And yet huge percentages of people still vote their incumbent back into office, still vote for their party, still rely upon their party’s propaganda rather than do research themselves, etc. So while they may report they have an issue with the functioning of our government, I think we can agree they don’t know what to do to change it, or at least cannot agree upon what to do to change it.

I don’t think it is hair brained to think that our government isn’t an expert at everything. There are things it can do well, and there are some things it does well, but there are many things that companies (both for profit and non profit) do much better.

We can both agree Obamacare is a disaster. It will continue to get worse, because no one wants to admit just how expensive it is to provide excellent care to the entire country. It is hard to come up with a good solution if you continuously lie about the scope of the problem.

I happen to work in healthcare, so I know a thing or two about it. The good side of privatization is that there is incentive to drive down costs. Insurance companies are often good and holding crappy healthcare institutions (and there are a lot of them) accountable for their poor performance.

The bad side of privatization is that there is incentive to drive down costs at the expense of quality of care. Insurance companies are also good at creating ridiculous billing schemes to obfuscate shirking their responsibility to treat everyone.

So I don’t have blind faith that privatization alone is the cure for all ills. For profit companies do need sensible regulation. There has to be a good balance between profit and public interest. I think our government should focus on producing sensible and manageable regulations that are based in reality, and not trying to become a nationwide healthcare company that will not perform as well as what we have.

If our government in its current form was capable of handling healthcare for the nation, then our VA wouldn’t be the dumpsterfire that it has been for the past 40 years.

At the end of the day, both government and for profits need to be held accountable and need to be transparent in their operations so that accountability can exist in reality, and not just in marketing materials.