Friday, March 30, 2012

Solving the Healthcare Social Marketplace Puzzle

There is a relatively simple and 'American solution' to our healthcare social marketplace woes rather than pushing another gubermint burrocratic take over of the healthcare social marketplace down our throats -- just let providers deduct the unreimbursed cost of charity care from their income.

Overnight there would be a stampede of clinics in all health professions stepping up with sliding scale fee structures to provide top notch charity care. Additionally, there would be a natural check and balance to this care -- to make it work, one would have to real income from paying patients to deduct from.

Clinics could develop these plans according to the needs and situations of their own communities, rather than being forced to accept some top down edicts from some DC bureaucrats about how you are supposed to do things.

Having control of their costs and care, Clinics could easily implement stable broad reaching preventive programs for those of limited means.

The unspoken reality of much gubermint Medicaid and Medicare care is it frequently pays doctors and clinics 30 percent or less of their regular fees -- which is about the same as if the care were tax deductible, only with lots of ever changing red tape that reduce the quality of care provided. Microsoft might donate $1M in software to schools, it's tax deductible; a grocery store might donate $1k of food to a food bank, it's tax deductible; but a doctor can't donate their time to save a life, it's not tax deductible.

Sure, one might find out that a lot of health care providers would be paying little income taxes -- but then there would also be a huge reduction, if not elimination, in Medicare and Medicaid expenses.

This care would all be subject to marketplace rules -- if someone can do it better for less, that's where the market may go. Currently, with so much paid for by third parties and gubermint, there's little market incentives to find the most cost effective care options.

In summary, providers, NOT politicians, provide health care. This shouldn't be overlooked. Way too many people have developed an unhealthy faith in politicians, burrocrats and gubermint to solve their woes. In the case of health care, it's doctors, nurses and providers of all sorts that choose to provide whatever care is given, even in the face of barely being paid for their time or overhead. If folks start to appreciate this part of the healthcare link, they may start showing up for appointments, following provider instructions, and improving their own health by developing a healthy long term relationship with their providers -- instead of the entitled demand "Make me healthy now for free so I can get back to my couch, laptop, Xbox and TV remote with soda and chips..."

Virtually all of the so called health care woes people face can be directly tied to misdirected politics of one sort or another -- some well meaning, some naive, typically with a lot of 'unintended consequences', and virtually all mostly to buy votes and power rather than to provide quality affordable health care. Government is the problem, not solution...

Get government out of the way by a few minor changes in the tax code and let the marketplace solve the health care problem.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

SocialMarketplace Foolery

Here we go again with another misguided push for sales tax on internet sales as a way to help states short on cash raise revenue. Come on folks, we live in a global marketplace that will self adjust to an internet sales tax amongst the States by moving internet business out of the country — and killing more jobs in the process.

Sure, initially some additional revenue might come into States, but that will just have to be spent on increased unemployment and welfare support for internet businesses that lose market share out of the country and have to either close or scale back their operations (lay off workers, close stores, and more). Might as well toss in loss of more jobs by American manufacturing that will now be done elsewhere because it makes even less sense to make something in the HIGH TAX US, ship it out of the country and back in to avoid taxation.

Taxing internet sales is basically like putting a bandaid over the cancer of politically centralized Social MarketPlace (SoMP) run amok.

The answer to weak government revenue to pay for more politically driven SOMPs isn’t more taxes, it’s promoting less centralization and politicization of the SoMPs. It’s out of control government run SoMPs that are driving out of control spending that is leading the push for more taxes… More taxes is akin to pouring gasoline on a fire.

The solution isn’t squeezing the flourishing internet sales market with more taxes, rather it’s opening up the politicized SoMPs so they are more individually driven rather than politically driven. Yes, this requires thinking out of the box -- a new paradigm if you will. Sadly, thinking out of the box is also something that the LOSERship of both parties are very weak at -- their solution for a a square peg and a round hole is to just pound harder, and charge the markets for all the pounding they did to 'solve' the problem until the cancer of Politicized SoMPs outgrows their bandaid and more pounding is required. Never mind that the "square pegs" of commerce and entrepreneurship are figuring out that moving operations out of the US is an increasing viable solution to achieving global marketplace success.

Marketplace Reality Check -- Politically driven SoMPs are inherently inefficient, costly, and insensitive to normal marketplace evolution — good or bad, programs grow and grow. Individually driven SoMPs are inherently efficient, cost effective, and very sensitive to normal marketplace evolution — good ones prosper, bad ones fade.