a market to be truly free.”

We always assume the only coercion can be laws and policy, but I am here to tell you when I have a Heart Attack, I am being coerced into dialing 911 in order to save my life. I don’t negotiate with my Oncologist about the price and or schedule of my Chemotherapy. And it doesn’t take a genius that a company that can keep you alive, but unwell, medicated for both your illnesses, and their symptoms, and a further level to address the side effects of the medications, is a considerably more profitable drug company than one that seeks to treat diseases and illness in clean, curative and complete ways, with as few medications as possible. Given the choice as a person of whether I want my medical dollars incentivizing treatments that leave me chronically ill, lingering with symptoms and side effects requiring additional medication, or Incentivizing treatments that cure the illness, I know what my answer is and what everyone else would answer, except with the added doubt of, yeah but, “without the competition of profit and loss, what is to incentivize the research to advance medicine?”

Well, I have a better driving force, from which the benefits are clear and implicit and the scalable values make instant and complete lifelong financial stability for the innovators, bestowed by a grateful population of suddenly healed and newly healthy people, where before they were chronically ill without hope or support. It will be sanctioned from taxes defined as incentives and scaled royalty buyouts for the rights to produce distributed, competitive and at scale to meet the need. Not Demand, this is not retail healthcare. This is HEALTH services, with a MISSION an objective of Market wealth, the Healthiest, happiest, most productive and longest functionally living workforce in history.

The costs of Illness even minor are not insignificant. Let us say you are sick from work a total of 3 days a year, and another 20 days you feel ‘Not yourself’ Productivity levels 80% of normal. a total of 7 days, times an average income of 500 dollars a work week plus 40 percent of another, let's say 700 dollars in wages. The value of your work arguably is around three or more times your pay. so take a labor force of our nation, 150 million, somewhere between 70 billion and 210 billion. Add in life-changing and debilitating or life-terminating illness of which at any time about 1 in 20 of us is suffering from and you are talking the loss of 100s of thousands of dollars per another 10 million per year. now add it up and you have upfront costs of 4–900 billion dollars, and we haven’t even scratched the actual costs of healthcare because these are production and losses, the illness, treatment, care and services and we are pushing doubling that number, because we have a system where both are valued and exploited by non-free markets.

Healthcare, if seen purely as a goal of Health, would include food sources, nutrition, stable housing, mental health, and basic living security. It would incentivize clean treatments, culture and lifestyle shifts, towards healthier self-care and behavioral decisions, leading to healthier populations, and behaviors, habits passed on to future generations. I would take the cost of treating illness and add dollars in order to incentivize and reward the innovations, treatments, research findings that lead to better health.

Where would the money come from? Well, you currently pay through the nose for health care insurance, to profit a private, predatory health care system. That money. The ads for medications, necessary if your ROI model requires sales and your fiduciary obligation to shareholders is maximum profit. That money. The money spent at private hospitals for the latest and best in all technology creating a surplus of capacity in order to compete for the profitable sick people. That money. All the gross expensive emergency medicine we currently apply in crisis to the 25million almost 10 percent of our population, costs that in one crisis exceed the preventative costs of dozens for life. Now, since they will get care in a non-free market. That money.

Add it up and everything that can be done, will be, and the cost to you will go down based on scale. The underpaid and shortages in medical professionals will evaporate because if we need them we will pay for them, assuming that they can deliver the higher standards of care, that our predatory, for-profit health care system has been whittling at in order to make MORE MONEY.

Oh no, but I may have to wait in line for my non-essential procedure.

You are right! AND for you, the very few who consume a ‘boutique’ of healthcare, there will be a private and for-profit health care system, non-essential, elective, cosmetic, etc… For you and your discretionary spending.

And YOU, will pay for it, not the society in general because this has nothing to do with your HEALTH. It has nothing to do with determining sick days, non-right days, and the length and quality of your lifespan. This healthcare has to do with the look and feel and personal taste. Can someone make an argument for needing botox in order to be healthy? Sure and a legal assessment for cosmetic and non-essential services will, of course, need to be in place. It will also have an obligation to figure out if a surgery or mental health care services are more warranted in achieving that happiness you legitimately are seeking. And unlike now, where undiagnosed mental health conditions lead to elective cosmetic procedures. Another form of medical abuse will see a great reduction. Do you have a horrible scar? Make a case. Do you want eyebrows that make you look ‘surprised’ all day long? Get out your bank card.

But if we ever get a chance to figure this issue out, again, I recommend we all agree on this simple fact. Healthcare is not a free market, by nature. And while we are at it, let us also treat Healthcare as a need, people cannot thrive without. If we do, we can align the incentives (granted bounty, vs profits) to achieve the goals we want. In healthcare, outcomes are all that truly matters. Right now we spend too much to allow others to get wealthy, all while incentivizing our exploitation and continued chronic sicknesses, not to mention our political dominance by such a predatory industry.

Looking for smart in a world of stupid, grateful for children and love. Will write about almost anything, and occasionally from an informed POV.

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