Originally Posted by Pete F.
So it would seem based on this clinic, that your opinion is that horizontal and vertical integration is not a viable method of reducing costs and providing better service. Most businesses would disagree with that,
On what basis do you assume that that is my opinion?
If you want larger, corporate business entities, horizontal and vertical integration strategies can reduce costs, but not necessarily better service. Nor is it a given that the savings in cost will be reflected in lower prices. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Co. was very successful using those strategies, so much so that it drove out competitors and delivered high quality product at low prices to the consumers. But Big Government thought that was unfair so preferred to crony-up with his failing competitors and bust up his monopoly. That crony capitalist move saved those that couldn't compete with Rockefeller, and drove up prices.
What we have in U.S. Health Care is a corporatist model using vertical and horizontal integration AS WELL AS a crony symbiotic relation with government. However, rather than passing on any savings those strategies garner it, the Health Care cartel actually uses the destruction of competition those models afford it to RAISE prices to the consumer. Especially when the consumer is represented by third party insurance or government payers. The corporatist model might actually work for it AND THE CONSUMER if the government would stay out of market competition and if that competition led to a giant health care corporation or two or three, and the government let them monopolize health care. Given what the government did to Standard Oil, it is doubtful that the government would let an unfettered, unregulated health care corporation monopoly to exist. Especially since government control is more of a goal than lower, competitive, free market prices.
And the cartel can use government regulatory power to eliminate free market competition, which leads to lots more money for all the willing participants . . . including the government bureaucracy--at the expense of the consumer.
A mostly unregulated corporate health care market along with, as well, mostly unregulated, free market, insurance companies (which would not be rescued from failure by government bailout) could lead to far lower prices, a la Standard Oil.
But I thought you didn't like corporatism. That you bemoaned the disappearance of small business and of the middle class. The Oklahoma City Surgery Clinic is a small business model that I thought you would like. It is not afraid of competition. It doesn't try to stifle it with horizontal and vertical integration in order to monopolize its product. In fact, its mission is that others will copy its model throughout the U.S. There are, BTW, other such clinics in other states including Virginia, New York, and California. Dismantling the ACA and having an actually free market insurance system would help to blossom free market clinics to compete with the American Hospital cartel.
sounds like health care is special.
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