We Don’t Need Health Care & Education “Systems”. We Need Markets.

Our school system is a wreck. So is our health care system. Anyone honest (outside of politics and government) will admit it.

My question: Why do we have SYSTEMS at all?

I don’t want a school system. Nor do I want a health care system. A “system” implies a centrally controlled authority. In practice, this means what we got in education: An unaccountable bureaucracy controlled by monopolistic teachers’ unions who turned a generation or two of children into unthinking, conforming, barely literate, pathetic little snowflakes.

Health care isn’t much better. You don’t know this unless you work in the health care “system”, or unless you’ve been sick. Government doesn’t dominate health care quite as much as it does education, but we’re just about there. Medicare is the main reason. Medicare finances most hospitals, and most serious medical care takes place at hospitals. Government micromanages Medicare no differently than Moscow micromanaged Soviet Russia. It’s the exact same principle.

We don’t need a system. If we didn’t have a system, then diversity, innovation and competition would ALWAYS have a chance and would usually win out, in the end.

Government involvement in education has resulted in the exact opposite of what education is supposed to deliver: Thinking, self-sustaining, responsible, independent minds. We don’t have those, for the most part. Yes, those still develop, including in the current generation. But they’re the rare exception, not the norm, and they develop in spite of the “school system”, not because of it. Most young persons think with their feelings, something they learned in their government-run schools. Only a government-run “system” could have permitted such stupid approaches in teaching to gain ground.

We have to get past this idea that we need a “better” or different kind of school system. Forget systems. We don’t need a system. We need a marketplace. We need individual parents and students making choices about what’s best for them in education. We need them to SHOP. We need them to price-compare and quality-compare. We need schools so accountable they can go out of business — something the behemoths we have created in the public school system will not do, not until someone has the courage to shut them down by cutting off their funds. It sounds brutal, but you can phase the government-run system out over a few years. Even ten years if you like, but it won’t take that long. Open up the market for innovation and price competition and, believe me, schools as we know them will not survive. Give parents massive tax credits to help them out and witness the end of property taxes as we’ve known them.

Ditto for health care, although some private health care does exist. Think specialists, especially in areas not covered by Medicare, services such as plastic surgery. Private practitioners — ones who opt out of government bureaucracy and insurance systems — are more responsible, capable, innovative, and customer-pleasing. I think of my own field, psychotherapy. People thank me for being courteous and scheduling people quickly, in most cases. They appreciate my ability to be reached by phone, email and text. They tell me they value the individual attention. Why? Because they pay me good money and I want to please them. If I took Medicare and the other insurance behemoths, I’d be cheaper, but I’d also be a factory. Do you want your therapist to be a factory in service to a third party, especially the government? Better yet, do you want your brain surgeon — should you get brain cancer — to be in service to the government? Well, most of them already are to some degree. If we get “Medicare for all” and the probable Communism that will accompany it, then all doctors and health providers will be slaves of the government. Is that what you want, seriously? What the hell do you think all these immigrants are fleeing?

We’ve got to get rid of systems. We’ve got to move toward markets. Unless or until we start doing that, everything will only keep getting worse. In America, it’s not too late. We can move toward competition, freedom, prosperity and capability. It will never, ever come from government. Government — when it functions, and when you have rational people in charge — can protect us physically, can protect our property, and also give us the liberty to do so for ourselves. The moment we started looking for government to educate and medically treat us was the moment we went down the wrong road. And fiscally bankrupt, too. Just look at us. We’re a mess in health care and education, the two areas government has been most involved with for generations.

We don’t need systems. We need markets. Get this through your heads, Americans.

 

 

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