You may not have read about it because he wasn't accompanied with his usual wave of unemployment, disaster, debt and racial discord, but Barack recently visited Ohio.

Here's an article that the good folks at Industry Week recently sent me.

When Libertarians criticize and ridicule Obamacare, they often get slammed for not providing an alternative, or for not caring about the poor, or for not having a plan at all. 

For a moment, please disregard the obvious reality of human action creating a spontaneous order, and the like.  Let's assume that someone has to write down a plan for the benefit of the Secular Theists out there. 

Here's a plan....

Designate a three-square-mile area south of Fort Worth TX as a "Free Market Healthcare Zone".  (Back in the early 80's, China designated four cities as "Free Trade Zones" as an alternative to having citizens starve to death.  These zones were wildly successful, led to the present success of the Chinese economy and standard of living, and everyone is still scrambling to get in.) 

In this Free Market Healthcare Zone, there would be no government regulations, only those regulations agreed to by the caregivers themselves (doctors, nurses, hospitals and pharmaceutical providers), and their customers.  Since the American insurance industry now has more government regulations than a nuclear waste dump, let's make this three-square mile area an Insurance Free Zone also. 

If you walk into a doctor's office or hospital in the Free Market Healthcare Zone, the first thing they'll ask you to do is sign a waiver promising not to sue if things go badly.  (These agreements are currently illegal, BTW.)  Yes, there is a sacred belief in the Libertarian mindset that if someone does you harm, you are entitled to compensation.  But there is another, equally sacred belief about honoring contracts.  Please hang with me for a few more paragraphs....

The second thing you'll do is see a nurse.  I've never known a nurse who didn't believe she could do 90% of what an M.D. can do.  If the nurse thinks you need some penicillin, she'll sell you some penicillin.  Or give you a morphine shot.  Or give you five stitches.  It's up to the nurse.  She might even call in a doctor.  After giving you whatever treatment she thinks you need, you'll walk up to a desk and write a check for the full cost of the visit. 

You might want to go only to a doctor who has been to a traditional medical school, one who will  have a little diploma on the wall stating that he's graduated, and has Rick Perry's permission to be a doctor in Texas.  Or you might be content to go to a doctor who has only been to DeVry.  Your choice.  Your life, your rules.   

But what if someone, or some institution, consistently provides bad service with poor outcomes?  How would the FW TX FMHZ possibly deal with that problem?  It would be done in the same way that we deal with bad grocery stores, bad mechanics, Betamax cassettes, Yugos and failed TV sitcoms.  People would stop purchasing those services. 

Things you will not have to pay for:  1) the involvement of a doctor, unless necessary, and 2) keeping the doctor and nurses safe from lawyers, and 3) a trip to the pharmacist, and 4) insurance overhead, and 5) Barack Obama's fantasies and delusions of being relevant to your health and well-being. 

I have a good friend who is a Marine medic.  If I get cut by a piece of rusty sheet metal, I can get him to give me a tetanus shot and five stitches, as long as we're in the lawyer-free, insurance-free, regulation-free Obama-free Fort Worth, Texas, Free Market Healthcare Zone.  It's none of Barack Obama's business.  Or Rick Perry's.  Or the law firm of Screwem Goode and Harte's. 

The same rules apply if I want to consult with some other dude who doesn't know much about stitches, but he's watched all of the YouTube videos.  I belong to me, you belong to you, and it really is none of your business. 

At this point, no one in the United States can tell you what it costs to treat a broken arm.  It depends on your insurance.  Chances are, no one in the U.S. with a broken arm has personally paid for the treatment in the last ten years.  The check was written by an insurance company or by the government, or the care was provided for, at no charge, by a hospital that can't legally turn anyone away.  Prices will never, ever drop as long as the user isn't negotiating the payment for the service. 

Would this Free Market Healthcare Zone concept cut America's healthcare expenses in half if every city had one?  Yes. 

Would one day in the hospital go back to a level where it equaled about two day's pay?  I bet it would.

Would it force the American Medical Association to start training more doctors?  Yes.  (BTW, things are more expensive when they are scarce, and the AMA creates an artificial scarcity by only releasing so many doctors into the market every year.) 

Would the level of innovation in these Free Market Zones possibly triple that of the current system?  Let's see... Risk wouldn't be punished, regulations wouldn't get in the way, and creativity would actually be rewarded.  I believe that's a yes.  There might even find a cure for cancer in that environment.   

Would more poor people be able to afford healthcare?  You betcha. 

Would more and more doctors and nurses be able to go back to treating indigent patients at no charge?  I bet they would. 

This would be so beautiful, and IMHO, so easy.  Give up the right to sue.  Stop worrying about whether the doctor or nurse has a certification from Rick Perry.  Get the insurance bureaucracy out of the way. 

We could do it next year, but we're just too compassionate to give up the trial lawyers, the insurance execs, and the Department Of Health And Human Services.....

Matthew McConaughey is starring in a new movie that'll be released in December called "Dallas Buyers Club", about a guy with AIDS who battled the bureaucracy to create something of his own very similar to a Fort Worth Free Market Healthcare Zone.  All of it illegal, of course.  Can't wait to see it. 


 

This morning on the way to work, I listened to NPR's Scott Simon interviewing Darrick Hamilton, an economist from "The New School".  (I often listen to NPR since I'm forced by the government's men with guns to help pay for it.)
The topic was the incredible disparity between black and white unemployment rates.  It's now a 2 to 1 ratio.

I interviewed black guys for about four hours yesterday, so I listened to the whole thing.  It took an ACT OF GOD to keep me from shoving my fist through the windshield. 

Go here to listen to the whole thing.  If you're a regular reader of this blog, stay away from glass and sharp objects. 

Perfesser Hamilton wants to have a Federal Job Guarantee.  Hit the link for the whole thing. 

By creating a National Investment Employment Corps (NIEC), states and municipalities could develop inventories of needed jobs for all who are able to work, matching skilled and unskilled alike with full employment opportunities. Jobs would address physical and human infrastructure needs, including building, repair and maintenance of bridges, damns, roads, parks, museums, mass transit systems, school facilities, health clinics, child care centers, even restoration of our damaged postal system. Pay would range from a minimum of $20,000 to a maximum of $80,000, each job also providing benefits, opportunities for advancement, on-the-job training and professional development.

Christ Almighty in a sidecar.  Wealth is created by moving assets from lower valued uses to higher valued uses.  Nobody becomes better off in the long run by hiring more government munchkins to train more and more black unemployed drug war victims in the skills needed to build museums, or the "restoration of our damaged postal system" LOL.  But enough about Perfesser Hamilton's FDR-era fantasies....

I interviewed 5 black guys yesterday.  One of my supervisors (who happens to be black) sat in with me.  We heard 5 depressingly similar stories. 

All 5 candidates had a criminal record related to the Nixon-Ford-Carter-Regan-Bush-Clinton/Rodham-Bush-Obama Drug War. 
All 5 candidates would have cheerfully taken $5.00 an hour.  It would be illegal for them to work for that amount, BTW.  I could hire all 5 at $5.00 an hour.  Barack Obama, in his wisdom, will only let me hire 3 of them at $8.00 an hour and stay within my semi-budget. 

A couple of these guys were really, really sharp.  They have absolutely no business coming to work for me, unloading shipping containers.  One of them was an honor student and captain of his high school basketball team, and had had a fairly good Air Force gig. 

When we didn't have a minimum wage, black folks sometimes had a higher employment rate than whites. 
When we didn't have a drug war going on, we weren't locking up so many black guys and totally ruining their employment prospects. 

The disparity between black and white unemployment is a solved problem.  Eliminate the minimum wage.  End the idiotic drug war.  We could do this tomorrow. 

But we're just too compassionate.