A Sustainable National Healthcare System: Prevention Only

Charles Hugh Smith | Business Insider | August 19, 2012

The current sickcare system will bankrupt the nation. One model of a sustainable national system would focus solely on providing preventative care.

Longtime readers know that I have presented various options to our costly (and therefore doomed) sickcare system. I have suggested a "cash only" system (The "Impossible" Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash July 29, 2009), and observed that the Veterans Administration (VA)offers a model for a national opt-in healthcare system that would offer an alternative to the hopelessly corrupt "fee for service" sickcare (Healthcare: A Large-Scale Solution January 4, 2011).

Stripped of purposefully obscuring complexity, sickcare is a system of State-sanctioned cartel skimming that redistributes the wealth of many to the hands of a few. There are many potentially sustainable alternatives, but regardless of the options offered, it is self-evident that open competition between transparent systems is necessary to provide cost discipline and encourage innovation.